Roots and Branches

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.