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Cuban Liberation Army 1895-1898

"Mambí Army"
Data Base

Introduction

The official record of participants and deaths of the Cuban Liberation Army that participated in the Cuban War of Independence 1895-1898 holds a wealth of genealogical, as well as historical, information. The records in many cases list not only both surnames of the participant (which correspond to the father's and mother's surnames), but also the first names father and mother, the date of enlistment, rank achieved and Regiment in which the individual last served.

These records were published in book form in 1901, shortly after the end of the War, and was used to determine elegibility for veteran's pensions. According to US Copyright Law and corresponding international agreements, this data is now considered to be in the Public Domain. The book was published under the direction of General Carlos Roloff, Inspector General of the Cuban Liberation Army, under the title Yndice Alfabético y Defunciones del Ejército Libertador de Cuba - Guerra de Independencia, iniciada el 24 de Febrero de 1895 y terminada oficialmente el 24 de Agosto de 1898 (Alphabetic Index and Deaths of the Cuban Liberation Army - Cuban War of Independence, started 24 February 1895 and officially ended 24 August 1898) [LOC Call number F1786.C95, LDS microfilm number 1844674].

The original book has now been digitized by the Digital Library of the Caribeean. The digital version can be found at the following link:

http://www.dloc.com/ufdc/?a=dloc1&m=hd1J&i=202347

(Thanks to Martha Ibanez Zervoudakis of the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami for the above link).

Transcription Project

Several readers of the CUBA-L genealogical discussion list volunteered to transcribe the information contained in the above mentioned records and the data has now been posted on CubaGenWeb for all to use.

Although the original records are in the Public Domain, this particular transcription is protected by US and international copyright law and may not be used for commercial purposes nor be published in any form, electronic, CD-ROM or in printed form without our written permission.

, and the Transcription Volunteers

Mambi Army Data Bases

We have re-designed our data base to allow searching the entire database for a first or second surname in one step. The new version does not require Java. The contents of the new database are identical to the original database. We will continue to support both versions until further notice. To try the new database use the first link below:

To search the database, first read the important notes and instructions below and then go to the search form using one of the following links:

New version:

Original version:

You can also search our transcriptions of the death records by using the following button:

Advice to researchers from General Roloff:

The names are listed in strict alphabetical order of the first surname, but you should take into account that there may have been spelling errors, and hence you should take care before determining that a given individual is not listed. If you do not find the person you seek under the first surname, you should search under the second surname and under the given name, since there may have been confusion during the classification. If you still do not find the individual, you should look under similar sounding letters, such as B and V, C and S, G and J, in case there has occured a spelling error.

Instructions for using the new search form:

The instructions are shown at the bottom of the search form.

Instructions for using the original search form:

Select the first letter of the last name using the drop-down menu at the bottom left of the table (first click the small arrow to see the list of options then click on the desired letter).
Wait until names appear on the grid - this may take a while (depending on the speed of your Internet connection).
The names will appear in alphabetical order of "Surname 1".
Use the scroll bar on the right to scroll through the list.
Click the "Page Up" or "Page Down" buttons to see the previous or next page of the list.
Click any of the blue buttons to sort the information by the contents of that column. Clicking again will reverse the order of the sort.
To search for a particular surname:
- Write the desired last name in the green box above the column titled "Surname 1". You can use the standard wildcards "?" (meaning any letter) and "*" (meaning any sequence of letters). Do not use accents, but do use the letter "ñ" if applicable. You can also enter only the first few letters of the name to broaden the search.
- Click on the green "Search" button. (the box immediately to the left of the "Search" button will tell you the number of entries found by your search criteria)
- You can also search for the maternal surname in "Surname 2", but if you want to do a full search on "Surname 2" you will have to look in all of the "Surname 1:" letters, one at a time. You can also search the contents of any of the other columns such as "Rank" or "Corps".
- Click the "Clear All" button to clear the grid in preparation for a new search.
- Click the "List All" button to see all the entries in the file (note that each letter of the alphabet of "Surname 1" is a different file as chosen in Step 1).
- A warning from the original book author: Keep in mind that there may have been confusion between the two surnames in the original transcription. If you do not find a surname under Surname 1, look for it in Surname 2 (in the original versin database you must search all the Surname 1 letter files for a complete search). Also be sure to look in both pairs of phonetically similar letters, such as "B" and "V", "C" and "S", "G" and "J", in case there has been a spelling error in the transcription of the original records

Important Notes on the Data (common to both versions)

Names such as "del Rio" o "de la Torre" have been transcribed as "Rio (del)" and "Torre (de la)" so they will sort by the surname and not by the "de" or "del".
All accents have been omitted to facilitate finding the names after sorting (accented letters will sort quite distantly from the unaccented letters due to the differences in ACSII codes used to represent them in computers).
The Spanish letter "ñ" has been transcribed as is. The rare letter "ü", which is required by Spanish grammar to appear in the diphthongs "üe" (as in "Agüero") and "üi" (as in "Güines"), has been transcribed as a plain "u", again to facilitate finding the names after sorting.
In general we have tried to transcribe the information exactly as it appears in the original, errors and all. Square brackets "[" and "]" have been used to denote any information added or changed from the original transcription based on data supplied from other sources such as a family descendant or to correct an obvious error.
A dot "." indicates that there was no entry in this field in the original book.
It was common practice in the originals to abbreviate some common first names such as "Jose M." for "Jose Maria", "Jose I." for "Jose Ignacio" and "Fco." for "Federico". Also some common second surnames were abbreviated, such as "F." for "Fernandez", "M." for "Martinez" and "Z." for "Zayas". In general these names have been transcribed exactly as they appear in the original.
There were women veteran soldiers and some even achieved the rank of officer. Not much appears in history books about them. Remember that this was a total war with entire families taking part.
The rank indicated in the book was the rank achieved by the soldier at the end of the war. Please note that many officers were promoted to higher ranks after the end of the war.
For an explanation of Ranks and Regimental Corps ID codes please see our list of Regiments.

If you find an error in the Data Base

If you find an error in an entry please send us an e-mail describing the error to the address shown at the bottom of the page. We will examine the original source to verify whether the database matches the original entry.

We will correct any errors made during our transcription process as soon as practicable

We will NOT modify the data as it appears in the original entry in any way. To do so would compromise the accuracy of the transcription. Please note that there indeed were errors in the original entries.

The only exception to the above rule is to correct spelling errors in a name or to add a missing surname or parents name(s). In such cases we will show the additional information in square brackets []. We will NOT erase or change the basic information in the entry from what appears in the original.

We will NOT modify any of the military information appearing in the record such as the rank, date of entry or regiment.

We will NOT add any names to the transcription that do not appear in the original source.

If you find this database useful, please send us an e-mail message by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page, and I will pass it on to the volunteers.

Mambi Army Data Base - Updated 16-May-2010