A free woman of color in Pensacola, Florida.
Born about 1794 in Pensacola. Race is recorded as parda.
The 1820 Spanish census of Pensacola shows her working as a seamstress, the head of a small household that includes her son, Marcelino Adolfo, and two other women of color whose relationship is not made clear: Mariana Alba, a free negra woman working as a laundress, and Genoveva Ham, a free parda woman working as a seamstress. The ages are right for Mariana to be Gertrudis’ mother but this has not been confirmed.
Gertrudis had at least one other child after the 1820 census, a parda girl named Maria Ana.
Gertrudis appears in both of her children’s baptismal records, one from St. Michael’s Parish in Spanish Pensacola and one from St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. Neither of the records identify the father.
FAMILY:
Children: Marcelino Adolfo Alba and Maria Ana Alba
SOURCES:
Records of St. Michael’s Parish, Pensacola, FL, Book III: Baptisms of People of Color, 1817 – 1882. University of West Florida Archives and West Florida History Center. 22 SEP 2021.
Nolan, Dr. Charles E, ed. Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archidiocese of New Orleans, Vol. 14: 1820-1821. New Orleans: Archdiocese of New Orleans, 1999.
Coker, William S. and G. Douglas Inglis. “Census of Pensacola, 1820.” The Spanish Censuses of Pensacola, 1784-1820: A Genealogical Guide to Spanish Pensacola. The Perdido Bay Press, 1980, pp. 93-126.