Cuban Roots

One of the ladies who recently attended our "Introduction to Genealogy & Ancestry.com" workshop is tracing her Cuban heritage. She emailed me recently asking for some assistance on where to find records. It doesn't appear as though many records for Cuba are on Ancestry.com, which really isn't that surprising since they have been a very closed society.

So I did a little research to see if I could provide some guidance on where to look, and surprisingly enough there appears to be a variety of websites with information available, so I'm creating this resource page for anyone who will be tracing their Cuban roots.

Aside from Ancestry and Family Search, one of the first places we all should be going to is a GenWeb page. The USGenWeb.org project created a page for every county and state in the U.S., but there is also a WorldGenWeb.org page for every country. This is a great resource for all of us since we will eventually being looking for records in a foreign country. 

#1 - The CubanGenWeb page contains lots of information with links to Cuban genealogy clubs, archives, databases and more.

#2 - The University of Miami has a Cuban Heritage Collection which might be beneficial. It's possible that genealogy volunteers might be available to look up information for those who do not live in the area.

#3 - The Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami looks to be well organized with a lot of resources available. This would be a great resource to go to for guidance.

#4 - Florida International Universities Libraries has an online resource that they claim is the "Cuban equivalent" of Ancestry.com. It is a resource that has been created to help families of the Cuban diaspora research their roots. It contains an extensive set of family trees, civil records and sacramental documents.

#5 - Genealogy Stack Exchange is a site that provides genealogy resources for every country. It's also a place to post a question and receive help. This particular link goes to the Cuban resource page.

#6 - Geneanet provides a resource page for Cuba where you can click on one of the regions of Cuba to search for records.

#7 - A blog entitled Hispanic Genealogy has included links to two sources he has found valuable in searching for records. He's been sharing his search on his blog since 2007 which can be found by clicking here. Blogs can be very helpful in learning how to research a particular location.

#8 - Tobias History Research provides some advice and links to search, as well as information on church and military records.

#9 - The Cuban page on Genealogy Today contains links to many resources.

#10 - Find My Cuban Family includes information on Cuban genealogy communities, databases, digital collections, immigration, books, maps and more.

#11 - The Guide to Cuban Genealogical Research - Records & Sources by Peter E. Carr is another good resource for understanding how to search for Cuban roots.

#12 The Cuban DNA Project by Family Tree is a good starting point for understanding your DNA results.

#13 - The Genealogy Forum's Research in Cuba contains links and is a place to ask questions and receive responses from others who are researching in Cuba, too.

#14 - Kindred Trails page for Cuba contains links to various records.

#15 - Cyndi's List has a page of links to Caribbean & West Indies resources (in which Cuba is included).

#16 - Genealogy Wise is a forum where you can post questions and receive help from others.

#17 - The Cuban Club of Miami group and The Cuban Genealogy group on Facebook will be an invaluable resource. So whether you like Facebook or not, create an account just to take advantage of these groups. Every state and country has groups, and I'm telling you these groups are invaluable with their help and suggestions.

#18 - Books available at Amazon on Cuban history & genealogy research.

A quick Google search is all you need to formulate a list of available resources. This applies to all of us, no matter what state or country we're researching in. All of the records we need are not contained on one site. When we run into a dead end on Ancestry (our first choice), our list of resources will become invaluable to us, and may very well be the difference in whether we meet with success or not.