C. G. C. JOURNAL - Raíces de la Perla - Winter/Spring 2007 HIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHI Puerto de la Habana - Febrero 1875 Calles de La Habana: Calle de Obispo Los López de Oviedo de Sancti Spíritus y Trinidad Ed Elizondo and CubaGenWeb Directorio de la Provincia de Santiago - Holguin Los Fernandez de Zúñiga de Trinidad Noticias Geográficas e Historicas de los Partidos de la Juridicción - Esperanza o Puerta de Golpe Del Presidente Greetings to all our members! We hope your research into your family trees is providing much well-earned fruit! Hopefully, this edition of Raíces de la Perla will add to your harvest! First of all, we are very proud to announce that our club's "god-father", Ed Elizondo, was the recipient of the "Outstanding Achievement Award in Genealogy" by The Florida State Genealogical Society (FSGS) for his contri- bution to the field of Genealogy for five or more years. During our summer board meeting, the CGC unanimously decided to lend our support and nominate Ed Elizondo for this honor in recognition for the aid he has provided to Cuban Genealogy aficionados. Ed received the award on Nov. 10, 2006 at the FSGS Conference in Melbourne, Florida. The CGC and Raíces de la Perla would not exist if we had not met through Ed as the moderator of the old Cuba-L forum. Please be sure to read Martha Ibáñez Zervoudakis' article in this issue on Ed Elizondo, including his bio, as well as how and why he entered the exciting, but often frustrating, world of genealogy. Congratulations and many thanks to Ed for his work and continued enthusiasm in the field of Cuban Genealogy! At our February meeting, the CGC hosted a tutorial held at Casa Bacardi, thanks to the assistance of fellow member Jorge Piñón, on accessing the Archivo Español en Red (AER). This website contains digitized images of original docu- ments of the Spanish State Archives, including our most important fountain of information, the Archivo General de Indias. Pictures taken at the function are shown below. Concerning new endeavors, our fellow member Lydia Reyes has offered the CGC her database containing a colossal collection of names found in Cuban newspapers, many dating to the early 1800s, such as the Diario de Cárdenas, El Comercio, El Heraldo de Cienfuegos, El Fénix (Sancti Spíritus), El Orden (Caibarien), El Sagua, La Aurora de Matanzas, La Voz de Cuba, and the Boletin Oficial of each of the provinces to name a few. We are currently working on uploading this information onto the website. Many thanks to Lydia and her efforts in the creation of this database! Many thanks, as well, to our journal writers for their contributions to this issue. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to write an article or offer ideas on future articles. We would like to continue to focus on providing our readers with more family history information by featuring many individual family studies. We need your help and collaboration in this task and ask that you send your trees to the CGC for possible publication in Raíces. Lastly, we want to remind our friends that June is Membership Renewal Month. Please use the form found on the back cover of this issue to renew your commitment to Raíces. We need your support in order to be able to continue to publish Raíces, maintain our website, cover genealogical association fees, offer seminars and provide you with material to assist you with your genealogical research. We look forward to serving you for one more year! We hope you enjoy this issue of Raíces and wish you a pleasant summer. Please visit our website for information on future meetings at: www.cubangenclub.org. For those of us in hurricane prone areas, we had a very quiet hurricane sea- son last year; let's hope we have the same luck in 2007! Remember to take precautions for the upcoming hurricane peri- od; take care of yourselves and your families, including safeguarding your genealogical materials and research! Happy Hunting! Please remember June is membership renewal month! We need and appreciate your continued support. Raíces de la Perla is a publication of The Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, FL Inc. Articles of family history or of historical nature are welcomed and will be used as space permits and at editors’ discretion. All precautions have been made to avoid errors. However, the publisher does not assume any liability to any party for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions, no matter the cause.Articles can be sent to [email protected]. Annette Piedra Baquedano, Editor http://www.cubangenclub.org Copyright 2007 1 Ed Elizondo and CubaGenWeb by Martha Ibáñez Zervoudakis Ed Elizondo is the webmaster, owner and driving force of CubaGenWeb. CubaGenWeb is an on-line depository of resources and information dedicated to Cuban genealogy. It provides this information via the Internet, free of charge, to those individuals researching their Cuban roots. More than 1,600 people visit CubaGenWeb each day from more than 40 countries including Japan, China, the Netherlands, Australia, and Italy as well as the most obvious countries of Mexico, Latin America, Cuba and the United States. Ed is a retired aerospace engineer, who graduated from MIT at 19 years of age. He has been interested in computer technolo- gy since its inception. He purchased his first computer in the 1970s and had to assemble it before he could put it to use! In 1972 Ed's father died. This event is the impetus for Ed's genealogical journey. He is an only son and has a desire to reestablish his ties with other family members. Using his com- puter skills, he compiles a family history and shares it with the members of the extended branches. As a result, correspon- dence begins with these members, contact is re-established and the family history is refined and expanded. While compiling his family history, he discovers sources of information available for Cuban genealogy and the techniques for doing Cuban genealogical research. In the early 1990s, he writes a summary of this information and publishes it in the Hispanic genealogy sections of the on-line services of CompuServe. In 1996, CompuServe begins to offer Internet access and hosting of home pages for their clients. Ed's Cuban Genealogy Resource Page appears on July 4, 1996. In April of 1998, he coordinates with the WorldGenWeb project and registers the CubaGenWeb.org domain. CubaGenWeb is born! Four months later, he starts a surname bulletin board on Rootsweb as a complement to the site and a month after that he becomes the moderator of the Cuba- L list. In 1998, CubaGenWeb consisted of five web pages. Today it consists of 270 pages with searchable data- bases, passenger lists, newspaper lists, research guides, sources and other information. Since CubaGenWeb is on a commercial hosting service, total control of the content is possible. An affiliation with the non-profit RootsWeb organization also allows for the additional services of the surname bulletin board and discussion list. CubaGenWeb has been and continues to be the premier source for Cuban genealogical research. Ed has always worked (and continues to work) on updating and maintaining CubaGenWeb (as well as the sur- name board and discussion list) in the evenings and weekends. In addition, CubaGenWeb is an independent non-profit web site because of Ed's financial backing. For years Ed Elizondo, through CubaGenWeb, has assist- ed a numerous and diverse group of genealogists and family historians find their way through the often daunt- ing and difficult road of Cuban genealogy. Ed was honored by the Florida State Genealogical Society (FSGS) for his commitment to the field of genealo- gy. He was awarded the "Genealogy Outstanding Achievement Award" in recognition of his contribution to the field of Florida genealogy and/or history for 5 or more years. This award was presented at the FSGS Annual Conference in Melbourne, Florida on November 10, 2006 by the FSGS President, Ann Mohr Osisek. We extend our most sincere congratulations to Ed along with our appreciation for the wonderful resource we know as CubaGenWeb! 2 Published in 1889 by the Imprenta de Juan E. Ravelo in Santiago de Cuba, the Directorio de la Provincia de Santiago de Cuba 1889-1890, con anuncios y referencias indispensables al comercio, oficinas, establecimientos públicos y cor- poraciones, lists the public officials for each "ayuntamiento" in the Province of Santiago. It also lists schools, churches, and doctors. The end of the list includes all the different businesses both large and small along with their address. Each section begins with a small introduction and description of the area as well as a census. This book seems to have been updated periodically as there is also an 1887 edition. We are publishing the list for Holguin in this issue of Raices. The rest of the directories can be found online at www.cubagenclub.org; Baracoa, Bayamo, Caney, Villa de Cobre, Gibara, Guantánamo, Jiguaní, Manzanillo, Mayarí, Tánamo, Santiago de Cuba y Victoria de las Túnas. HOLGUIN by Martha Ibáñez Zervoudakis Capital del partido judicial de su nombre, con 32,240 habitantes, en su término municipal, está situada á 280 kilómetros de esta ciudad. Su jurisdicción es bastante estensa y productiva en tabaco, yarey, maderas, maiz y abundante ganado.Cuenta con Ayuntamiento y en residencia de una Comandancia Militar. Tiene Junta de Instrucción pública y de Beneficencia, Cárcel, bonitos edificios, espaciosas plazas de paseo y dos iglesias. La ciudad se halla dividida en cuatro barrios, denominados San Isidoro, San José, Carull y Llano. Cuenta con una administración de Comunicaciones de 2ª clase.