Names in Havana Newspaper Lists (1802–1861)
Search 2,550 names printed in three lists in Havana newspapers between 1802 and 1861: the subscribers to the Papel Periódico de la Havana in 1802, the people who gave aid after a hurricane in 1843, and the owners of lots that had to be built on or sold in 1861. Depending on the list, an entry gives the barrio the person was listed under or the street and number of the lot they owned.
Lists like these are some of the few places where ordinary residents of Havana are named in print before civil registration began. They can confirm that a person was living in the city on a given date, and in which part of it.
The three lists
Papel Periódico de la Havana, 12 August 1802: 355 entries. The subscribers to the newspaper, which later became the Diario de la Habana. Only names and titles are given. The list opens with the Captain General, the Bishop and five other officials named by office alone, and includes clergy and titled families such as the Conde de Casa Bayona and the Marqués de Cárdenas. Transcribed by CubaGenWeb from microfilm at the Green Library of Florida International University, Miami.
Diario de la Habana, 18, 19 and 20 April 1843: 1,622 entries. People who contributed aid for those who suffered the hurricane at Ceuta on the night of 10 October 1842, as CubaGenWeb describes the list. Each donor is listed under a barrio or town of Havana. The largest groups are Pueblo de Regla (143), Barrio de San Felipe (130), Caserío de Casa Blanca (124), Barrio de Guadalupe (116) and Barrio del Horcón (109).
Gaceta de la Habana, 17 May 1861: 573 entries. Owners of lots and plots of land that had to be built on or sold within one year under the decree of 23 April 1860. 545 of them give the street of the lot, usually with its number, such as "Calzada de San Lazaro # 253". Some lots belonged to the heirs or the widow of a named person, and the entry says so.
The 1843 and 1861 lists were located and transcribed for CubaGenWeb by Lydia Reyes, from the Archivos Españoles en Red (the Spanish state archives online, now PARES).
How these records were recovered
CubaGenWeb published these lists through a small Java program that ran inside the reader's web browser and drew a searchable table. Web browsers stopped running Java programs of that kind about ten years ago: Chrome removed the feature in 2015 and Firefox in 2017. Since then the page has shown "Please wait a few moments for the data to load" and nothing more.
This list had a second problem. The page told the Java program to open a file under one name, and the file on the server has a different name. So the list could not be opened on the original site even by someone who still had a browser able to run Java.
The names were never lost. The file was still on CubaGenWeb's server. Cuba Research Project wrote its own programs to find and read that file directly and to turn every row into a record that can be searched here alongside the other collections. Nothing was retyped, so no new transcription errors were introduced. Every record keeps the row exactly as CubaGenWeb published it.
Things to keep in mind
- Each record says which newspaper and which list the name comes from, and why the person was on it.
- Most entries give a single surname. Second surnames are rare in these lists.
- The 1843 list was printed across three issues of the newspaper. The transcription does not say which of the three days a name appeared, so those records are dated April 1843.
- Words printed with a name are kept as printed: "Herederos de don" (heirs of), "Viuda de" (widow of), "Presbitero", "Licenciado", titles of nobility, and in a few cases a description such as "portugues".
- A few entries in the 1861 list are institutions and not people, such as the Empresa del Gas and the Real Junta de Fomento.
- The 1802 list repeats 24 of its entry numbers. Both entries are kept.
- Spelling follows the transcription, without accents. Try more than one spelling, and remember that B and V, S and Z, and I and Y were used interchangeably.
Thanks
Our thanks to Ed Elizondo, who has run CubaGenWeb since 1996, and to Lydia Reyes, who found and transcribed two of the three lists. Visit CubaGenWeb's page about the newspaper lists.
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