Charlotte CAIGNET HEVIA

As interesting as the Abbé’s story may strike us to be, François No. 11 strictly speaking is not one of our ancestors; he had no children, and thus no one descends from him. But one of his brothers, François No. 7, is a different matter. His two sons, named Adelson and Adolphe, as if enraptured by alliteration, married two sisters named Corinne and Charlotte Caignet. My grandmother’s grandfather, Alberto Vidaud Caignet, is one of Adolphe and Charlotte’s seven children. The sisters’ father was one François Caignet, who was the son of yet another François Caignet, who, as we saw before, was known to have been in New Orleans in 1815, where he sold a mother and child as slaves. François Caignet, the son, had a farm in Oriente named Mon Repos, but his repose rested on the forced labor of others. In “État des propriétés rurales appartenant à des Français dans l’île de Cuba,” a consular report drafted in 1843 in Havana for the Ministère des Affaires étrangères, someone surnamed Caignet is indeed mentioned as the proprietor of Mon Repos, a sixty-hectare coffee plantation, and the owner of forty slaves. It is terrifying to think that the purchase of that lovely-named property — indeed, its sustenance — was built on the institution of slavery, a despicable commerce that seems to have taken the first François Caignet from Saint-Domingue to Louisiana. Could it be that we, who descend from the Cuban Gauls, could have a slave trader as our first ancestor in this nation?

https://robertissimus.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/x-slavery-and-brothe...

And consider these two nineteenth-century characters, a respectable couple, it seems. The bearded gentleman is Adolphe Vidaud du Dognon de Boischadaigne, and the lace-veiled lady is his wife, Charlotte Caignet Hevia. They are my third great-grandparents. Faithful readers of this blog have seen the stern-looking Adolphe before. He matters to my cousins and me because he is, in a sense, the first of our Cuban Gauls. His father was François Vidaud du Dognon de Boischadaigne, who left France for Saint-Domingue during the Reign of Terror with four of his brothers; unlike at least three of them, who returned to France, François No. 7 (as we call him to distinguish him from his homonymous brothers), appears to have spent the rest of his life in the Caribbean, probably in Cuba. In the earlier entry on Adolphe, I could do little more than speculate about the milestones of his life. We really just had the information that M. Vallantin Dulac provided in his “Généalogie de la famille Vidaud du Dognon,” published online: “Adolphe VIDAUD du DOGNON de BOISCHADAIGNE, marié à Santiago de Cuba avec Charlotte COIGNET [sic], dont les sept enfants ont laissé postérité actuelle à Santiago de Cuba.” We know who the seven children are, but then there were more questions than answers. We wanted to know whether Adolphe was born in Cuba or France. We were curious about how he and his younger brother, Adelson, had come to marry two sisters, Charlotte and Corinne — a triumph of alliterative love. We thought Adolphe must have died in Cuba, but we weren’t sure.

As for Charlotte, what little we knew of her line was troubling. Her father, François Caignet, sold slaves in New Orleans in 1815 and later appears to have possessed a coffee plantation named Mon Repos, along with forty slaves, in Oriente province. (Many years later, the surname Caignet became well known in Cuban and Latin American broadcasting culture. Charlotte and Corinne’s younger brother, Benjamin, was the father of Félix B. Caignet, an Hugo of sorts who wrote El derecho de nacer (1948), a drama produced by Havana’s famed CMQ radio and television network. But that’s a twentieth-century story, along with much of Félix’s pioneering work for the rise of a continental soap opera tradition, “algo así como una especie de integración lagrimal,” in the words of a critic.)

As weeks and months passed, readers of this blog, including old and newly found cousins, have kept searching for the elusive Adolphe and Charlotte. A gentleman from Barcelona, you may recall, contacted me with childhood pictures of his own grandmother, Juana Amelia Vidaud Caignet, Adolphe’s and Charlotte’s daughter. He also provided me with a copy of the his father’s birth certificate. Rafael Calbetó y Vidaud, as he was called, was born in Havana, where his father commanded the Presidio, in 1893. In the document, Amelia’s parents are said to be living (unlike her father- and mother-in-law, who had died in the province of Girona, where her husband was from). Adolphe’s and Charlotte’s birthplaces are mentioned as well, but their names are now given in Spanish, and Adolphe has even acquired a new first name, which we had never heard of before. The child, Rafael, is said to descend “por línea materna de Don Pedro Adolfo Vidaud, natural de Santiago de Cuba, provincia de ídem; y de Doña Carlota Cagnet, digo Caignet y Herrera, natural de New Orleans, casados y vecinos del mencionado Santiago de Cuba.” Whoever copied the original certificate seems not to have been in top form; not only is Caignet at first misspelled, Carlota’s maternal surname is changed from Hevia to Herrera. Yet one thing appears to be certain. Both Adolphe, or Pedro Adolfo, and Carlota, or Charlotte, were still living in the 1890s. And we now had official confirmation of Adolphe’s Cuban birth.

https://robertissimus.wordpress.com/2015/03/14/xxii-to-reconnoiter/

Procedente de la Habana y acompañado de su familia ha llegado á esta villa, el Sr. D. Doroteo da Carlos Lecumberri, ayudante y Secretario particular del que fué Gobernador General de la Isla de Cuba, Excmo. Sr. General Polavieja. Unido en familia con nuestro compatricio y distinguido amigo D. Rafael Llopart, ha venido para pasar el verano á su lado y descansar de los penosos trabajos que le proporcionara el delicado cargo que con tan acertada elección supo confiarle el Ilustre General y en cuyo puesto de confianza hizo gala de su ilustración correspondiendo altamente á los deseos de aquella Superior Autoridad.
El Eco De SITGES felicita á tan distinguido huésped, asi como á su compañero D. Adolfo Vidaud, padre politico del Sr. Llopart, y á toda su familia, y les desea que su permanencia en esta villa donde tantas amistades cuentan les sea del todo agradable y venturosa.

Eco de Sitges, num 327, de 10 Julio de 1892, Pag 4

https://www.sitgesarxiudigital.cat/setmanaris-i-revistes/

A la avanzada edad de 74 años ha fallecido: en Santiago de Cuba la respetable y virtuosa Sra. D,* Carlota Caignet de Vidaud madre política de nuestro amigo y compatricio D, Rafael Llopart.

Reciba toda su familia nuestro mas sentido pésame

La Voz de Sitges, num 33, de 12 agosto de 1894, pag 3

En la tarde del último miércoles súpose que había fallecido en Santiago da Cuba, a la edad de 74 años, la respetable señora Dª. Carlota Caignet de Vidaud, madre de la señora esposa de D. Rafael Llopart Ferret, á quien, así como á su distinguida familia, enviamos nuestro más sentido pésame.

Eco de Sitges, num 439, de 12 de Agosto de 1894, pag 2

https://www.sitgesarxiudigital.cat/setmanaris-i-revistes/

Fallecida en agosto de 1894, según "Cronicas de Santiago de Cuba"

pagina 32 de

https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00062763/00008/34j

En múltiples páginas o árboles aparece como segundo apellido "HEVIA", como "Heria", o "Herrera"
Sin embargo en libro "Sitges Guantánamo Sitges, aparce como "Gloria"
Según mismo libro, dice nació en Cuba, hacia 1825

Según esta pagina :
https://robertissimus.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/xxxv-what-words-are-...
For some time, we had been trying to ascertain the true surname of Charlotte’s mother, as we had seen it listed not only as Hevia, but also as Heria, Herrera and, strangely, even Gloria. But now, by means of Charlotte’s baptismal inscription in the Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, the elusive name assumed a clearer definition. But what’s in a name, after all? What is it worth? “Hevia” was rather enticing because it suggested a possible link with José Antonio de Hevia, a historic personage who explored the Gulf of Mexico and gave Galveston its name in the late eighteenth century.

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https://robertissimus.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/xxiii-what-i-know/

an entry for Charlotte’s baptism in a tome titled Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Her name appears as Maria Carlotta Paulina, and her birthdate is given as 18 September 1818, twelve years earlier than what the family tree in Nunú’s notebook states. Her father is Pablo Francisco Caignet, a native of Cap-Français, and this name struck us as peculiar. Why should the man hitherto known to us as François, who was born in a French colony, suddenly appear to have a Spanish name in a city that by 1819, when the christening took place, was already part of the United States? But the real mystery was the identity of Charlotte’s mother, a woman named Josephina Arthemisa Heria. If Heria could easily be resolved as a misspelling of Hevia, we soon discovered that we could not find any other references to any lady in Louisiana or anywhere else named Josephina Arthemisa. In his impressive Familias cubanas, the Conde de Jaruco devotes several pages to the name Hevia in Havana. There it is stated that José Antonio de Hevia, along with two brothers, left their native Galicia and settled in Cuba in last third of the eighteenth century — but, alas, none of their children or grandchildren is named Josephina Arthemisa. (...)

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https://robertissimus.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/viii-the-triangle/

Recibo, 14/05/17, mensaje a traves de la web ( geni ) de Esteban Díez y que es bizniet de Carolina Vidaud que por su parte era bisnieta de Adolphe Vidaud du Dognon. Dice que, sin duda que el nombre de la mama de Charlotte Caignet es HEVIA... que tiee copia del bautismo de Charlotte Caignet y Hevia hija de Paul François Caignet y María Josephine Arthemise Hevia... nacida en NUEVA ORLEANS y no en Cuba. Además dice tener un cuaderno escrito por una nieta de Adolphe y Charlotte que los conoció personalmente y vivía en casa con ellos varios años... que confirma lo mismo. En esa misma nota,, ella deja muy claro que solo habían SEIS hijos de Adolphe y Charlotte (sus tíos y tías) los menciona en orden de nacimiento (Alberto, Severo, María, Amelia, Charlotte, Madeline, y Matilde (su mamá). No había un hijo Adolphe, y la Susanna que tienes como hermana es la prima (hija de Adelson Vidaud y Corinne Caignet)