The Sun-Sentinel.
The Associated Press. Posted May 21 2001.
GAINESVILLE · University of Florida researchers are set to embark on a
unique Cuban rescue mission. They aim to save millions of pages of historical
documents dating as far back as 1578 which have been locked up in Havana since
1959.
UF researchers made a deal with the Cuban National Archives in March to
preserve and copy about 10 million handwritten records of life, business and
shipping in Havana from 1578 to 1900.
The Notary Protocols contain births, deaths, property and slave ownership --
information about everything and everybody who passed through Havana en route
from Spain to the United States and back. At the time, just about everything
went through the Cuban city.
"It was like the capital of Florida," said Arva Parks, a South
Florida historian and author.
The volumes paint the historical saga of colonial Spain, with information
such as census data, cargo inventory, wills and settlers' contracts ranging from
marriage to emancipation
Eugene Lyon, the former head of the Spanish Document Center at Flagler
College in St. Augustine, said the protocols trace the movement of cargo and
people, including slaves, between Spain, Cuba and Florida.
Once public, the records would give slave descendants the ability to trace
their genealogy to the time when their ancestors were first brought to the
Americas.
UF had tried to win access to the volumes, locked in the Cuban archives
since 1959, for 20 years, without success.
In the project's start-up phase, UF will make microfilm and digital scans of
50 volumes, totaling about 70,000 pages, spanning three centuries.
When historians complete that, university officials plan to get donations to
pay to index and scan the remainder of the 6,658 volumes.
Copyright © 2001, South Florida Sun-Sentinel | 