In the Beginning
Two key pieces of evidence place the death of a Maltese emigrant, Francisco Javier Baldoquin, in Cuba. First, G Baldoquin of Cuban descent contacted us and identified a book Familias baymesas by Enrique Orlando Lacalle that states that Francisco Javier Baldoquin, son of Francisco Baldoquin and Maria Veronica Borges and a native of Malta, made his will in Cuba and died in 1804. Secondly, G Baldoquin’s Big Y-700 DNA test from Family Tree DNA resulted in an exact haplogroup match with my husband Mark of Maltese descent. Francisco would have been born Francesco Saverio Baldacchino in Malta but his baptism has not yet been found and we have no information on why he moved to Cuba.
Internal Migration
We have not yet found any online source for Cuban genealogical records. However, hundreds of thousands of Cubans emigrated to the United States beginning with the first wave following the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Other waves of emigration took place, for varying reasons, through the remainder of the century. The emigrants included Baldoquins, most settling in Florida but also a significant number in California. Due to the small number of places where the Baldoquin spelling is found in the world, it is highly likely that virtually all of the Baldoquins found in US genealogical records have Cuban ancestry. We have only found a small number of birthplaces in these records to date but it appears that Cuban emigrants arrived from a variety of Cuban locations such as the provinces of Camaguey, Cienfuegos and Sancti Spiritus.
The Surname Today
forebears.io estimates that, in 2025, there were 375 people with the surname Baldoquin in Cuba. Baldoquin is the only form of the surname found in the country. Almost half of the Baldoquins in Cuba currently reside in the Las Tunas Province, with a sizeable number also found in the capital city of Havana.
