Table of Contents | Overview | Index
| 1800-1900 | 1901-1940 |
1941-present | Other Rumbauts | En español
OUR ROOTS
AND OUR BRANCHES
THE RUMBAUTS AND THE RIERAS
A
narrative of the histories of the main branches of the family
The Rumbauts of Las
Villas
The Yanes Rumbaut
Line
The Capote
Branch
The López Branch
The Rieras of Catalonia
The Rieras of North Carolina
Starting
Over in Exile
The Flemish
Stowaway: A Rumbaut Family Legend
Josuea Rumbaut
was 14 years old in 18th century Belgium when he argued with his noble family
and determined to get to America. He stowed away on a ship and landed on the
beautiful island of Cuba. He went into the interior to escape the crowds of the
big city of Havana and came upon the province of Las Villas, where he heard that
German, French and Flemish families had settled. He carried with him as proof
of his noble heritage a pair of fine slippers to which only blue blood would
have access.
Las Villas was the
middle province of the six then in Cuba (Pinar del
Río, La Habana, Matanzas, Camagüey and Oriente were
the other five). The provincial capital was Santa Clara. People from Las Villas
were called "Villareños" and those from
Santa Clara itself "Villaclareños". Las
Villas at the time of the stowaway consisted of five villas. Cienfuegos, one of
the youngest cities of the nation, was founded in 1819 by a French lieutenant
of the Spanish armed forces named Luis D'Clouet. He
named the town after his friend, Cienfuegos, the then Spanish governor of Cuba.
The city faced a bay called Jagua by the indigenous
population, and the Spanish had called the area Fernandina de Jagua. D'Clouet missed his French
roots and sought to bring farmers from his home in Bordeaux.
He also looked to
Louisiana for immigrants. A wave of French immigrants had traveled to Canada to
build a successful utopian community, Acadia. The English, however, had thrown
them out. The community traveled down the Mississippi, looking for a home, and
landed at the mouth of the river in Louisiana. After the Louisiana Purchase in
1803, the area became part of the U.S. The settlers were given twenty years to
become integrated as U.S. citizens or move on. Some of them left for Cuba.
Certain streets in Cienfuegos are named after the French Acadian families that
came from Louisiana at that time.
Just to make sure
that the Rumbaut line did not arrive in Cienfuegos
through this migratory wave, the telephone directories of this community were
checked in Louisiana in the 1970's. Many names appeared that are also familiar
names in Cienfuegos, but there were no Rumbauts. A
recent computerized search of national phone books turned up no Rumbauts there (and very few anywhere else).
Another story told
about the Rumbaut name is that it comes from French immigrants to Escambray
from Haiti, who landed at the Finca de Majagua. During the Slave Rebellion in Haiti many people
fled that country. Some of them ended up in Las Villas. Be that as it may, the Rumbaut name has been fairly decisively traced to Flanders,
not France.
Introduction | Index | 1800-1900 | 1901-1940 | 1941-present
Other Rumbauts | Early Rumbauts
En español