The posting of the DNA markers is wonderful! Thank you so much those who have contributed! Yesterday I got a book out of the library about how to interpret DNA markers - what each one means and how it pinpoints a location. Well, at least I hope that's what it will do. I'm thinking it would be helpful if everyone could see why ("el porque" as my father always used to say) this or that marker puts our origins in different places. If anyone else wants to post their DNA results step right up! The more the merrier!

In the mean time it's also wonderful that our cousins are all reaching out and making contact... putting up a hand and saying, "Hey I'm here in... and my father or mother was..." Our name is uncommon and we come from those first settlers who made their way from Europe to PR. We are primos and we are waving to each other across time zones and the seas!

Rather than leave this in the comments area, I think it should be published here. It's an "annonymous" comment (though it could be from R. Caban!) and lends weight to a Balkan/Eastern European connection:

Hi with my R. Caban Haplogroup I1b
Positive for the following SNPs: M170+ M258+ P19+ P37.2+ P38+
Negative for the following SNPs: M161- M21- M223- M227- M253- M26- M307- M72- P30-
Haplogroup - I1b The Balkan countries likely harbored this subgroup of I during the Last Glacial Maximum. Today this branch is found distributed in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and extends further east with Slavic-speaking populations

What do the rest of you think? Anyone else got tests done?

Cousins...

Hola familia mia! Some time ago I posted a question on the Ancestry.com message boards ( Message Boards > Surnames > Caban >) regarding the origins of our surname. Over time I've had interesting replies!

Marco Caban said "The Radhanites of Spain, in 1400, took the center of the Jewish goverment established in Spain to the korsack of Poland. It is suposed that some of the rabbis were Caban."

I don't know what the "korsack of Poland" means... if it's a typo or I'm just ignorant (most likely the latter) but I did look up the Radhanites in Wikipedia. It says:

"The Radhanites (also Radanites, Hebrew sing. רדהני Radhani, pl. רדהנים Radhanim; Arabic الرذنية ar-Raðaniyya) were medieval Jewish merchants. Whether the term, which is used by only a limited number of primary sources, refers to a specific guild, or a clan, or is a generic term for Jewish merchants in the trans-Eurasian trade network is unclear. Jewish merchants dominated trade between the Christian and Islamic worlds during the early Middle Ages (approx.AD 500–1000). Many trade routes previously established under the Roman Empire continued to function during that period largely through their efforts. Their trade network covered much of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of India and China."

That would explain our name getting around, if it's true that we have Radhanite origins.

CabanR said: "Hi interested in your posting and I also have been curious about the Caban origins - I can shed some new light having done Y DNA testing myCaban heritage traces back to Ireland - they have a county in Ireland call Cavan county - I also thought they were French but there is more to that having Polish origins is another mystery but the Y DNA also indicates Haplogroup I1b originating in the what are the Balkans in Europe

My grandfather Manuel Caban-Vera is a descent of the Caban santeros who settled Camuy-Quebradillas area. Manuel was born in Quebradillas - with DNA testing Y chromosome from the male the Haplogroup ia I1b - originating in the Balkans - they are also Celts - as the DNA mutations show origins in Ireland with matches - There is a county in Ireland call
Cavan county during the Irish disporta - Royal Decree of Grace - 1815 the Caban santeros are known from about 1850 to 1950 as multi-generational family of santeros."

That's very interesting too! My father was descended from the same Santeros. Anyone else connected to the Santeros group?

Randy Caban said: "Caban is also a surname found in Lincolnshire County, England and also in Scotland. Caban is also a word in the Welsh language - Caban is a surname found in Poland pronounced "tsban" and it is found in all parts of Europe."

And that probably brings us back to the Radhanites.

On these pages, Lucita has commented,

"I have a 4th great-grandfather, Alejandro Caban. I had my Mtdna done. I also convinced one of my male cousins to have the Y-DNA test done. Here are the results:
DYS# 393 390 19* (aka 394) 391 385a 385b 426 388 439 389-1 392 389-2
Did you have yours done?"

Hooray! Unfortunately I don't know how to interpret the data and being female mine would only go back to origins so ancient that they just virtually say "Human from planet Earth." But maybe someone will know how to read the data...

And in the meantime we also have cousins... the Rodriguez family has married very closely in with the Cabans, as have the Sotos and the Romans. I got a comment from Angela Roman asking if anyone knows about the connection. I can say what I know...

Valentin Roman Y Campos married Manuela Campos in the 1890s. They had the following children who were listed by the name Campos rather than the name Roman. (I believe this was done after the US took over PR in 1898.):

Francisca - b. 1895
Antonia - b. 1902
Lucia - 1903 - 1925
Jova - b. 1904
John - 1906 - 1972
Bienvenido - b. 1908
Leopoldo - b. 1908
Nazario - 1915 - 2001
Alejandro - b. 1917

All of these children were born in Islote, near Arecibo, in Puerto Rico. Of that list John Campos married Carmen Caban and they had two sons, John and William.

Carmen Caban was the daughter of Roque Caban and Juana Torres. Roque was the son of Eduviges Caban and Maria Rodriguez, and his parents were Juan Caban and Juana Hernandez. Juan and Juana are listed as "strangers to Puerto Rico" in the parish records that my late cousin John discovered. They seem to be the start of the dynasty - at least of the one that I'm descended from.

Their son, Eduviges had 5 sons - Quiterio, Rafael, Wincelso, Antonio and Roque. The Caban Santeros are sons of Quiterio. Roque was the mayor of Aguadilla for a while. Here is the picture from his campaign button -



I descend from Rafael Caban. So... Roque was my great-grand Uncle and his daughter Carmen married into the Roman family. And as I said, this is not the first or only connection. Perhaps you know of others! If nothing else, I hope this list helps some of us find a connection.

Oh and Manuel Caban-Vera is my first cousin once removed! Woo-hoo I connected with someone!!

Here is some info that came as a comment but needs to go as a posting! for those who are interested in DNA testing, I got a comment from the CEO of this DNA Testing Company:

Hi -- Since you guys are talking about DNA tests for genealogical purposes, I thought I'd share some news with you.

Familybuilder, a leading genealogy software and application company has just announced the introduction of Familybuilder DNA, the lowest-priced DNA test on the market. At $59.95, for both YDNA and mtDNA tests, this is ideal for genealogical purposes.


For more information, please visit: http://www.familybuilder.com/dna

Thanks,

David Rheins
CMO Familybuilder

Someone has asked about getting DNA testing done. There are many many services out there (especially in this age of genealogical research) who will do it for various prices. It's not hard... a swab inside your mouth and there's your DNA collected.


I live in the UK so I'm not sure about what is available world wide, but here are two interesting places to begin.

1. Cyndi's List - Genetics, DNA & Family Health: http://www.cyndislist.com/dna.htm I don't know who Cyndi is, but her website has been around for a long time and THE most comprehensive research site there is. Period. (Not only can you look into DNA testing, but you can look further into Latino family research with this site as a great starting point.)


Anyway, regarding the DNA testing I see someone is advertising DNA testing fro $79 but that is paternal testing and hopefully every Caban knows "Who's da Daddy".

2. Another interesting website is: "Family Tree DNA" http://www.familytreedna.com
They aren't particularly cheap, but they seem to be running a surname database project which shows our surname listed twice. Anyway, they seem pretty professional and have some interesting articles on DNA testing including at link to an article in the New York Post.


Yeah yeah - I know it's not like the New York Post when I was younger - more of a rag now... but the article's pretty good. It says in part:

"Rather than getting trashed at bars, New Yorkers are swabbing their cheeks en masse at house parties and then sending saliva samples back to labs to help trace their ancestors.

But for Latinos, an umbrella group consisting of various ethnicities, races and religions, tracing family trees is a bit more complicated.

"Five hundred years after Europeans colonized Latin America, imported 10 million African slaves and mixed with the Native Americans, modern Latinos still don't have a clear understanding of their own lineage," explains Bennett Greenspan, a genealogist and expert in Jewish, Latino and African ancestry.

"They've heard tales and rumors from relatives, but they've often lacked a paper trail to verify the claims," says the head of Family Tree DNA."

"What's in Your Genes? DNA testing is the Rage Among Latinos" by Shirley Velasquez, New York Post, November 12th 2008

Hopefully this is a starting point... as I said before, unfortunately it has to be you male Cabans who get the DNA testing... that "Y" chromosome is the marker needed. Female mitochondrial DNA testing can only tell us about our extremely ancient progenitors... not where we came from before we ended up in Puerto Rico and/or NYC!


If you do it I will publish it!

Hola familia mia!

I've had some really nice comments come in on this blog. But I think it's time for an update, don't you?

Someone suggested DNA tests to determine our ancestry. That is a fantastic idea!

The only thing is that the test for female DNA only shows very ancient family information. While we may be interested to know if our very ancient mothers came from the Sub-Saharan continent, it seems to me that it would be more useful to know more about our ancestors PRE Puerto Rico! For that you need male DNA.

Therefore if any one of you Caban guys out there (particularly my immediate cousins) who gets a DNA test please let me know all about it and I will gladly publish the results here on this site. Who knows? We might get some interesting results and the exchange of good information.

The picture above is of "Tia Goya" - Gregoria Caban de Reyes. She came to New York in the early 1920s. She was married to Daniel Reyes and they never had any children. Tia Goya didn't like the things that went on in the bedroom so she gave her husband money to go get himself "Fixed" from time to time. They adopted and raised her nephew, Phillip Salgado. Tia Goya also bought land in Manhattan but didn't read English, so when the tax notices came she never paid the taxes and in time the city took her land back. I'm shaking my head at the loss of her potential fortune even as I type these words...

Caban Origins and more

Behind the scenes of this blog several people and I have been doing extensive research into the origins of the Caban family BEFORE they came to Puerto Rico. This has been a question I've seen on most every genealogy site where the Caban name can be found. People are either looking for current family OR they are asking the question, "Where did the family come from?" It's kind of funny, because you never see it asked about surnames like Rodriguez, or Jimenez, or Jones, or MacDonald...

So that is the big question: Where did the Cabans come from?

And here is the answer, as much as we researchers have been able to piece together:

The Cabans originated in Languedoc-Roussillon, in what was once the kingdom of Occitania, but is now the Pyrenees area of Southern France and Northern Spain. (In fact it is only about 50 miles between Carcassonne and Barcelona!) The Occitan language is still alive, as are customs and the culture, if you are interested to know further. The name Caban is a French word for "overcoat" but it was believed to have been Cabanne or Cabannis originally.

The Caban name was not found in Puerto Rico prior to the 1800s. In fact, as you see from my mini-family tree, the earliest one listed is Juan Caban, who was born circa 1790. There is nothing any further back than that. And here is why...

The Cabans came to Puerto Rico as part of the Royal Decree of Graces of 1815. Wikipedia explains that Spain had lost all of its territory in the Americas and was in danger of losing Cuba and Puerto Rico. "Free land was offered to those who wanted to populate the islands with the condition that they swear their loyalty to the Spanish Crown and allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church".

Because Europe was experiencing a series of Revolutions and life was so unstable, "Hundreds of Corsicans, Italians, French , Irish and Germans, attracted by the offers of free land by the Spanish Crown, moved to the colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico and accepted the conditions stated. As soon as these settlers swore their loyalty to the Spanish Crown and their allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church, they were given a "Letter of Domicile".

After five years, the settlers were granted a "Letter of Naturalization" that made them Spanish subjects. In an effort to attract non-Catholic Europeans, the Spanish Courts passed a law in 1870, granting the right of religious freedom to all those who wished to worship another religion other than the Catholic. "

There have been tracings of the Cabans to Ireland as well (Cavan county!) but again there was a lot of migration between the European countries over the centuries, so this does not necessarily make us Irish.

In any case, the Cabans came as part of the Royal Decree of Graces and it's not hard to think that a man named "Jean Cabanne" could easily change the "E" in his first name to a "u" and drop the "ne" at the end of Cabanne. So Jean Cabanne becomes Juan Caban. It's done by immigrants all the time.

The Cabans did have huge plantations in PR. Here is what happened to it, according to Carl Diaz, son of Gloria Caban Diaz (the oldest of our family alive):

"As the Spanish American War came to a close, the brothers (Roque, Bonifacio, Florentino & Rafael) along with their parents who were “Loyalists” (being Spaniards by heritage & nationality) were in jeopardy.

The local freedom “guerilla” fighters called “La Banda Pendiciosa” targeted their father’s plantation and were coming to burn it along with those of other loyalists.

The story goes that my mother’s grandfather Roque had escaped into the caves since he was being hunted in reprisal for his efforts to fight against the guerillas and the “American Liberators”. His fate was pretty much assured. He was to face execution if captured.

The remaining three brothers stayed with their families at the plantation.

On the “Night of the Burnings” – as it came to be called – all the family members, wives, children and their servants and loyal peasants etc. gathered together and began a prayer vigil.

The next morning they found all nearby plantations destroyed and the fields burned. They miraculously escaped the fires and their plantation was spared!

Roque eventually re-appeared 3 months later after the fighting was over and the search for him had been abandoned.

The Americans had taken over the island, the Spaniards had left, the peasants had been reorganized and eventually the lands and property were “socialized”…"

My father, Edwin Caban, always said that the family had been wealthy but lost their lands and wealth because they backed the Spanish in the Spanish-American war. So now we see how they got and lost the land, but thankfully they were talented artisans and were able to make their way into the world.