So happy to announce i’ll be talking about my recent publication in the Winter 2025 issue of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Journal, “Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, 1776-1833.”
I’ll discuss the 1780 Gradual Emancipation Act in Philadelphia, part of the lesser known history of Northern slavery. By tracing the family histories connected to the silhouette artist and museum artisan and assistant Moses Williams (1776-ca 1833) one can catch sight of the challenges experienced by African descended and multiethnic Free People of Color in their emancipation process in this city. Williams was among the children of John and Phylis Williams, a couple held in bondage until 1786. He worked in the Philadelphia Museum of Charles Willson Peale from his childhood to adulthood and was manumitted about 1802.
Shamele Jordon will present on the heritage of Green Book locations in New Jersey, and Mary Belcher and Guy Weston will discuss recovery and reclamation of Black cemeteries in Washington DC and Flushing New York.
Silhouette of Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles, 1802. Library Company of Philadelphia
So happy to share that “Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, Philadelphia 1776-1833. ” is in the latest issue of the AAHGS Journal!
Volume 43 Winter Edition of the AAHGS Journal is available via Amazon. Editor Guy Oreido Weston brought together articles that span several states. The issue delves into family and local histories, the recovery and reclamation of Black cemeteries in Washington DC and New York.
Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, Philadelphia 1776-1833.
Moses Williams is a paradigmatic figure for the 250th Anniversary of the founding of our country. Born into slavery in 1776, and eventually freed by 1803 under the terms of the 1780 Gradual Emancipation Act, Williams was the first Black museum professional. For a time, he owned property and a house at 10 Sterling Alley; he had a wife and at least four children. Raised in the museum, in proximity to the Peale children, Williams learned how to read, how to prepare birds and other animals for displays. Eventually he cut silhouettes there using a patented machine. In 1810, he considered his role important enough to tell the census enumerator that he ‘attended at the Museum’.
Now in 2025, an amazing group of historians, curators, writers and artists from different institutions & independent professionals are focusing on Williams’ life and craft. This is a sea change from the shock I experienced listening to an exasperated curator ask why look at him? in the midst of the Peale exhibition touring nationally some two decades ago. I published my first article in Museum Anthropology detailing what I learned about Williams, who also figured in my dissertation. This built on then-current Peale scholarship on the audience for Peale’s Museum. Black history did not figure into the history of museums, even though to function, some institutions were dependent on the labor of enslaved and indentured persons. Similar to Monticello, the Peale project suffered from a segregated history that has changed since the late 1990s.
Since then, Williams has been recognized as an artist and artisan in his own right, part of a growing community through exhibitions organized by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw and other scholars. There is also an initiative by Faye Anderson, Director of All That Philly Jazz; she also serves on the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and plans to have him remembered with a historical marker where his former home stood, to be featured in future walking tours of the city.
Williams is a historical figure I can relate to. He knew a lot about many things, was literate and skilled with his hands. When I went to museums I found myself connecting to the people who worked there cleaning, protecting and maintaining the collections, and so I see him as a kindred spirit, an ancestor who deserves to be taken seriously. To see the constructed nature of the display, its arrangement, the acquisitions taken as booty in wartime, silenced behind display labels shows the larger threads that colonization wove to establish particular kinds of truth. There was a silencing or veiling of the destruction of Native settlements and the genocide that accompanied these early campaigns, also tied to an economy built on the backs of enslaved people. Despite these challenges, Williams’ presence is there, part of a larger story of this nation.
Beyond the display were questions of family. Even with what was reconstructed and recently discovered, there remain questions and the hope of finding more fragments to pull together. I’m part of a group that shares these new finds. Public historian Dean Krimmel working with The Peale found a probate file showing that he died 18 December 1830; of three daughters, two, Louise and Sarah are named, his son Carl became Charles. Now we know he had four children with Maria– whose surname remains unknown. The likelihood of finding descendants today increases with these additional names.
Descendants of John & Phillis Williams- The Williams Family Tree
But back to Williams and his family. Their experiences resonate, as they lived under the threat of kidnapping and forced deportation, the result of the constitutional amendment passed in 1793– the Fugitive Slave Act. They did everything to insure their family’s survival, even if that meant separation by indenture. My research uses details from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers, church records, the Peale Papers, newspaper accounts, census records and other items to reconstruct two generations of the Williams family. My hope is that this reconstruction makes it possible for descendants to connect.
Hope, resilience and faith in a better future drove their choices. To face the future despite the challenges is what defines the Williams’ family history.
This post, based on transcriptions of a notary document from Aguadilla, speaks the names of several enslaved ancestors held in Aguadilla by Pedro Pellot. Pellot, one of four Peugeot siblings from Fuenterrabia (Hondarribia in Basque), Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country of the Atlantic Pyrenees in Spain. The siblings arrived in Puerto Rico in 1804.[1]
By 1810, Pellot became a partner in the company of d. Pedro Abadia (Pedro Manuel Abadia Valencia ca 1727-1828) and d. Martin Lorenzo de Acevedo y Hernandez (1749-1828; also my 4th GGF). Pellot first administered, then purchased Abadia’s hacienda in Barrio Aceituna and expanded it, acquiring some 105 souls to work the coffee plantation by 1847.
While Hacienda Yruena, was among the three largest haciendas in Aceitunas, Pellot held the largest number of enslaved people in the municipality. He sold the property to its administrator, Juan Labadie Larre. The big house was rebuilt in 1903, and today is known as Hacienda Labadie. [2]
Hacienda Labadie, Moca, PR. E. Fernandez-Sacco, 2007. This version of the house was built in 1903.
Margarita
At the end of December 1822, d. Pedro Pellot purchased Margarita (bca. 1806), a young 16 year old woman, born in Guinea from Da. Maria Lucia Domenech Arze (1792-1832). [3] Maria Lucia also came from a family of enslavers, as at least one enslaved person held by her father d. Jose Domenech, appears in the first Libro de Defunciones for Aguadilla.[4]
Maria Lucia Domenech was the wife of d. Francisco Rabasa Dalmaso, a Catalan who settled in Aguadilla and whom she married three years earlier. Rabasa was also involved in buying and selling humans in the 1820s. Domenech made the sale on the basis of her rights under marriage to conduct business, and eventually, Margarita became the property of Pedro Pellot.
We come to know of Margarita’s life in Puerto Rico as part of a series of transactions. How accurate was the recording of her age? How many Margaritas were there on the Pellot plantation? This is an issue one faces when researching enslaved ancestors, as the focus on familial details is reserved for the enslaver, while personal details are used to maintain the status of the enslaved as property, and later in the century, after 1868, they became citizens incrementally.
Searching for Margarita
Acta entierro, “Margarita esclava de Dn. Fran.co Rabasa de diez y nueve anos de edad” 15 December 1837, APSCB Libro 6 F115 No, 2589
In Libro 6, F115 #2589 of entierros for San Carlos de la Aguadilla is a record for another Margarita, born about 1818. On 19 December 1837, she was buried at the age of 19 years. According to the entry she was also enslaved by d. Francisco Rabasa. As Margarita (b.ca 1806) from the 1822 sale does not appear among the cedulas of 1868-70 in Caja 4 of the Registro de Esclavos, she either managed to buy her freedom, was sold away, or died. The difference in age, together with the children born after 1837 suggests that Margarita survived, unless the children belonged to a different Margarita.
Other persons enslaved by Rabasa were born in Africa, such as Maria who died in 1828 (without noting her age or any other details), and Juana Rita 28, who died in 1843. The 1826 Relacion de Esclavos de Aguadilla has a list of enslaved people held by d. Francisco Rabasa. At the top of the second column appears yet another Margarita, age 11 bca. 1815.
Caja 62, Relacion de Esclavos, d. Francisco Rabasa, 1826. AGPR
Another Set of Sales: Four Boys, Aguadilla, 1822
Four boys trade hands in Aguadilla in March 1822. While we have the record for Pellot’s purchase, there are another set of entries that offer the outlines of trafficking in small numbers of those enslaved.
In March 1822, Pellot purchased four enslaved children born in Coro, Venezuela from D. Jose Antonio Vidal and D. Carlos Espinet. The boys were between the ages of 10 and 14, and worked as house servants. A host of questions come up– where were their mother or parents? Were they separated earlier? When did they gain their freedom? Did they ever and when? What surname did they take on? Over how many continents did their origin reach? They are:
José Eduviges de 14 años, b, 1808
José Perfecto de 10 años, b.1812
Francisco de la Yuga de 11 años b.1811
José Manuel de 10 años b. 1812 [4]
As the century wore on, there was a growing preference for purchasing children, with the expectation of a longer term of labor. [5] According to the entry, they were first sold as a group for 725 pesos by Nicolas Franson (b. Genoa, Italy) to Jose Antonio Vidal and Carlos Espinet. The price that Pellot paid is not recorded in their resale on the 23 March 1822. [6] Franson was a captain, specifically of the ship Monserrate, ‘goleta espanola’, a two masted schooner, that suggests he was also capable of transporting the enslaved. I am left with questions and the hope of finding something more.
Capitania del Puerto, – “25 Abril 1837, De la Aguadilla goleta española Monserrate, su capitán d. Nicolas Franson” Gazette de Puerto Rico, Apr 29, 1837. Library of Congress.
The witnesses to the sale were D.Francisco Rabasa, D.Juan Bautista Doumeng and D.Jose Joaquín Miranda, all local plantation owners and enslavers. These documents show the small scale of human trafficking among married couples, emigres who shared French or Basque origins and local partnerships. By 1850, more formal businesses were involved.
Trafficking from Coro to Aguadilla, 1822
Here are all of the enslaved persons from Coro who were trafficked in Aguadilla for the year of 1822
Chart listing enslaved from Coro, Venezulela to NWPR, Caja 1291, Aguadilla.
References
[1] Ellen Fernandez-Sacco, “Reconstructing District 3’s Missing 1872 Registro Central de Esclavos for Northwest Puerto Rico.” [Part 1 of 4] Hereditas 2019, 73. Antonio Nieves Méndez, Historia de un pueblo: Moca 1772-2000. Ediciones Aymaco, lulu.com 2008, 247.
[2] Nieves Mendez, Historia de un pueblo: Moca 1772-2000., 247.
[3] Caja 1291 En Aguadilla 3-22-1822 fol 128 ante mi,el escribano Real y público y testigos que se nominaran compareció D.Nicolás Franson de este vecindario y dijo que da en venta Real a D.José Antonio Vidal y a Carlos Espinet de la propia vecindad 4 esclavos de su propiedad nombrados José Eduviges de 14 años, José Perfecto de 10 años, Francisco de la Yuga 11 años y José Manuel de 10 años naturales del Coro y se los vende por la suma de 725 pesos. Testigos y vecinos lo fueron D.Francisco Rabasa, D.Juan Bautista Doumeng y D.José Joaquín Miranda. Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena, AGPR, Fondo de Protocolo Notariales, Caja 1291, Serie- Aguadilla, Pueblo- Aguadilla, Escribano Jesualdo Gaya 1821-1822. Transcrito por Carlos Encarnacion Navarro.
[4] Caja 1291 f370v-372, 31 Dec 1822; f131v – 132v, 23 March 1822
[6] Caja 1291, En Aguadilla 3-23-1822 fol.131-v a 132-v ante mi, escribano Real y público y testigos que se nominaran comparecieron D. José Antonio Vidal y D. Carlos Espinet de este vecindario y dijeron que daban en venta Real a D.Pedro Pellot del mismo vecindario 4 siervos esclavos nombrados José Eduviges de 14 años, José Perfecto de 10 años, Francisco de la Yuga de 11 años y José Manuel de 10 años todos naturales del coro. Testigos y vecinos lo fueron D.Francisco Rabasa, D.Juan Bautista Doumeng y D.Jose Joaquín Miranda.
Citation: Ellen Fernandez-Sacco, “Remembering enslaved ancestors purchased by Pedro Pellot, Aguadilla, 1822.” Latino Genealogy and Beyond, 9 Nov 2024.
Thrilled to announce that my presentation proposal, “Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, Philadelphia, 1776-1833.” was accepted for the 45th AAHGS National Conference this October! Appreciate the opportunity to share, learn and contact other genealogists and family historians at this wonderful event, hosted by AAHGS President LaJoy Mosby.
The conference theme is “Fighting Erasure: Staying Visible by Keeping African American Genealogy and History in Focus.” This centers on the “role of preserving and spotlighting African American history and genealogy in the broader narrative of American history.”
Silhouette of “Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles, 1802″Library Company of Philadelphia.
Here’s my abstract for my presentation, “Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, Philadelphia, 1776-1833.” :
When the word slavery comes to mind, many think of the US South, rather than the Northern states. Northern slavery’s history is less well known, particularly in states with gradual emancipation—Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. This presentation focuses on the family histories tied to the silhouette artist and museum artisan Moses Williams (1776-ca 1833), to glimpse African descended, Free People of Color and the challenges faced in their process of emancipation. The reality of bondage challenges the image of Philadelphia, a city so closely identified with national freedom. Important clues for Moses Williams and his family are contained in archives that includes the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, and records for his former enslaver, the Maryland-born portrait painter and Philadelphia-museum owner Charles Willson Peale (1746-1823). Peale held Williams’ parents between 1776-1786, and freed Williams in 1803. Most archival material on the Williams family is excavated from the Papers of the Peale Family, newspapers, deeds & census records. While the origins of Williams parents remain a question, records suggest the situations that Free Black Philadelphians contended with under the 1780 act for Gradual Abolition. Freedom was negotiated and paid for with terms of service at a tender age. This case study shows how the increased availability of digitized records and community research helps restore the experiences of free Black families to a larger historical narrative.
My deep thanks to Nancy Proctor and Dean Krimmel of The Peale Baltimore, who have invited me to share my work on Moses Williams, who now has a museum space and internship program named after him; and to Carol Soltis, of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, who is currently studying Williams’ technique and style for the profiles he produced, that numbered nearly nine thousand. Williams’ family members experienced degrees of unfreedom in different ways, and I seek to acknowledge their resilience by considering the ways they sought freedom at the cusp of the nineteenth century.
Daryl Lewis demonstrates a silhouette panel at the new Moses Williams Gallery at The Peale, Baltimore, 2023
Williams, born about 1776, was a skilled silhouette artist, born into slavery; he and his parents were enslaved by Charles Willson Peale. His parents gained their freedom and Williams grew up working in the Peale family’s Philadelphia Museum, where he learned to prepare and install exhibits. In the summer of 1799, Williams learned taxidermy as an assistant to Peale, preparing birds collected on the New Jersey Shore. In 1801, he worked mounting the skeleton of the mastodon, and in 1803 became a silhouette cutter at the museum, on the second floor of Independence Hall. Williams was literate, probably picked up a bit of Latin, placed his own advertisements in the local newspaper, bought land, owned a home, and was known in the local community.
Williams, the first Black museum professional in the U.S., now has a center and a gallery named in his honor. Moments in his life are illustrated by silhouettes that visitors can see with a penlight as they go through the gallery as seen above.
“Moses Williams, cutter of profiles”, silhouette, 1802
Today, the Moses Williams Center is the Peale Museum’s teaching gallery and home to the Accomplished Arts Apprenticeship program, which offers training in exhibition preparation and the historic preservation trades. Their recruiting fairs for the program happen the third week of October for this 32 week program. Launched in 2020, this paid apprenticeship consists of “non-traditional mentorship and vocational training in fine art, curatorial practice, art installation, logistics, and historic building preservation to develop transferable skills using arts as the driving force.”
This is a wonderful way to memorialize Moses Williams’ skills, creativity and resilience. It is in stark contrast to the withering account of him and his family given by Rembrandt Peale in “The Physiognotrace.” published in an 1857 issue of The Crayon. My guess is that this was such an awful perspective that Lillian Miller found she could not bear to discuss it in her bibliography for her catalog, In Search of Fame: Rembrandt Peale 1778-1860. While Peale’s account held no expectations for Williams’ person or future, it is, ironically, the main building block for understanding the context that Williams lived and worked in.
Enslavement, the slave trade and Native dispossession are no longer marginal to the story of Peale’s Museum in Philadelphia. Moses Williams is now a very visible ancestor.
See my “Racial Theory, Museum Practice: The Coloured World of Charles Willson Peale.” Museum Anthropology, 1996. You can download a copy here.
This has turned out to be a busy month! I finished my last article for the series on “Reconstructing Missing Volume of the Registro Central de Esclavos, pt 4” for the forthcoming volume 24 of Hereditas: Revista de la Sociedad Puertorriquena de Genealogia. I hope to submit “Looking for Lorenzo Ubiles, Alcalde de barrio Humacao 1873.” for the AAHGS Journal shortly.
I’m happy to announce that on Thursday October 19, 1:30 PM-2:30 EST, I’ll be presenting “El Registro de Esclavos: An archive you need to know”, at “Hidden in Plain Sight: Recovering the erased stories of our ancestors in the United States and the Caribbean”, the 44th Annual 2023 AAHGS Virtual Conference. Excited to be among so many great presentations & presenters that includes friends & family from Black ProGen Live! Sessions will be available until Dec 31.
Here’s the description: The process of emancipation in Puerto Rico formally began in 1868, with the registration of over 30,000 enslaved persons using cedulas, small registration forms 6 x 8” in size. The information on these forms were copied to create the volumes of the Registro de Esclavos, issued in 1872. FamilySearch microfilmed two series of these documents from the enormous collection of Gobiernos Españoles collection. These are now searchable on the FamilySearch site as “Puerto Rico Slave Registers, 1863-1879”. These entries shed light on the identities of people as they transitioned to freedom just fifteen years before the establishment of the Registro Civil (Civil Registration) in 1885 and the formal end of slavery in 1886. The information covers name, origin, parents, partner, children, enslaver, physical details and issues around the purchase of freedom, manumission, or even the death of the person listed. The ages range from days old to persons in their 80s. These documents are useful for identifying family members and confirming their identities and locations pre-1885, and who may not appear in the 1910 census. Recently digitized archives on the Archivo Digital Nacional de Puerto Rico (ADNPR.net) that overlap with the information in the Registro de Esclavos will be covered. This work is a contribution to the ancestors, to help bridge them with their descendants.
Yesterday evening, the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project (MPCPMP) hosted Antonio Rocha’s performance of “Voyage through Death to Life upon these Shores”: The Malaga Speaks. Here’s the description of the program, which will soon be on YouTube:
The story of the Malaga, a 19th century ship built in Maine that transported captive Africans, was created and will be performed by Antonio Rocha. Told from the perspective of the ship, Rocha uses song, narration, and mime to weave his way through this historical tale that chronicles the history of the trans-Atlantic human trade and its legacy. Annually, on August 23rd, the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project (MPCPMP) hosts a program to acknowledge this day and the lives of those captive Africans who perished during the trans-Atlantic crossing known as the Middle Passage and the ten million who survived to build the Americas. Through the presentation of this creative work, The Malaga Speaks, MPCPMP offers a broader narrative of connection and the Diaspora – from ship building, to the ocean voyage, to arrival, into enslavement; from Maine, to Africa, across the Atlantic, to Brazil.
Rocha’s performance is a powerful one. He builds and weaves a narrative that reveal layers of history and experiences of the Middle Passage as a knowledge that is both painful and liberatory the deeper he enters into the story of the Malaga. There is a body memory, a visceral space where those who survive decide what they can carry, and what was left by the ancestors for us today.
View from the fortifications of San Juan, 1824. Library of Congress.
What are the origins of the Ubiles families of Barrio Mabu, Humacao? This post is part of a larger project that explores the lives of ancestors who lived centuries before in Northeast Puerto Rico. As a genealogist, this was an opportunity to delve into the ancestry of Marie Ubiles, and share more about what documents hold about her ancestors, Juan Lorenzo Ubides Rodriguez and Petrona de la Cruz Amaro. First I needed to explore who were among those who held the surname during the late seventeenth-early eighteenth century in Northwest Puerto Rico. Here is the first chapter of the project.
The locations for the Ubiles family clusters extend across the Northeast by the early eighteenth century.
NE Portion of 1898 Map of PR showing locations for Ubiles families- San Juan, Bayamon, Trujillo Alto, Cangrejos, Loiza & Humacao
Origins
In Puerto Rico, the surname Ubiles begins with Capt. Miguel Joseph de Ubides y Espinosa, born in 1699 in Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz. Son of Juan de Ubides and Ysabel Calderon, it is unclear as to whether his parents came to the island at all. Miguel de Ubides was once a partner and then an enemy of Capitan Miguel Enriquez, the privateer who rapidly ascended San Juan’s social caste, only to be turned upon later. Both Enriquez and Ubides’ were enslavers and slave traders, and here lies the origin of the Ubides of color. Over time, the spelling of those once enslaved changed.
Properties
Capt. Miguel de Ubides married Cecilia Sanchez Araujo on 8 July 1720 in the Cathedral de San Juan, and they had at least four children. One reached adulthood, Juan Manuel Ubides Araujo born in July 17341. Unlike many dwellers of the time in San Juan, Ubides lived in a two-story building. It was described by historian Angel Lopez Cantos, and based on a July 1725 inventory of de Ubides’ embargoed property:
Y la casa de fiel ejecutor del cabildo de San Juan, Miguel de Ubides, tambien era de dos plantas. En la anterior había una ‘sala’ que ocupaban mitad del espacio y la otra un ‘aposento’ y una ‘despensa’. Abajo solo había un habitación que servia de tienda y el postal. El hueco de la escalera lo habían tapiado y hacia las veces de ‘almacén2’.
And the home of the faithful executor of the cabildo of San Juan, Miguel de Ubides, was of two floors. In the rear was a large hall that took up half the space, another chamber and a pantry. Below there was a bedroom that served as a store and the post office. The space underneath the stairs was closed off and at times, served as a warehouse.
This lends an idea of the kinds of property and labor that de Ubides used in his business—there would be a need for domestics, cooks, storekeeper, clerk, and porters, all roles that could be done with enslaved workers. This knowledge also represented a route to freedom in early San Juan, if one were able to arrange buying it. To know these aspects of how to run a business oneself meant one could openly support their own families once out of bondage.
Smuggling
The sixteenth – seventeenth centuries were a time of smuggling in the Caribbean, as Spain paid more attention to the development of silver mining in the Yucatan and its other colonies. As a result, Puerto Rico was a hotbed of smuggling activity that connected merchants to Curacao, Venezuela and other islands . The ships and cargoes taken as prizes by Spanish and Spanish American merchants were sold in the British West Indies. [See Cromwell 2018]
Miguel de Ubides was involved with Captain Miguel Enriquez, the privateer hired by the Spanish government. Eventually, Enriquez was turned against by the elite of San Juan, disturbed by his rapid social climb and business expansion. Another reason they resented him was that Enriquez was the grandchild of an enslaved woman from Angola, and in a world where the proximity to Europe was paramount, he did not fit in. de Ubides was among those who pitted themselves against Enriquez, and he also suffered the embargo of his property not long after. The larger question is how much of their business was involved with the slave trade. Lopez Cantos suggests that Enriquez’ holdings numbered over 200, including those enslaved who worked plantations. There is only a trace of people held by de Ubides and Enriquez in surviving parish records.
Enslaved Persons Held by Miguel de Ubides
The earliest mention of enslaved Ubides is in the pages of the extant books for Nuestra Senora de los Remedios in Viejo San Juan.
Maria Antonia, hija de Antonia, morena esclava del Cap.n Miguel de Ubides, Jul 1748 Nuestra Señora de los Remedios
This July 1748 baptism for “Maria Antonia, hija de Antonia, morena esclava de Dn. Miguel de Ubides. Padrino, Joseph Manuel Carrillo3” is among the few documents for the enslaved persons held by Ubides. Antonia’s age is not noted, and she may be anywhere between 12 to 45 years of age, probably born in Puerto Rico.
Joseph, hijo de Maria, morena esclava de Miguel Ubides, 1738, Nuestra Señora de los Remedios4
Maria, a Black woman enslaved by Miguel de Ubides in 1738 gave birth to Joseph, who was baptized on 26 October 1738, and Manuel de Jesus served as his godparent. This entry illustrates how ‘new property’ was registered through parish records. Additional documentation for Maria and Joseph may no longer be extant.
Acta de Bautizo, Joseph Antonio Ubides, Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, San Juan, 1773. FS.org
When Joseph Antonio, a formerly enslaved man from St Thomas was baptized on 17 January 1739, Dn. Miguel de Ubides served as his godfather5. Joseph Antonio, a freedman, was baptized together with Antonia, an enslaved woman held by Capitan Andres Antonio. Joseph Antonio’s conversion to Catholicism was an assurance to the Spanish crown of his loyalty [6]. What is unusual in this record is that two men brought two persons to be baptized, one who liberated himself from a British colony and the other, an enslaved woman. Why the double baptism? Were they a couple? There is no additional information to go on. Apparently, Joseph Antonio took the surname of his padrino after 1739- and is the same Joseph Antonio Ubides who dies in May 1770, married to Ana Lerey.
Summary
Several people of African descent carried the de Ubides surname in early-mid eighteenth century San Juan. As documentation is scarce, there is evidence of them in parish records. There are several clusters of this surname with a connection by name or association.
How many enslaved persons were held by Capt. Miguel de Ubides is unknown. Given that his property (like Enriquez) was impounded, an inventory was made of his holdings. It is possible that enslaved people appear on these pages, either as a numeric count, or perhaps, a named list. Protocolos from this time period for San Juan are unfortunately, not extant.
If you’re from one of the Ubiles family communities, I hope you’ll share your story.
For an idea of the extent of smuggling, see Jesse Cromwell, The Smuggler’s World: Illicit Trade and Atlantic Communities in Eighteenth Century Venezuela. UNC Press, 2018.
5. Joseph Antonio, Acta de Bautismo 1739″Puerto Rico, registros parroquiales, 1645-1969″, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6DBL-YF8Z : 15 December 2021), Joseph Antonio Miguel de Ubides in entry for MM9.1.1/6DBL-YF8C:, 1739.
6. Did Joseph Antonio Ubides serve in the military, as many free Black men did in Cangrejos? See: David M Stark, “Rescued from their Invisibility: The Afro-Puerto Ricans of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century San Mateo de Cangrejos, Puerto Rico.” The Americas 63:4 (Apr 2007), 551-586.
Two decades ago, I was in the Special Collections of U InterAmericana looking at their Herman Reichard Collection, where I photographed historian Eduardo Neumann Gandia’sResena historica sobre la fundacion y crecimiento del municipio de Moca of 1910. Despite the homemade cover, this was one publication of at least two tracts by Neumann Gandia that served to circulate a brief history of a municipality.
Eduardo Neumann Gandia (1852-1913)
It’s a brief 11 pages, taken from a larger work as can be seen from the numbered pages 79-90. There’s no mention of what the original text was. Nor do can we tell the entire volume was by a single author, or if it was a collection that includes multiple municipalities. He published his two volumes of Benefactores y hombres notables de Puerto-Rico: bocetos biográficos-críticos con un estudio sobre nuestros gobernadores generales, in 1896 and 1899, which contained mini-biographies of figures in government and business.
Herman Reichard Esteves (1910-2005), who preserved this pamphlet and other archival materials, was a librarian and professor based in Aguadilla. He was an avid genealogist whose work continues to inform many today, and which Dra. Haydee Reichard is making available through the Archivo Digital Nacional de Puerto Rico ADNPR.net. I made photographs of Neumann Gandia’s work, and (over 110 years later) ran it through an OCR program to make a PDF from the images.
You can download the pamphlet from the link at the bottom of the page.
1972: Historia de Moca 1772-1972
This text was the basis for the 1972 bicentennial publication, Historia de Moca 1772-1972, produced by Sociedad Civico-Cultural Pro-Conmemoracion del Bicentenario de Moca, Inc. Published by the Dept de Instruccion Publica, Estado Libre Associado de Puerto Rico, both organizations spoke to a particular moment of identification on local and state level, and a recognition of a shared history that extends to the eighteenth century.
There is no mention of the fact that Moca is an indigenous name, nor of any survival in these pages. Additional information builds out Neumann Gandia’s brief history and benefits from photographs of the location and personages, as for the biography of the educator Adolfo Emeterio Babilonia Quinones (1841-1884). He married into the Yturrino family, whom i’ve written of in a previous post.
Cover, Historia de Moca 1772-1972. Edición bicentenario. Collection of the author.
Cultural Memory, ancestors & what gets overlooked…
The purpose of Neumann Gandia’s text and its later iterations was on the importance of a cultural memory. These local histories can be crucial for creating the microhistories of our ancestors on different parts of the island. This is not the same as a building a romanticized story of the past. Instead the intent is to write to reflect the struggle to live, have families or not, to stay or to go, to become part of groups that yielded forms of support, or produced a variety of creative expressions.
The 1972 book devoted two pages to mentions of enslavement: La Esclavitud Negra:(breves anotaciones) en Moca. There are a couple of paragraphs detailing the presence of enslaved people in Moca since its founding. Quoted is the 1945 interview by Luis M. Diaz Soler in Historia de la esclavitud negra en Puerto Rico. This excerpt acknowledges the experiences of Leoncia Lasalle and her daughter Juana Rodriguez Lasalle under bondage. Looking back at Resena, for early Puerto Rico, Neumann Gandia simply elides the topic (save for the statistics) yet the system of enslavement permeates the economic activity of the era he describes, the 1840s on.
Neumann Gandia, Resena historica de sobre la fundacion y crecimiento del municipio de Moca Page 82
Neumann Gandia’s Moca of the 1840s, p.82
“…Así se vivía en aquella época patriarcal y primitiva desprovista de ideales, aspiraciones y huérfana de comodidades, donde no habia a sola escuela en todo el partido. Pocos sabían leer y menos escribir, pero había suma honradez en las compra-ventas y contratos. Se vivía como en familia y las viandas que faltaban en una casa se suministraban por los vecinos reciprocamente. Los compadres se estimaban como si fuesen hermanos, y todos los habitantes del partido se estimaban entre si con gran afecto y consideraciones. No existían escrituras públicas y según cuenta la tradición oral que se ha trasmitido hasta nuestros días, de padres á hijos al finalizar los contratos bervales, se arrancaban mútuamente un cabello de la cabeza, en señal de su cumplimiento, y rara vez, ó casi nunca, dejaban de llevarse á cabo sus pactos los cuales cumplían con religiosidad. Pocas demandas ó ningunas se interponían y eran raros los asesinatos y desconocidos por completo el robo y el pillaje en esta comarca, así como en toda la isla. Eran estos vecinos muy católicos y a veces muy superticiosos. A la entrada de sus casas ó en los bateyes de las mismas, levantaban el signo de redención, ó sea cruces de madera, y rezaban diariamente el rosario, como su oración favorita. vestían con camisa de listado, pantalón de coleta y sombrero de paja, é iban enteramente descalzos. Sobre todo, sentían gran placer por los bailes fandan-gos, celebrando muchas fiestas por Navidad, Año Nuevo y Reyes, que duraban semanas enteras y distribuían pasteles, almojábanas, alfajores, majarete, manjar blanco, mundo nuevo y otros dulces criollos, así como licores y refrescos á la gente que á ellas concurrian. El carácter alegre y jovial de los pobladores, originarios, los más, del medio día de España, prevalecía entre estos vecinos.“
“That is how life was in that patriarchal and primitive time devoid of ideals, aspirations and orphaned of accommodation, where there was not a single school in the entire region Few knew how to read and even less how to write, but there was honesty in sales and contracts. One lived as family and the vegetables that one household lacked was taken care of by the locals reciprocity. Godfathers treated each other as if they were brothers, and all the inhabitants of the area regarded each other with great affection and considerations. There were no public documents and after oral tradition that has been transmitted to the present, of fathers and sons finalizing their verbal contracts, each would pull a hair from the other’s head as a sign of fulfillment, and rarely, or almost never, left from taking to completion their pacts, which they accomplished religiously. Few demands or none were and rarely were there murders or unknowns who robbed and pillaged in this county as in the rest of the island. These inhabitants were very Catholic and very superstitious. At the entry of their homes or in the bateyes of the same, they raised the sign of redemption, that is to say, wooden crosses and daily recited the rosary as their favorite prayer. They dressed with striped shirts, canvas pants , a straw hat and went entirely barefoot. Above all they were greatly pleased by the fandango dances, celebrated many parties through Christmas, New Years and All Kings Day, that lasted entire weeks, and distributed pasteles, “almojábanas, alfajores, majarete, manjar blanco, mundo nuevo” and other local sweets, along with liquor and refreshments to those to whom they agreed with. The happy and jovial character of the original founders, more from the middle age of Spain prevails among these locals…”
Neumann Gandia lays out a different world for the early nineteenth century. His was not an inclusive history, and the only cultural source recognized is European. AfroIndigenous or African cultural survivals or influences are not mentioned. This was instead a peasant society composed of a superstitious and illiterate populace prone to violence, whose ‘happy character’ is simply an expression of early Spanish culture. Look at those numbers though on p.82. Taking the categories of free and unfree together, the 2,299 BIPOC population is significant yet has no role in the historical scenario he sketched above.
The fact is that the island was a process of settler colonial society, with a system that required violence and the use of force to control the enslaved and sharecroppers ‘of various colors’ within a stratified society. Born in 1852, slavery shaped Neumann Gandia’s world. Freedpeople were very much around in 1910, and the process of emancipation terminated in 1886. Also interesting is that Neumann Gandia’s collection of Taino bird effigy bowls was purchased by Jesse Walter Fewkes. This remains for us to discuss in understanding our ancestors lives today and their world.
The best history of Moca is Antonio Nieves Morales’ Moca 1772-2000: Historia de un pueblo (Lulu.com, 2008). Nieves Mendez’ work is groundbreaking as a full history, one that includes tables listing enslavers and the enslaved, and his own connection to this past, via his family history.
Miguel A. Babilonia Talavera, Alcalde de Moca
Lost is the original cover and the introduction to the section on Moca, a message by the mayor, Miguel A. Babilonia Talavera (1867-1947) who became Alcalde in 1899, and again from 1905-1910. He is my great uncle, brother to my great grandfather Ambrosio Alcides Babilonia Talavera (1860-1951), who I knew from my mother’s recollections of her childhood there.
He served as mayor after the annexation of Moca from Aguadilla took place in 1905. On pages 50-51, the 1972 Historia de Moca volume reproduces part of page 79 from the Neumann Gandia pamphlet as “Don Miguel A. Babilonia se despide de sus conciudadanos” written in December 1910.
Pedro Miguel Antonio Babilonia Talavera (1867-1947)
I want to express my deep thanks to all the members of the Babilonia family and their descendants, and members of SAMocanos for sharing their information and photographs with me over the years. I especially want to thank my cousin Gaspar Babilonia, for sharing his collection of his grandfather’s photographs.
Now digitized images of ancestors and their communities populate a variety of places on social media, another way that descendants can connect to their past. Neumann Gandia’s work is but one expression of this from over a century ago.
In working with the histories of enslaved ancestors, one comes to the questions of survival and resilience in the face of all that bondage could entail. The mid-nineteenth century world of a rural hacienda in Puerto Rico where a young African woman is enslaved, is recreated in the pages of Dalma Llanos Figueroa’s 2022 novel, A Woman of Endurance.
It is an incredibly moving book that takes one through moments in her life, the episodes of violence and trauma, of learning, caretaking and trusting in a world hostile to recognizing the full humanity of the labor that built it. There is the potential for violence at every turn.
We glimpse the lives of the women who are working for the big house in different capacities, and Pola makes a transition from working the fields to the sewing room. This and other events ripple through the groups whose lives are not under their own control. Through the figure of Pola, there is healing. Community and love, however vulnerable it may make a situation, is what helps one survive.
The story of Pola takes us through an experience that replicates the experiences of many enslaved women. In Yorubaland, West Africa in 1831, Keera, a very young woman comes to know of her power from her mother. After surviving the Middle Passage and assaults, we come to know her as Pola, with this brief glimpse of life before capture and enslavement in a flashback. The vision comes while she recovers in another hacienda.
Llanos-Figueroa recreates this world vividly, with descriptions of situations that do not shy from the violence of losing children, or finding love and understanding in the middle of a forced labor camp.
Note the cover art, a woman in a silk dress with a pattern on her back that echos the pattern of scars on the back of a painting of Gordon, who served as a Sargent in the Louisiana Native Guards during the Civil War. The painting is based on the cabinet card photo where he reveals his back, and the arrangement of painting, flowers, beads and symbols suggest this is an altar that honors Gordon’s experiences as an ancestor. The fabric of a life.
This is one of the most incredible novels i’ve read, and on my list of key texts for our times.
Available in Spanish as Indomitable. Amistad Publishing.
You can visit the author’s website here: https://www.dahlmallanosfigueroa.com where there are excerpts of the novel available in Spanish & English so you can check it out.
