Cuban Genealogy Center

24 Jan 2010 - We have just transcribed another 934 passengers, corresponding to arrivals and departures to or from Habana during October 1870. We now have 63,869 passenger names from 4,354 ships in our database. You can easily search this database by clicking on the above headline.

28 Nov 2009 - We have added the following new links to our links page:

• LDS Family Search (new pilot version - see story below)
• Alvin Sherman Library Genealogy Collection (Nova Southeastern University)

2 Feb 2010 - There is a new genealogy related TV show titled "Who Do You Think You Are", coming to NBC. The Series premiere will be Friday, March 5th, at 8 p.m. / 7 p.m. central. 

According to NBC, in the show, seven celebrities embark on the journeys of their lives--the quest to discover the genealogical roots of who they are. Click on the above headline to see who the celebrities are. Click here to watch a preview of the show.

Thanks to the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami for the news and the link to the preview of the show.

28 Nov 2009 - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has made available a new version of their Internet search service, Family Search. In this new version, still in the pilot stage, you can not only do the same searches as in the traditional version but, in addition, you can see an image of the original document by clicking on the small image that appears at the upper right. Eventually this service will completely replace the need for consulting microfilms.

Our project to transcribe the 69,770 names of the veterans of the Cuban War of Independence (1895-1898) was completed in 2003. This project, honoring the memory of those who fought to liberate Cuba from the colonial yoke of Spain, was made possible by the effort of 34 volunteers, working for nearly 3 years and provides a unique resource for those researching their Cuban Genealogy.

We have also completed the transcriptions of the death notices of the soldiers that died during that war. These transcriptions provide a unique insight into the personal story of many who fought and died in the war.

The Department of Culture of the Basque Government of Spain has established a Document Center of Euskadi (the Basque nation) called IRARGI which is dedicated to the creation of a historic archive of Euskadi.

The principal components of their digitized archives are:

• BADATOR - an index to the various archives and documents. This includes nearly 40,000 entries representing 5 million information folios compiled from Municipal Archives, private family archives and Catholic Church archives.
• Sacramental Archives of the Historic Diocesan Archives of Bilbao, San Sebastian & Vitoria (containing an index - still in process- to over 5 million baptism, marriage and death documents)
• Index to the 49 volumes of documents compiled by the great genealogist D. Luis de Salazar & Castro (1658-1734)

Click on the headline above to reach this resource.

We have generated a list of links to digitized books of interest to Cuban Genealogy. These books are available on-line for free download. Please continue letting us know of any others that you discover so we can all mutually benefit from these resources.

Thanks to copies of microfilmed newspapers provided by Mariela Fernandez and Lourdes del Pino, members of the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, we are transcribing passenger lists arriving to (and a few departing from) Habana into our searchable data base. These records can be searched alphabetically. Click on the above headline to reach this resource.

Many documents from various Spain Archives have been (and are still being) digitized and placed on the web. The web site interface has recently been updated and is now much easier to use and you no longer have to register. You can search all the archives by any desired text (including personal names), and limit your search to a certain date range. You will then get a listing of all the archives having documents that match your seach criteria. Clicking on the name of an archive will bring up a list of the relevant documents in that archive, Many of these documents will show a small camera icon. Clicking on a camera icon will bring up small images of all the pages of the original document. You can then click on each page, zoom to read it, print it and/or save it to your computer for further study. Visit http://pares.mcu.es/

Thanks to the folks at Evendon.net, the 1958 Habana Telephone Directory is now available on line. Click on the above headline to go there.

CubaGenWeb is visited each day by more than 2,000 people from more than 80 countries, including the United States, Mexico, Spain, Argentina, Peru, Cuba, Colombia, Chile, the Dominican Republic and Canada. Find out these and other facts, such as which are our most popular pages by clicking on the above link.

You can visit our archive pages and review previous news headlines by clicking on the above link.

You can easily increase the font size of the text in our pages to improve readability by using the menu on your browser as follows:

• Internet Explorer: select Page->Text Size->Larger (or Largest)
• Firefox: select View->Text Size->Increase (you can repeat this step several times to increase the size further)
• Safari: select View->Make Text Bigger

We are proud that our work has been recognized with the following awards:

• 2009 Cuba Select Honoree - One of the top 24 Cuba web sites in the world - awarded by the Havana Journal, Inc.
• 2006 Genealogy Outstanding Achievement Award - awarded to your Webmaster by the Florida State Genealogical Society.