Tampa, Historical Background

First off, if you are researching your Cuban relatives in Tampa, you will want to learn about Ybor City and West Tampa as well.  Though both were later incorporated into Tampa, they started out as separate cigar factory towns.  Ybor City was started by Vicente Martinez Ybor, a cigar manufacturer from Cuba, and Ignacio Haya in 1885, when they decided to move their cigar factories from Key West to the Tampa Bay area.   Though Vicente Ybor was not happy about it, Tampa annexed Ybor City in 1887.  West Tampa was built by Hugh MacFarlane who watched the achievement of the Ybor City cigar manufactures and decided to copy them.  By 1895 he was successfully competing with Ybor, and by 1905, West Tampa was the fifth largest city in Florida.  In 1925 Tampa annexed West Tampa.   Though both areas were annexed, they were distinctly Latin communities with personalities and histories of their own.  Initially the cigar workers were almost exclusively Cuban cigar makers, but later large numbers of Spaniards and Italians lived and worked there.   

For genealogists, this means reading and searching for material using the names of all three cities.   For family historians it means that you will find a different cultural history in Ybor City and West Tampa, then in Tampa. One of the best books on the history and culture of Ybor City that  I have read  is The Immigrant World of Ybor City, Italians and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985 by Gary R. Mormino and George E. Possetta.  The bibliography alone is thirty pages long, and each chapter of the book has endnotes. So this is a great book for history students. Even though their focus was on the Italians, it has very detailed valuable information about or related to the Cubans as well.  Chapter two of the book is a good short history of Tampa.  I bought the book for $20, but today, as of this posting, it is available on Amazon.com for only $13.57, a bargain price for the information.  (What’s with the $.57?  Are they catching on that we know that $13.99 is really $14?)    

If you are doing African American ancestry, be aware that there are African Cubans and African Americans from the South in Tampa.  Being located in the South, Tampa created a unique circumstance for the African Cubans.   The mixed race of the Cuban community created challenges for all Cubans.   For an interesting article on this subject read The Afro-Cuban Community in Ybor City and Tampa, 1886-1910 by Nancy Raquel Mirabl, OAH Magazine of History, Volume 7, NO 4, Summer 1993, online at:  http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/africanamerican/mirabal.html.   

The last thing I want to mention is that if your family was living in Tampa during the l800s-early 1900s  and  seem to disappear, don’t assume they died.  So far in my work there seems to be a lot of movement back and forth between Tampa, Key West, New Orleans, New York, and Cuba.  This movement has a lot to do with the history of the Cuba.   Also they may not have become U.S. citizens.  Many intended to go back to Cuba, many did, or many just went back and forth between U.S. Cuban communities and/or Cuba. 

Patricia