In follow-up to my previous post, Notable Hispanics in Early American History, I decided to make another post honoring five more Hispanic figures in early American history. These figures, like the previous five I’ve written about, may not be very famous but they have all left their mark on this country. Whether they served for the Confederacy or for the Union, these five figures are all part of American history and they, alongside their stories, deserve to not be forgotten.
Lola Sánchez (1844-1895)
Born in 1844 to Cuban parents, Dolores “Lola” Sánchez was one of five children alongside her siblings Emiliano, John Henry, Francesca (who was referred to as “Panchita”) and Eugenia who grew up in the vicinity of the town of Palatka, which was a major shipping port and tourist spot in the 1840s. The family tended to their father and to their mother who suffered from an infirmity. When the Civil War broke out in the early 1860s, Palatka was initially occupied by Confederate troops. One of Lola’s brothers served alongside them. On October 7, 1862, however, the USS Cimarron gunboat fired some shells, and soon thereafter, Palatka was occupied by Union troops.
Initially, Lola avoided getting herself involved in the Civil War. That would all ultimately change, however, when her father Mauricio was falsely accused of being a spy for the Confederacy, despite information leaks continuing after his arrest. It is said that this was due to one of Lola’s siblings serving in the Confederate army. Mauricio was imprisoned at the Castillo San Marcos in St. Augustine and a few Union troops were stationed to keep watch at and occasionally search the Sánchez home. Despite their attempts to negotiate their fathers’ release, the Union troops repeatedly refused to release the elder Sánchez from his imprisonment.
The Sánchez sisters spent their evenings entertaining Union officers which included preparing Cuban coffee, home-made cuisine, light conversation, singing and even Spanish guitar music. At one point however, Lola overheard the troops speaking about a morning gunboat raid at Camp Davis near St. Augustine followed by an ambush on Confederate soldiers to steal their supplies while they slept, all of which was to be carried out the following day. After telling her sisters, Lola got on her horse and rode to the St. John’s River where she took a small boat. She then met a Confederate guard who gave her his horse so she can ride off to Camp Davis. At Camp Davis, she met with Captain J. J. Dickison and told him of what she had overheard. She then rushed back home so that the Union troops wouldn’t begin to suspect her of doing anything suspicious. During her absence, her sisters distracted the troops by cooking for them.
The following day on May 22, 1864, the planned Union raid at Camp Davis ended in failure, with the Confederate troops not only ambushing and sinking their vessel, the USS Columbine, they captured most of the Union troops, killed one of their generals and even captured one of their colonels, William Noble. This encounter became known as the Battle of Horse Landing which gave the Confederates a victory over the Union troops. During the years after the Civil War, she married a former Confederate soldier named Emmanuel Lopez (of the 3rd Florida Infantry, Company B) and had a daughter named Leonicia who was born in St. Augustine. Lola passed away in 1895 and was buried in Palatka and is remembered for being a Confederate spy. Her sisters also married former Confederate soldiers.
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Stephen Vincent Benét (1827-1895)
A native of St. Augustine, Florida, Stephen Vincent Benét was born in 1827 with paternal ancestry from Menorca. After studying at Hallowell’s school in Alexandria, Virginia and at the University of Georgia, Benét went to the United States Military Academy at West Point where he graduated the third in his class in 1849.
He was then appointed to serve in the Ordnance Corps. In 1859, he also served as an Assistant Professor at West Point where he taught geography, history and ethics. During the Civil War, he was promoted to the rank of Captain in 1861 and served as instructor of Ordnance and Science of Gunnery at West Point until 1864. He was then placed in command of the Frankford Arsenal in Pennsylvania where he served until 1869. He was promoted to Major in 1866, and in 1869, he was made Assistant to the Chief of Ordnance, followed by the rank of Brigadier General, Chief of Ordnance in 1874 after the death of the department chief. He retired from the Army in 1891, and he passed away four years later in 1895. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
His sons, James Walker Benét and Laurence Vincent Benét both served in the US Military, the former as an Army Colonel and the latter as an Ensign in the US Navy. His grandchildren, Stephen Vincent Benét and Laura Benét went on to become prominent poets in their time.
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Rafael Chacón (1833-1925)
Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico (at the time part of Mexico) in 1833, Chacón was born to a local New Mexico family with long ties to Mexico. His grandfather, Francisco Lopez, was killed in action in 1834 while serving in the town of Socorro (today part of the state of New Mexico) and his father was a prominent judge. At the age of eleven, his father sent him to the Chapultepec military school to be given a military education. In 1846, during the Mexican-American War, he made his way back to Santa Fe to defend his town from U.S. Army General Stephen Kearney’s invasion. He was put in command of an artillery section, however no shots were fired, because then-New Mexico governor Manuel Armijo abruptly ordered everyone to go home before Kearney and his troops even arrived. General Kearney subsequently took formal control of Santa Fe and proclaimed himself the Provisional Governor of the Territory of New Mexico.
In the following years, Chacón served as a trader and rancher. During the 1850s, he fought Ute and Apache Indians alongside U.S. Army Colonel Kit Carson. When the Civil War broke out in the early 1860s, Chacón served with the Union Army with the rank of Captain, and he raised a company of volunteers from New Mexico to serve alongside him. In 1862, Captain Chacón and his troops served at Fort Craig in the Battle of Valverde, where they successfully fought off Confederate troops that were headed for Santa Fe. Chacón reportedly also served in the Battle of Glorieta Pass, where his troops fought off more Confederates attempting to make their way towards the Midwest, albeit this time without success since it ended in a Confederate victory. In the years following the Civil War, Chacón served in the territorial legislature and then spent his final years ranching and writing his memoirs until his death in Colorado in 1925. There is a marker in Socorro, New Mexico dedicated to him.
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The Fernández Cavada Brothers
These two brothers are perhaps my favorite since, as a fellow Cuban-American, they served not only with honor in the United States but also in the cause for Cuban Independence from Spain. Federico and Adolfo Fernández Cavada, alongside their other brother Emilio, were born in Cienfuegos, Cuba (then a Spanish colony) to Spanish father Isidoro Fernández Cavada and American mother Emily Howard Gatier of Philadelphia. After their father’s passing in 1838, they moved with their widowed mother to her native Philadelphia. Both brothers would end up following very similar paths and fates.
Adolfo Fernández Cavada was born on May 17, 1832. Enlisting in the Union Army in August 1861, he joined the 23rd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment where he served as a Captain of Company C. In 1862, while serving with the regiment, he fought in the battles of Manassas, Williamsburg and Glendale as well as the Siege of Yorktown. After Fernández Cavada left the 23rd Pennsylvania in July 1862, he subsequently rose to the rank of Major and served as an aide de camp to General A.A. Humphreys. Fernández Cavada then served in the battles of Fredericksburg (December 1862) and Gettysburg (July 1863). At the Battle of Gettysburg, while he was riding his horse, the horse was shot and killed and he ended up wounded. Nevertheless, Fernández Cavada fought on, and in 1865, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
In the years following the war, Fernández Cavada was appointed US Consul in Cienfuegos, Cuba, a position he served until around 1868 when the Ten Years War (1868-1878) broke out, one of the many Cuban uprisings against the Spanish authorities. Joined by his brother, Federico, they joined the Cuban people to fight for their independence from Spain. In February 1869, Adolfo launched an attack on the town of Palmira near Cienfuegos, and he led men in other subsequent battles in towns such as Altos de Potrerillo and Saltadero de Siguanea, including an attack on an armory located in Arimao. Several months later in November 1869, Fernández Cavada and his men took control of his home town of Cienfuegos, and subsequently a month later, they took over the town of Arroyo Blanco. In April 1870, he succeeded his brother Federico as the Commander in Chief of the Cinco Villas. A year later on December 18, 1871, while in battle, Fernández Cavada was killed at a coffee farm near Santiago de Cuba called La Adelaida.
Federico Fernández Cavada was born on July 8, 1831. He enlisted in August 1861 around the same time as his brother, Adolfo, as a Captain with the 23rd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment. Unlike his brother, however, he was instead employed as an engineer since the young Federico had a talent for sketching and topography. During the war, he would often ride hydrogen balloons and sketch the positions of the Confederates from the sky. After leaving the 23rd Pennsylvania in July 1862, he then joined the 114th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment with the rank of Major. The following month, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. While with the 114th, he fought at the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. During the Battle of Gettysburg, Fernández Cavada was captured as a prisoner of war on July 2, 1863 by the Confederates where he was sent to Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia where he spent time until January 1864.
After he was released from prison, he briefly returned to the Army until he resigned in June 1864. Following the war, he was appointed US Consul in Trinidad, Cuba, a position he served until around 1868 when the Ten Years War broke out, around the same time as his brother Adolfo. He then served as General for the District of Trinidad with the Cubans who were fighting for their independence from the Spanish authorities. During the war, he became Commander in Chief of the Cinco Villas. Then In 1871, while at battle in Cayo Cruz in Puerto Príncipe (today known as Camagüey) province, he was captured by the Spanish gunboat Neptuno and was given a trial where he was found guilty. The Spanish then ordered for him to be executed by firing squad. He was executed on July 1, 1871 in Nuevitas, which also happens to be the birthplace of my paternal grandfather. His last words were “Adios Cuba, Para Siempre” which means “Farewell Cuba, forever”.
Both brothers followed similar destinies and similar fates, and they both ended up dying in their beloved Cuba. Both deserve to be remembered in both American and Cuban history since they fought alongside the likes of Cuban heroes of the time like Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Calixto Garcia, Antonio Maceo and the Mambíses Army. While they are never talked about, these two heroes were not only great loyal warriors to the United States, but also to the cause of Cuban Independence.
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Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga (1717-1793)
Born on April 6, 1717 in Málaga, Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga came from an illustrious wealthy family of Spanish nobles. From an early age, he was groomed to be in the military, with the young Unzaga enlisting as a cadet with the Spanish Army at the early age of thirteen. As a young soldier, he fought in the 1732 Spanish Conquest of Oran, and he also fought in various battles in Italy. In 1740, he departed the Spanish city of Guipúzcoa for the Americas. In the Spanish Americas, he served a variety of roles in Spanish Cuba such as Military Lieutenant of Baracoa in 1744 and Capitán Gobernador of Puerto Príncipe (today known as the Cuban province of Camagüey) in 1747. In 1753, he rose to the rank of Comandante (military chief). Luis fought in the Siege of Havana by the British forces in 1762, where he struck friendships with the Irish-born Spanish military leader Alejandro O’ Reilly, and with the Irish-born merchant Oliver Pollock, who would later play a role in the financing of the American Revolution.
In 1769, he accompanied Alejandro O’ Reilly to Spanish Louisiana, a territory he governed at the time, where Unzaga served on their Cabildo (council). In 1770, Unzaga succeeded O’ Reilly as Governor of Spanish Louisiana, a position he served until 1777. He faced many challenges, particularly since much of the population of Louisiana was French. During his governance, he is credited with creating the first bilingual French-Spanish public education system around 1771, and in 1775, Unzaga further aided in improving the relations between the Spanish authorities and the French merchants of Louisiana by marrying Elizabeth de Saint Maxent, the daughter of a local wealthy landowner. Upon hearing of the British troops arriving in the Thirteen Colonies to quell the unrest from the colonists arising from the spike in tax prices on tea, Unzaga secretly began forming a plan to aid the colonists in their cause.
Following the Boston Massacre in 1770, Unzaga organized a spy network which informed him of many subsequent confrontations between the colonists and the British such as the Boston Tea Party in 1773 and the Siege of Boston (1775-1776). He successfully responded to several requests for aid from the colonists by sending them items such as gunpowder, uniforms and flour, by ships via the Mississippi and Ohio rivers under the Spanish flag so that the British wouldn’t suspect anything. Such supplies would have aided George Washington in many battles with the British authorities. It appears that Unzaga also possibly may have inspired the name of the country. This is coming from a letter George Washington sent to Colonel Joseph Reed, one of the founding fathers, on November 30, 1776 where he wrote “I have just receiv’d a most flattering letter from Don Louis Venzaga, Governor of N. Orleans—He gives me the title of General de los estados unidos Americanos, which is a tolerable step towards declaring himself our ally in positive terms”.
In December 1782, he was named Capitán General of Cuba, and he also served as the first Capitán General of Venezuela. Over many years of service to the Spanish Crown, he eventually returned home to his native Málaga where he eventually passed away on June 21, 1793. It should also be noted that de Unzaga was a close friend of Bernardo de Gálvez, who also happened to marry Felicita de Saint Maxent, the sister of Unzaga’s wife Elizabeth. Thanks to the aid of people like de Unzaga, the United States was able to succeed in becoming a sovereign nation.
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