My Cohen Family from Colombia's Caribbean Coast (updated 6/14/2024)

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NOTE: This blog entry was started in July 2021 but backdated to 2009.

Church at Barranquilla (1844) by Edward Walhouse Mark

“Some of our ancestors had strange habits. For example, they killed their own food, didn’t sleep in the same bed with their wife. They always said to us that we were Jews… My grandfather detested the Catholic Church… but when he spoke about Judaism his eyes were always shining.” – Saúl Cohen Ortega

“They [Bogotá Jews] would say, 'Ah yes, the Cohen costeños that are all assimilated.' ... I also remember asking my Dad if we were Jews and his answer was 'We are but we are not.'” – David Cohen

"A nosotros mi abuelo nos decía que podíamos escoger. Siempre formados cristianos por las abuelas pero con el judío haciendo sombra." – Claudia Acero Cohen

The Cohen costeños have a fascinating family history reflecting the larger saga of Caribbean Jews. Our immigrant ancestor, Juan Cohen (c.1786-1869), was a British Jew who settled in Cartagena, Colombia as it struggled for independence from Spain and still had an office of the Holy Inquisition. By the time Barranquilla's first Jewish congregation formed in 1874, my Cohen ancestors had dealt for three generations with a complete lack of synagogues, Jewish schooling, and kosher food. Their assimilation into Colombian Catholic society is understandable, given the total absence of Jewish culture and institutions.

Yet generations born long after Juan Cohen's time still talked with pride about how they were of Jewish descent. Some married into Jewish families, and a few even converted back to Judaism. The Cohen family is also lucky that one of Juan Cohen's grandchildren, Cándida Amelia Cohen de Marchena (aka "Tía Memé," 1873-1968), wrote in 1967 two notebooks full of genealogy and autobiography and preserved many family stories.

Juan Cohen was a slave owner, a ship captain, and a merchant. His decades in trade and shipping and exploitation of people left behind a sizable paper trail which has come to light as historical newspapers and notarial records are digitized. We have a clearer sense than ever about his life and the historical forces that shaped it, and we have even uncovered his birth family!

"PRIESTLY" GENES

Early 20th century German depiction of the Kohen priestly blessing.

"Kohen" is the Hebrew word for priest and the Kohanim, members of the Jewish priestly caste, are said to be direct male descendants of the Israelite high priest Aaron, brother of Moses. What's interesting is that a majority of Kohanim share an identical set of DNA variations on their Y-chromosomes, called the "Cohen Modal Haplotype." Some researchers believe a common male ancestor of these Kohanim lived between 1250 BC and 600 BC, the time of Biblical Israel and Judah. 

Our Cohen male line has that same genetic signature of the Cohen Modal Haplotype, as proven by David Cohen, Juan's direct-male 3rd-great-grandson. We don't know if Juan Cohen himself ever performed the Kohanim's priestly blessing, but his direct-male ancestors definitely did. And yes, this blessing inspired Leonard Nimoy's Vulcan greeting on Star Trek.

The Kohanim are part of the larger J1 (or J-M267) haplogroup, a branch of the human Y-chromosomal family tree that stretches back to a common male ancestor who lived in Africa c.200,000 years ago. His direct male descendant who lived c.70,000 years ago joined a small band of people who crossed into southwest Asia and became the patrilineal ancestor of most non-Africans living today. One branch of male descendants stayed in western Asia, where the first man with the genetic markers of J haplogroup lived c.48,000 years ago, and the first man with the genetic markers of J1 haplogroup lived maybe 24,000 to 17,000 years ago. 

The J1 haplogroup may have accompanied the spread of agriculture from Anatolia and Iran and then later trade routes through the Middle East and northern Africa. Today, a sizable portion of men in the Middle East, northern and eastern Africa, and the Caucasus belong to the J1 haplogroup. The Kohanim are part of the sub-haplogroup J-P58, as are other Semitic and Arab peoples, including the Quraysh and Hashemite Arab tribes to which the Prophet Muhammad and his paternal family are said to have belonged.

The Jewish diaspora brought some Kohanim and their male descendants to southern Europe in Roman and medieval times. It's not clear whether my Cohen ancestors were Sephardic Jews who fled from Spain and Portugal to Holland and other Dutch territories, or Ashkenazi Jews who migrated from France to Germany, but by the 1780s they lived in Bristol, England. 

While England originally expelled its Jews in 1290, openly practicing Jews had returned to London by 1656, and Portuguese Jewish merchants steadily trickled into England to escape the Inquisition. In 1692, London’s tiny Ashkenazi Jewish population founded the Great Synagogue, which was sadly destroyed in the London Blitz. Another casualty of the London Blitz was the Mocatta Library, where Bristol’s earliest synagogue records were among the destroyed documents. All this to say, our Cohen family history is very incomplete, but it took a long time to even know this much.

THE MANY ORIGIN STORIES OF JUAN COHEN 

"Mobius Ship" (2006), sculpture by Tim Hawkinson

The standard family tale is that Juan Cohen was born in England, and indeed Juan Cohen was described in an 1815 newspaper article as a "British subject" and another 1827 article as "an Englishman." Juan’s granddaughter, Cándida Amelia Cohen, wrote in her 1967 memoir that her paternal grandfather's full name was Juan Agustín Cohen (although other records refer to him as "Juan Bautista Cohen"), and he came from London. Juan had a sister named Sahara Cohen, who married but never had children and lived in a London mansion. 

Different branches of the family tell variations of this story. Some say Juan was born in Liverpool, England. Or he came from Ireland, or Venezuela's Isla Margarita. One family narrative even claims (with no accompanying proof) he was a "Syrian" rabbi named Isaac Cohen who later settled in England. My grandmother's family, the Vásquez Cohen branch, claimed their Cohen ancestors were German. 

There are vague stories of Juan's life in England. His mother had the surname Morris, or Murray, or Duncan? He was maybe a cousin of Santiago Duncan Baird (1794-1870), an Irishman who helped fund Simón Bolívar’s army and later became a Barranquilla businessman (although there is no proof of this claim)? Juan had one son in England, or two, or three? Juan had two English-born grandchildren, including one named Isaac, who ventured for Colombia but one of them never arrived? 

Even I crafted an origin story for John Cohen, suspecting he was born in Jamaica, and therefore more loosely "British." My distant relation Gina Goff found a fascinating record on FamilySearch.org: the Anglican baptism of a biracial boy named John Cohen, which took place in Kingston, Jamaica in 1791. His mother was listed as a “free Quadroon woman.” While our ancestor did spend time in Jamaica, and there are a number of Black and multiracial Jamaicans with Jewish ancestry (think of Sean Paul), this Jamaican was not our ancestor.

On February 5, 2024, all the speculation came to a halt, when I found a record on FamilySearch.org with a definitive answer about the start of Juan Cohen's life: his death record.

THE DEATH (AND BIRTH) OF JUAN COHEN

In 1871 in the tiny town of El Carmen de Bolívar, Colombia, the town notary created a thin death registry which was later bound into a volume of the year's notarized business records. To my astonishment, the third item in the registry was for a death from 1869: Juan Bautista Cohen! Here is the record, across two pages:  

The record reads in part: "[...] a los dos días del mes de Octubre de mil ochocientos setenta y uno, ante mí, Eduardo Arroyo, notario público de la provincia, se presentó el Señor Juan José Cohen, casado, vecino de este distrito, mayor de veintiún años [...] y dijo: que el dia dieciséis de julio de mil ochocientos sesentinueve murió en este distrito en la casa del Señor Andrés Locarno, su padre el Señor Juan Bautista Cohen (John Cohen) de ochenta y tres años de edad, casado, natural de Bristol, condado de Somerset, Reino Unido de la Gran Bretaña, i vecino de este distrito..."

Translated: "on October 2, 1871, before me, Eduardo Arroyo, public notary of the province [of El Carmen de Bolívar], presented Mr. Juan José Cohen, married, neighbor of this district, older than 21 years of age... and he said: that on July 16, 1869 died, in this district in the house of Mr. Andrés Locarno, his father, Mr. Juan Bautista Cohen (John Cohen), of 83 years of age, married, native of Bristol, Somerset County, United Kingdom of Great Britain, and neighbor of this district..."

Learning that Juan Cohen was born in Bristol, I looked up a lot of Cohen families from early 19th-century England, but only one had ties to Bristol, London, Jamaica, and the “West Indies.” In May 2024 I reached out to Caroline Gurney, a historian and genealogist who has thoroughly researched Bristol’s historical Jewish population, and on June 1, 2024 she shared a digital copy of a will that proved this family was my ancestor’s family! 

The will was signed on January 22, 1870, just months after Juan Cohen’s death. Elizabeth Cowen, a woman in her mid-80s living in Brixton, England, named as her main heir “my brother John Cowen who is or formerly was residing at Barraquilla in South America.” 

Elizabeth Cowen's will, with the part on "John Cowen" underlined.

I never expected to find such a clear answer regarding Juan’s origins, and now I could start to piece together his family story. I once imagined Juan Cohen was a maverick or the black sheep of his family, but now it seems many of his family members were unusual and adventurous like him. 

THE COHEN FAMILY OF BRISTOL AND LONDON

Juan Cohen had at least four siblings: Hannah Cohen, Catherine Cohen (c.1773-1833), Elizabeth Cowen (c.1783-1870), and Morrice Cowen (1791-1869). The names of their parents are not known for certain: Hannah may be listed in a 1794 marriage record as the daughter of “Nathan KZ,” standing for Katz, which in turn is the German abbreviation of “Cohen Tzedek,” the Hebrew for “righteous priest”]. Morrice listed his parents in his 1807 baptismal record as “John and Elizabeth Cowen.” 

Surprisingly, both Catherine and Elizabeth listed in their wills an oil portrait of their father. Perhaps my 5th-great-grandfather Cohen was painted from life or in memoriam, but either way it’s amazing that an 18th-century Jew had his portrait painted. Elizabeth said “the picture of my late father” was to be given to “my nearest relative at the time of my death who I hope will accept and value them for my sake.” I hope the portrait ended up in safe hands after 1870, but who knows.

This is not my ancestor, but an assimilated Ashkenazi Jewish contemporary in America, Jacob I. Cohen (c.1744-1823), painted in youth and old age. (LoebJewishPortraits.com)

Catherine referred to Juan Cohen in her 1827 will as her "brother Jacob Cohen whom I believe also sometimes spells his name 'Cowen,' who went many years since to the West Indies." This indicates that Juan's birth name was Jacob / Yaakov. During John Cohen's childhood, Bristol was in its waning years as a major slave port, leading up to the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807. The city and its namesake channel also had a long history of smuggling and piracy, and I wonder how much it influenced John's later career in privateering. 

Bristol originally had a thriving medieval Jewish community until the expulsion of English Jews in 1290, and then Jewish residents returned in the early 18th century. Caroline Gurney, who has closely studied this reemergence of Bristol's tiny Jewish community in the 1700s, generously shared with me references from that era of town residents named Cohen. Her work augments similar efforts by historians Cecil Roth, Judith Samuel, and DP Lindegaard. 

18th-century Bristol's Broad Quay, looking towards Lewin's Mead. (Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives)

 

It's unclear at present if these early Cohen families of Bristol are related, but their stories are still interesting and often include overseas migration. Aaron Cohen appeared in the paper in 1727 after his pocket was picked. The Bristol Common Council ordered in 1757 that a silversmith named Moses Cohen should be prosecuted, noting he "keeps a shop with glass windows before Lewin’s Mead Chapel, on the Quay, and there sells gold and silver without being a Burgess." Moses Cohen could not legally be a burgess because he was a Jew, and legal emancipation of English Jews only started in the 1830s and was not complete until 1858. Moses Cohen next appeared in the London Gazette in 1776 for declaring bankruptcy.  

The same Moses Cohen (died 1792) and his wife Rebecca Levy had at least two sons, Philip and Barnet. Philip Cohen (born c.1759) converted to Christianity and was baptized in 1785. Barnet Cohen (c.1770-1839) was born in Bristol and immigrated to Charleston, South Carolina, where he had two Black sons by a free Black woman named Catherine Owens, before marrying a white German Jewish woman, Bella A. Cohen, in 1814. A family account by Barnet's grandson, E. Yancey Cohen, uploaded to FamilySearch, describes Barnet Cohen as "an Englishman" who "was a man of education, speaking several languages and was a high Mason." Bella's German-born sister, Catherine Cohen, married Barnet's English-born nephew, Elias Abrams, in Charleston.

Barnet Cohen bought a plantation along the Savannah River, near the site now known as Cohens Bluff Landing, South Carolina, and it seems his white sons became legal guardians of their older Black half-brothers. The historian Bertrand Wallace Korn notes how one of Barnet Cohen's Black sons, Benjamin Owens Cohen, was forced to own his own wife Jane and their children as slaves, since that was the only way South Carolina's racist laws could give him custody. A decades-long paper trail survives, showing Benjamin Owens Cohen's attempts to preserve some sort of freedom for his family in the antebellum South.  

Meanwhile, back in Bristol in 1786, the purported year of John Cohen’s birth, the Jewish congregation opened a new synagogue on Temple Street to replace an earlier synagogue, and the congregation acquired a "Dutch style brass Chanukah Menorah” that is still extant. That same year, one of the first couples to wed in this new synagogue was Israel I. Cohen (1751-1803), a German-born Jewish resident “of Virginia,” and “Miss [Judith] Solomon, daughter of Mr. Solomon of Exeter.” Israel and Judith Cohen joined Israel's brother, Jacob I. Cohen (1744-1823) in Richmond, Virginia in 1787, and later moved to Baltimore. Their accomplished children included the civic leader Jacob I. Cohen Jr. and the globetrotter Mendes I. Cohen. A distant descendant led recovery efforts at the World Trade Center rubble, following the September 11th attacks.

A son of Israel and Judith Cohen, David I. Cohen, married into an Ashkenazi Jewish family named Cohen from Swansea, Wales. David's nephew by marriage, Reuben Zaleg Philip Cohen (1810-1881), became a plantation owner in Cuba and then settled in Jamaica during Cuba's Ten Years' War. Reuben's children then settled in Panama, Haiti, and possibly Costa Rica.

Bristol's "Dutch style brass Chanukah Menorah" from circa 1786. (JewishGen.org)

Returning to my Cohen ancestors, they were in Bristol from at least c.1783, when Elizabeth was born, through 1791, when Morrice was born. An elder daughter, Hannah Cohen, possibly married Nathan Lear in London’s Great Synagogue in 1794, and she had a daughter named Hester Lear. Hannah married again in 1801 to Benjamin Dias Fernandes, a “West Indies merchant,” in the church of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and their son, Jacob Thomas Dias, was baptized in the same church in 1803. 

By the mid-1790s, Catherine Cohen took the extremely unorthodox step of becoming the mistress of a wealthy gentile, Gabriel Tucker Steward, who was a member of Parliament representing Weymouth, England. By 1795, Catherine Cohen had adopted the pseudonym “Mrs. Catherine Knight,” presumably to avoid scandal, and was living on Park Street, Grosvenor Square. For nearly 40 years, Catherine passed as a property-owning gentile in the highly fashionable London district of Mayfair, the setting of many Jane Austen parlor dramas and Bridgerton cliffhangers. We may never know the exact nature of Catherine and Gabriel’s relationship, but at the very least it was financially lucrative for Catherine. 

Who knows what Catherine Cohen and Gabriel T. Steward's relationship was really like.

Catherine and Gabriel had at least a son, who died young and whose name is unknown, and a daughter, Catherine Urania Steward (1801-1864). The baptism of Catherine Urania was held in St. George’s, Hanover Square, and the record lists her parents as Catherine Knight and “Coulson Knight, Esq.” “Coulson Knight” seems to be a fictitious name that appears in no other records, and the only other record where “Catherine Urania Knight” appears is Catherine Cohen’s 1827 will. Ten days after Catherine wrote her will, Gabriel wrote a will leaving his entire estate “to my beloved daughter, Catherine Urania Steward.”

The top of the first page of Catherine Cohen's will. (The National Archives, UK)

The 1827 will of Catherine Cohen is a crucial puzzle piece, as it correctly listed Catherine as a “spinster” with her original maiden name “Cohen.” She said her surviving siblings Elizabeth, Jacob, and Morrice sometimes spelled their last name “Cowen,” which could pass as a Gaelic name. Catherine, whose estate was valued at under £14,000 (roughly £1.8 million/$2.2 million today, per officialdata.org), bequeathed to her siblings and daughter Catherine Urania some stunning luxury items:

"I give unto my daughter my diamond locket with hair, my amethyst ring set with diamonds which the Emperor of Russia gave to my dear deceased son, my laces, my two Indian shawls, red and black, my enamelled watch set with pearls and all its appendages, my late dear son’s portrait in oil and his miniature. I give and bequeath unto my sister Elizabeth... my gold watch chain and seals. I give and bequeath to my brother Maurice [sic, Morrice]... the portrait in oil of my father."

An amethyst and diamond necklace that Tsar Alexander I gave to a German noblewoman in 1822. (Sotheby's)

I believe Catherine Cohen/Knight is the inspiration for the family story of “Sahara Cohen,” and perhaps “Sahara” was her original Hebrew name. I’m hoping to eventually learn how Catherine’s son could have met the Emperor of Russia, but one of the executors of her will, Lord Burghersh, was a British diplomat who joined the Allied Armies in Germany led by Tsar Alexander I from 1813-1814. Perhaps the tsar, who was known to widely gift Siberian amethyst jewelry, presented his ring during that time? 

Catherine Cohen asked her daughter to select her burial place and she was buried on July 20, 1833 in St. Martin of Tours churchyard in Epsom, about 14 miles southwest of London. Her gravestone describes her death as "a few hours of severe illness, which she bore with the Greatest patience and resignation," and she "was suddenly taken from her afflicted relatives," but the relations are unspecified. Her tombstone lacks religious messaging, perhaps hinting at her own religious ambiguity.

Catherine Knight's gravesite in Epsom. (eehe.org.uk)

Learn more about the unusual and fabulous life of Catherine Cohen, a.k.a. Mrs. Knight, in my blog, “Genetic Funhouse.”

Catherine Urania Steward continued in her mother's footsteps of living as a wealthy gentile, and in 1837 became the second wife of Walter Stevenson Davidson (1785-1869), a well-heeled widower and banker who made his fortune decades earlier trading in Asia and Oceania, including importing opium to China and exporting Australian wool. Catherine Urania became a stepmother for Walter's children from his first marriage and lived out her days in Saxonbury Lodge, the Gothic-style Davidson family manor in Frant, UK that was demolished by 1965.

Saxonbury Lodge in Frant, the home of Catherine Urania Davidson (theweald.org) 

Morrice Cowen had a successful naval career, joining the Royal Navy in August 1805 at age 14, a couple months before the Battle of Trafalgar demonstrated to the world that "Britannia rules the waves." He started as a First Class Volunteer, taking the track to become a naval officer. He became a midshipman in August 1806 and then was baptized at age 16 in St. George's, Hanover Square on October 15, 1807, in a possible move to gain social clout. 

Over seven years, Morrice served on at least three ships, the HMS Saturn, HMS Royal Oak, and HMS Podargus in the Mediterranean Sea, Baltic Sea, and English Channel. Morrice was promoted to lieutenant on board the Podargus on March 21, 1812, and it's likely he was present at the Battle of Lyngør on July 6, 1812, a major Dano-Norwegian defeat that ended Denmark's involvement in the Napoleonic Wars. Morrice then sailed to the East Indies on the HMS Minden, arrived in Madras, India on January 29, 1813, and then served on the HMS Illustrious, with both ships commanded by Captain Alexander Skene. 

Royal Navy commander's uniform and lieutenant's uniform during the Napoleonic era (HughEvelyn.com)

There's a decade-long gap in Morrice's biography, but from 1824-1830 he was part of the Coast Blockade, stopping smugglers from entering England. He then entered an extended period of retirement, and was promoted to Commander in 1854. He lived with his unmarried sister Elizabeth in Watford (1851 census), Richmond (1861 census), and then Stockwell, where Morrice died in 1869. In her will, Elizabeth left Morrice's "quadrant and sword" to his friend, Captain Edward Franklin (1798-1875), another retired Royal Navy officer who he likely knew from the Coast Blockade.  

Another man named John Cohen served in the Royal Navy from 1806-1810, but there's no evidence proving this was my ancestor Juan Cohen. On March 31, 1806 this particular John Cohen, age 21, joined the HMS Blanche as an "ordinary seaman." He then joined the HMS Alfred in March 1807 and was promoted to "carpenter's crew." The HMS Alfred took part in the Battle of Copenhagen (August-September 1807), during which British ships bombarded the Danish capital for three days straight. Finally, John Cohen served on the HMS San Domingo from May 1809 to September 1810, and took part in the Walcheren Campaign, a failed British naval assault on the Netherlands.

This same "John Cowen" received a medal from Queen Victoria in 1848 for serving on the HMS Blanche when it captured a French frigate, the HMS Guerrière, on July 19, 1806. There seemed to have been a naval pensioner in London named John Cohen during the 1830s-1840s, and again, it's unclear which John Cohen received the medal. 

Whether or not Juan Cohen served in the Royal Navy, he made the fateful decision to settle in Jamaica by the 1810s. Perhaps he crossed the Atlantic expecting to return to England, but as the years went by and John became "Juan," a man who wrote and spoke fluent Spanish, assimilated to Latin American culture, and raised Colombian children, it became clear that this "British" man would finish his long life in the Caribbean. 

JAMAICAN JEWS AND THE "TRANSIMPERIAL" CARIBBEAN

"The Jews who were able to make it to Jamaica were fleeing the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal and had literally nowhere else to go." – Ainsley Cohen Henriques 

I don’t know if my ancestor John Cohen followed his brother-in-law, Benjamin Dias Fernandes the “West Indies merchant,” to Kingston, Jamaica, but given that he was later an agent for Jamaican firms, I can imagine him doing similar work in Kingston offices or warehouses, possibly alongside other Jewish businessmen. A Jamaican newspaper referred to him in 1813 as "Mr. Cohen, formerly of this city." And Henrique Cohen, Juan Cohen's oldest known son who was born around 1810, gave the intriguing clue in an 1849 notarial record in Barranquilla that he was "natural de Jamayca" — native of Jamaica — even though his descendants said he was born in England.  

Regardless of whether Juan Cohen was of Sephardic or Ashkenazi descent, his life and career reflected over 300 years of the Sephardic “Portuguese Diaspora,” or in Portuguese, nação. The Western Sephardic Jews, fresh off their expulsion from Spain in 1492, were forced into mass conversions in Portugal in 1497. Many of these “New Christians” or conversos lived for generations as Crypto-Jews, secretly practicing Judaic customs. The Portuguese Inquisition officially began in 1536, causing trickles of emigration to France, Italy, Holland, Brazil, Curaçao, England, and then Jamaica starting in the 1660s. Emigration from Portugal ramped up in the 1700s, and by 1720 the Jewish community made up a fifth of Kingston's population, although the total Jewish population never topped 1,000. Jamaica also had a small Ashkenazi Jewish population, including the major slave owners Hyman Cohen and Judah Cohen, who are probably not relatives.

Historian Stanley Mirvis’s excellent book The Jews of Eighteenth-Century Jamaica explains the trade, cultural, and familial networks set up by these far-flung Portuguese Jewish populations in the Caribbean, England, Western Europe, and even North American ports like New York City, Newport R.I., and Charleston S.C. Farewell España by Howard Sachar and Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean by Edward Kritzler are another two informative and enjoyable books on Sephardic Jewish history (although researcher Ton Tielen has objections to some of Kritzler's conclusions). Ainsley Cohen Henriques, the former president of Kingston's Shaare Shalom Synagogue, has dedicated his life to preserving the rich history and genealogy of Jamaica's Jews and related historical sites (here is his interview from 2021).

Benjamin Dias Fernandes (died c.1818), the second husband of Hannah Cohen, had ancestors who were persecuted by the Inquisition as early as 1651, according to the Cátedra de Estudos Sefarditas "Alberto Benveniste." Benjamin’s great-great-grandfather Abraham Dias Fernandes (1655-1743) and his wife Maria were arrested by the Inquisition in 1703, endured an auto da fé in Lisbon in 1705, and lived in London by 1707. Abraham’s father and two brothers and six of his wife’s siblings were also arrested by the Inquisition. 

Auto da fé in Lisbon (source)

A chilling news item on an auto-da-fe in Lisbon on October 14, 1725 involving a possible member of the Dias Fernandes family shows the everyday horrors of life under the Inquisition's thumb: "Yesterday a publick Auto de Fe, was held in this City, in which 39 Men and 32 Women were tried for various Offences. Two Men and one Woman were sentenced to be burnt. One of the Men named Antonio Dias Fernandes, a Merchant of this City convicted of Judaism, was pardoned for his Recantation. The other being a Priest nam'd Manuel Lopez de Carvalho, a Native of the Bahia 44 Years old, was executed at 4 aclock this Morning being burnt alive. He absolutely persisted in his Opinion, which was, 'That Christ came not to destroy the Law of Moses, but to perfect it; and that Circumcision was as necessary as Baptism.' At the Place of Execution he was told it was not yet too late for Mercy if he would renounce his Errors, and own the Doctrines of the Inquisition; but this he absolutely refused, saying the Inquisition were not Christians but Idolaters. He suffered with great Resolution amidst the Flames calling upon the God of Israel. The Woman of 65 Years of Age, convicted a second Time of Judaical Practices, was strangled and afterwards burnt."

Once in London, Abraham Dias Fernandes became a dealer of Brazilian diamonds and traded East India Company stock. His grandson, Benjamin Dias Fernandes (grandfather of the younger Benjamin), was a merchant in Jamaica who wrote in the 1740s a group of letters defending Judaism that were later published as “A Series of Letters on the Evidences of Christianity.” The younger Benjamin was part of the fourth generation in his family to become “West Indies merchants” and it seems he died in Jamaica. Given the antagonism the Dias Fernandes family felt towards Christianity, the younger Benjamin is more ambiguous, since he married and baptized his son in the fancy parish of St. George’s, Hanover Square. However, it must be remembered that until the 1830s, many English civil rights including voting and serving in government required an oath swearing allegiance to the king and his Church of England. Such an oath excluded Catholics, Quakers, Jews, and other religious minorities.

Benjamin’s son, Jacob Thomas Dias (born 1803), a dentist who lived in Kingston and changed his name to "John Thomas Dias," appears to have been a practicing Christian. John T. Dias married Elizabeth Robbins in 1828 in an Anglican church and baptized his two known children, Wallace Emmanuel Dias (born 1830) and Henrietta Isabell Dias (1837-1934).

Jacob/John Dias left behind a fascinating 1842 account of working on a hypnotized patient, and in his free time he was involved with local theater, managed the Kingston Amateur Association, and raised money to build a new theater in 1838. An 1890s account of Jamaican dental history by Dr. Ernest Sturridge likely mentions John Dias but is wrong about when he came to Jamaica: "About the year 1836 a man by the name of Dias landed in Jamaica, and commenced the practice of dentistry. He was probably the very first to practice the profession as a distinct business, and, from all I can gather, his work consisted principally of filling, in a primitive style, with amalgam, and, perhaps, tin foil, filing the teeth, and extracting with the key." 

John's daughter, Henrietta Dias, married an older accountant named William John Carter in 1856 in Kingston. She may be mentioned in the Falmouth Post in 1874: "Mrs. Henrietta Carter, a widow, and proprietress of several houses in the city of Kingston, has presented to the Venerable Archdeacon Campbell £200, part of which is to be placed in a Savings Bank, and the interest thereon to be distributed annually to the poor." Henrietta lived to her late 90s, and I don't know if she was survived by Jamaican relatives, or if she knew about the family of her great-uncle, John Cohen.

The harbor of Kingston, Jamaica, c.1870

When John Cohen lived in Kingston, Jamaica in the early 1810s, the city was having a "golden age" in free trade, according to historian Ernesto Bassi's thought-provoking book, An Aqueous Territory. Britain and Spain were allied against Napoleon, allowing for free trade between their colonies, and Britain stayed neutral during the Latin American wars for independence in order to trade with both royalists and independistas. Ships from Kingston, Jamaica sent "sundry dry goods" in all directions of the Caribbean and returned with raw materials like cotton, cocoa, indigo, wood, and tortoiseshell. 

Shipping records survive of John Cohen sailing trade vessels between Kingston and Panama's San Blas coast in 1818. Novelist Michael Scott, who lived in Kingston at the time, wrote: "The whole of the trade of Terra Firma, from Porto Cavello down to Chagres, the greater part of the trade of the islands of Cuba and San Domingo, and even that of Lima and San Blas, and the other ports of the Pacific, carried on across the Isthmus of Darien, centred [sic] in Kingston."

In the wake of losing the United States as colonies, Great Britain not only expanded its rule in India, but initially strived to acquire more Caribbean and Latin American territories like Trinidad, Belize, and the failed invasion of the Río de la Plata. By the time Latin America was fighting for independence, the British replaced the goal of direct rule with vying for economic domination of the region, creating what later historians called an "informal empire."

In one fascinating example, Bassi writes how the Republic of Cartagena, which was under siege by the Spanish, desperately resolved to join the British empire on October 13, 1815, and raised the British flag over the city. British officials ignored them, just as they also disregarded Simón Bolívar's requests for military aid, which Bolívar later received in 1816 from the Republic of Haiti. Juan Cohen was in Cartagena during its abortive bid for British rule, and perhaps he tried to help construct, in Bassi's words, that "plausible world."

I'm not sure when Juan Cohen first made the five-day trip from Kingston to Cartagena, but it was an major trade route in the larger "transimperial" Caribbean region, as Bassi calls it. As a privateer and later as a shipping agent, slave owner, and businessman, Juan Cohen's affairs crossed borders and regularly involved Jamaican merchants, and all types across broader Caribbean trade networks. For decades, Juan Cohen was complicit in Jamaica's slave economy and the exploitation of Colombia's raw materials for foreign, especially British, profit.

The first lines of Tracy K. Smith's poem inspired by a historic image, "Photo of Sugar Cane Plantation Workers, Jamaica, 1891."

JUAN COHEN, PRIVATEER

The Colombian genealogist Rocío Sánchez (who runs the blog "Camino Arriba") first wrote of Juan Cohen being the same man as a "Captain Cohen" who sailed and traded around the Caribbean in the 1810s and 1820s. Historian Edgardo Pérez Morales makes reference to a privateer "J. Coen" in his terrific book No Limits to Their Sway: Cartagena's Privateers and the Masterless Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions. In 2021, I found digitized newspaper articles that definitively prove the connection to me. 

As said above, my ancestor lived in Jamaica around 1810, when he and a woman named Eliza Macfarlane had a son named Henrique Cohen (c.1810-1872). Then on November 11, 1811, Cartagena became the second major South American city after Caracas to declare independence from Spain. The colonists of Nueva Granada needed help in their war against Spain, and they turned to Spain's longtime enemy: England. While the British government was officially neutral, many British individuals like Juan Cohen aided the independistas.

One family story claims Juan Cohen arrived in Colombia as part of the British Legion that volunteered to join Simón Bolívar's army in 1817, and he fought in the Battle of Pantano de Vargas (1819). However, documents suggest that Juan Cohen joined another wave of volunteers: foreign sailors who became privateers flying independent Cartagena's flag and received letters of marque legalizing plunder of Spanish ships.

It's probable that Juan was part of the team of "Philips and Cohen" that led the Kingston Packet, a “felucca” of privateers that sailed out of Cartagena in 1813. A Jamaican newspaper dismissed the Kingston Packet's crew as a "band of desperados," consisting of "Americans, Frenchmen and Spaniards," and added that the ship only raided two vessels "of little value." 

However, it seems the Kingston Packet did more damage. In May 1813 alone, the ship targeted at least four ships: the British schooner Nancy, the Neck or Nothing, the China, and the Portuguese schooner Coimbra. The latter two were mentioned in the May 8, 1813 edition of the Royal Gazette: "About ten leagues from St. Jago [Santiago] de Cuba the China was boarded by the felucca privateer Kingston Packet, under Carthagenian colours, commanded by a Capt, Philips, and owned by a Mr. Cohen, formerly of this city, which took some stores from the China, and then permitted her to proceed for her destination. The same privateer had two days before detained the Portuguese schooner Coimbra, Capt. Bragan, from Wilmington, (N.C.) board to St. Jago de Cuba, with lumber, and ordered her for Carthagena." 

On June 13, 1813, the Royal Gazette of Jamaica reported: "The Kingston Packet has lately taken a Spanish schooner, and sent Mr. Cohen, formerly of this city, in her as prizemaster to Carthagena." These news items are a missing link of sorts, connecting Juan Cohen with his old home of Kingston, Jamaica and his new home of Cartagena, Colombia.

Juan Cohen's first definite appearance in Cartagena is in a news item from December 1815 that circulated in various British newspapers for months. Four British subjects were caught in the middle of the brutal Spanish reconquest (or "pacification") of Colombia:

"From the Kingston Chronicle, of December 30: — 'A letter from Santa Martha to a Gentleman of this city, dated the 23d inst. states, that a Gentleman on his route to the head quarters of General Morillo's army, fell in with Messrs. John Macpherson, John Cohen, John Welsh, and Leonard Hebden (British subjects, and lately resident at Carthagena), stripped of every farthing they possessed in the world, and not even common rations allowed them by General Morillo. They had been ill of fever and ague for near two months, notwithstanding which, they were driven about, tied arm in arm, from town to town, without shoes or hates, existing merely upon the charity of the inhabitants. All their hopes were in the arrival of a British man of war to claim them as British subjects, and to carry them off. The property of Messrs. Macpherson and Hebden, General Morillo had in his own private possession.'"

"Three Prisoners," etchings from Goya's "Disasters of War"

Somehow, Juan Cohen survived the hardship. The Kingston Gazette reported on March 19, 1816 that the Cartagena prisoners were marched to Santa Marta, and 30 had died along the way. Shortly afterward, on March 23, the Gazette wrote of Juan's probable release: "The Drake brought over from Santa Martha 46 British and American subjects, who were prisoners at that place and Carthagena." Of the other prisoners, John Macpherson probably settled in Venezuela and John Welsh tried to form a cavalry unit in Barranquilla in 1821, according to the Hispanic-Anglosphere database. 

Juan Cohen left Spanish-controlled Cartagena and sailed from Jamaica to trade along the coast of San Blas in modern-day Panama in 1818. His schooner, the Liverpool Packet, was owned by Richard Bruce Kirkland (1785-1829), a Jamaican-born son of Colonel Moses Kirkland, a South Carolina Loyalist who fled Charleston at the end of the American Revolution. Funny enough, the shipping journal Lloyd's List included in 1818 a news tidbit from Captain Cohen on privateering: "Kingston, Jamaica, August 8. - By the Liverpool packet, Cohen, which arrived on 2d inst. from San Blas, we learn that 2 privateers had lately been there, said to be commissioned at Carthagena, and some of her people had been on shore at Little Pleyen Keys, and plundered several trading vessels of stores, &c."

The Colombian scientist Joaquín Acosta, according to his daughter's biography, happened to accompany "Captain J. Cohen" to the coast of San Blas in May 1820, and witnessed Cohen trading with the local Kuna Indians and conducting diplomacy with the local cacique, Cuipana. Cohen honored the cacique Cuipana for his military actions against the Spanish with gifts from the local governor. The cacique received the flag of Gran Colombia and the title of "commanding governor-general of all the free people of the Coast of San Blas." Cohen then brought out a "demijohn of rum" and spurred on the festivities, and the Indians and Colombians ended the night by firing shots into the air from the ship's deck. 

Juan Cohen then took an even more active role in the war for independence. The historian Enrique Otero D'Costa wrote that "Captain Cohen, a Sephardic Jew from Curacao" ["el Capitán Cohen, judío sefardita de Curazao"] took part in Admiral José Prudencio Padilla's naval attack on Cartagena on June 24, 1821, commanding "El Centinela," a corsair brigantine. Padilla captured 11 war ships that night, a major step toward the eventual liberation of Cartagena that October. 

Composite of three portraits of Admiral José Prudencio Padilla, each depicting the Afro-Colombian with a different skin tone (Art by Nicolás Muñoz, source)

Padilla's naval siege went down in history as the "La noche de San Juan," as it took place on the feast day of St. John the Baptist. Perhaps it's a coincidence that Juan adopted the name "Juan Bautista Cohen," or perhaps it's not. Also, it's unclear why Otero D'Costa said Juan Cohen came from Curacao, and he was possibly just guessing. 

Saúl Cohen Ortega heard other family tales of Juan Cohen giving Padilla ships and guiding him through secret waterways to retake Cartagena. Edison Posso, a researcher of Cartagena's Freemasons, is said to have found that Juan Cohen helped Padilla join the Cartagena Masonic lodge. Hopefully I will find out more details about these incredible claims.  

Within a few months of "La noche de San Juan," Juan Cohen's ship El Centinela plummeted from the heights of glory to committing atrocities. Newspapers reported how in November 1821, El Centinela [misspelled "Centinella" and "Centinelle" in English sources], “a private vessel of war, cruising under the flag of Colombia and commanded by [Peter] J. Bradford” and owned by "Kirkland and Cohen, of Santa Martha," captured the brigantine La Pensée, a French slave ship, and claimed its 220 African captives as rightful loot. Historian Jonathan Bryant reports that La Pensée had 270 captives when it left Africa, so 50 people had died in the Middle Passage. Shortly afterwards, the USS Hornet, a U.S. brig commanded by Captain Robert Henley (nephew of Martha Washington), captured the Centinela and brought the Colombian ship, French ship, and the enslaved Africans to New Orleans.

Part of the infamous 1787 diagram of a British slave ship, showing 292 slaves. The French slave ship La Pensée had 270 enslaved people on board upon leaving Africa in 1821.

In March 1822, a New Orleans district court judge ruled that “Kirkland and Cohen, of Santa Martha” were legal privateers and the rightful owners of La Pensée and its enslaved captives. President James Monroe personally intervened in the case and ordered the French ship and enslaved people be sent to France. Historian Jonathan Bryant said by the time the French legal system condemned the illegal slavers in July 1822, "only 160 captives remained alive of the 270 La Pensée loaded in Africa." About 40% of La Pensée's captives died in their hellish voyage from Africa to France. 

I found a notarial record from Santa Marta proving the identities of Kirkland and Cohen: On January 30, 1821, Ricardo Bruce Kirkland (the Jamaican), Juan Cohen, and Henrique Alauze sold the "bergantín nombrado Centinela de porte de trescientos cuarenta toneladas armado en corso" [brig named Centinela weighing 340 tons, armed for privateering] to Miguel María Martínez de Aparicio for 16,000 pesos fuertes. The ship was armed with "10 twelve-gauge cannons and one hundred rifles." The same day, Martínez de Aparicio give Kirkland and Juan Cohen the legal power to handle El Centinela and its armaments. Kirkland, of course, is the same man who owned Juan Cohen's schooner back in Jamaica, and Henrique Alauze was another Gran Colombian privateer who commanded the schooner Bellona in 1819. 

The signatures of Richard Bruce Kirkland and Juan Cohen in the 1821 notarial record of the sale of the Centinela.

Learn more about John Cohen's privateering and the court files from the La Pensée case in my blog, "Genetic Funhouse."

Captain John Cohen next took a more direct role in plundering and commanded the General Padilla, a "Colombian private armed schooner" named after José Prudencio Padilla, on several privateering cruises around the Caribbean. While Cohen flew the flag of Gran Colombia, the Padilla was owned by George DeWolf (or George D'Wolf, 1778-1844) of Bristol, Rhode Island, an infamous shipping magnate who had only recently stopped illegally smuggling enslaved people. The DeWolf family was the most successful slave-trading family of the United States, bringing around 12,000 enslaved Africans on the Middle Passage between 1769 to 1820. Legalized piracy was probably an easy pivot in business strategy.

It seems Captain John Cohen captured at least four ships in 1822 and one ship in 1824. The first one was the schooner Sylvia, which carried sugar and coffee from Santiago de Cuba, and was boarded by Captain Cohen in early June 1822 off of Dame-Marie, Haiti. The second was the Spanish brig Protector, attacked by the Padilla on September 13, 1822, off Cape San Antonio, Cuba. 

The most complete account tells how "The privateer Padilla, of Carthagena, John Cohen, master” captured the Draper, a ship that left Havana under the command of Capt. Smith of Boston, on November 3, 1822: 

The Draper “was boarded by the Carthagenian brig Padilla, Cohen, on a cruize. Capt. Cohen boarded the Draper, and after examining the papers, declared the whole cargo Spanish property – whereupon the crew gave three cheers. [A funny reaction from the Latin Americans on board!] Capt. [Smith] was then ordered on board the Padilla, with his letters, which were nearly all broken open. The supercargo was then ordered on board – Capt. Cohen then observed that if Capt. S. would not produce letters relating to 6 cases sugars, and 9 seroons of indigo, found on board, he would order the ship to Carthagena. After much altercation, it was finally agreed that Capt. S. should sign an agreement to deliver the property in question to the order of Capt. C. in New York, which he did, to avoid being carried to Carthagena, and for the safety of the ship and cargo. Capt. Smith states that the strictest discipline was observed by the boarders – no trunks or desks were broken open – nor personal ill treatment suffered.”

The Draper arrived in New York two weeks later, shortly after Captain Cohen docked in Charleston, SC on November 5, 1822. This is the earliest evidence I've found of an ancestor of mine setting foot in the United States. Several days later, John Cohen put an ad in the "Charleston Daily Courier" saying a 30-foot-long cedar canoe had drifted away from his ship, and promised "A suitable reward will be given on her delivery, by applying to the Captain at the Carolina Coffee House."

A newspaper account of Captain Cohen's capture of the ship Draper, 1822.

On November 29, 1822, the Padilla commanded by Cohen and the Centella commanded by Captain Charles C. Hopner (a different ship from the Centinela) captured the schooner Culloden "between Florida and Cuba." The Padilla then returned to Cartagena in February 1823.

At least one more ship attack came in September 1824, when Cohen targeted the Mariquito, sailing from La Coruña, Spain en route to Havana, Cuba. As the "British Press" reported: "The Colombian armed schooner Padilla, Cohen, has sent into Carthagena a large Spanish ship... laden with wines, &c. which she had captured on the Banks of the Old Channel." The Mariquito arrived in Cartagena on September 10, 1824. The previous month, an American source quoted by the British "Colonist and Weekly Courier" said with ample hyperbole: "two privateers having appeared of this [northern Cuban] coast – professing to be Colombians – one the General Padilla, supposed to be owned and manned by a parcel of rascals and ragamuffins of all nations, 'black, white, and gray,' and the other the Polly Hampton... They have adopted the motto of Alaric – 'Havoc and Spoil and Ruin are their gain.' They seem determined to sink, burn, and destroy."

While Cohen seemed to give up privateering, the American-born Charles C. Hopner continued to serve as a privateer for Gran Colombia and Mexico before he settled in Venezuela and married Luisa María Páez, the sister of President José Antonio Páez. Hopner was attacked and murdered by locals in Macapo, Venezuela on April 9, 1837.

The Padilla continued on privateering cruises under the command of Captain Peter Bradford (1791-?), a 4th-great-grandson of the Puritan Governor William Bradford. On June 22, 1824, Peter Bradford sailed the Padilla into the harbor of his hometown of Bristol, Rhode Island. He shocked family members who thought he had died years before, scandalized the upper class of Bristol, and ruined the reputation of George DeWolf. Bristol townsfolk remembered Peter Bradford as "the Bristol Pirate," and chronicler George Locke Howe republished an account of Bradford's visit in his 1959 book Mount Hope. 

Peter Bradford was probably in command of the Padilla when it fought and blew up the Spanish brig Marinero on July 30, 1824 in Cay Sal Bank near Cuba, killing nearly half the brig's crew. For what it's worth, the Padilla did help rescue the survivors of the Marinero. Genealogies suppose that Peter Bradford died at sea at an unknown point. (As an aside, Bradford's aunt, Nancy Ann Bradford, had married James DeWolf, George's uncle. Nancy and James DeWolf were in turn the maternal great-grandparents of the artist Charles Dana Gibson.) 

While Juan Cohen settled into legal trade, he still interacted with privateers and smugglers. In July 1827, a news article marked his negotiating for the release of American sailors suspected of smuggling. The full article read:

“The schooner Medal, [commanded by Captain] Smith, of and from Baltimore, put into Carthagenia 10th July, for the purpose of obtaining a permit from the Authorities there, to trade to the Coast of San Blas, and intermediate ports, when she was taken possession of by an armed force, on suspicion of having contraband goods on board. After a detention of 6 days, she was, through the indefatigable exertions of Messrs. Foster and John Cohen, (the former an American the latter an Englishman,) Merchants, liberated.” 

Juan Cohen's career had come full circle. In 1815 he was a hapless captive of the Spanish army, and by 1827 he was a respectable merchant, negotiating for the release of foreign sailors. 

JUAN COHEN, SLAVER AND MERCHANT

Juan Cohen's signature (1840), in Barranquilla's notarial records

After Gran Colombia gained its independence, the new country reversed colonial restrictions and allowed foreigners to freely settle and run businesses. British merchants who previously spearheaded smuggling operations now flocked to set up commercial houses in Cartagena, Santa Marta, and the booming ports of Barranquilla and Sabanilla at the mouth of the Magdalena River. 

Juan Cohen spent four decades working as an agent for various British firms, and even operated his own commercial house out of Barranquilla. It seems he also traded for a time in Quibdó, way inland on the Atrato River in the Province of Chocó, an area mostly populated by enslaved Afro-Colombians. In the early 1820s, Jamaican traders came to Chocó to export gold from the exploitative regional mines, tobacco, and more. 

The historian Sergio Mosquera wrote, "Businessmen like Ricardo Bruce [Kirkland], Joan Cohen and Manuel Morris arrived at Quibdó where they formed a company for trade between Jamaica and this province." (quoted in Jorge Isaacs, el creador en todas sus facetas, edited by Darío Henao Restrepo.) This company was formed at some point in the 1820s, as Kirkland, the Jamaican mentioned above, died in 1829 and Manuel Morris was murdered in 1828 in Quibdó by two machete-wielding enslaved men, Manuel Moreno and Lázaro Rentería (source).

Vista de una calle de Quibdó (1853), watercolor by Manuel María Paz. (Source: Library of Congress)

Details on the Jamaican business boom in Chocó are in Freedom's Captives: Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Colombian Black Pacific by Yesenia Barragan. One of Chocó's most successful Jamaican settlers, the Jewish merchant George Henry Isaacs, became a plantation owner and the father of writer Jorge Isaacs. María (1867), Jorge Isaacs's renowned and sappy romantic novel, falsely depicts a Colombian plantation much like his childhood home as an idyllic haven for grateful slaves — "large pastures with droves of cattle and horses in them, good stables, and an excellent house for the overseer" — living under the care of a paternalistic master. 

Quoting the 1890 translation of María by Rollo Ogden: "The slaves were well clad, and as happy as it is possible for slaves to be, and were docile and even affectionate towards their master" (p.10). "It was easy to see that my father, without ceasing to be a master, treated his slaves with kindness. He was anxious for their domestic happiness, and fondled the little ones" (p.11). 

It seems Juan Cohen did not achieve the wealth and status of George Henry Isaacs, but he did aspire to the life of a "gentlemen planter," with no regard for the Afro-Colombians mistreated along the way. Juan eventually owned land and settled in El Carmen de Bolívar, overseeing the growing and harvesting of tobacco by Black workers and probably selling the crops abroad. 

Here is a rough timeline of some of Juan Cohen's business from the 1820s through the 1860s, including all of his known slave deals:

• early 1820s?   Juan Cohen, Richard Bruce Kirkland, and Manuel Morris set up a company in Quibdó to trade with Jamaica. The boom of Jamaican trade in Quibdó was noted in accounts by Joaquín Acosta (1820) and Charles S. Cochrane (1823).
  
  
• 1825   Juan Cohen served as an agent for "Gualterio Chitty" in Cartagena. This was Commodore Walter Dawes Chitty (1794-1838), a former aide-de-camp of Simón Bolívar and the brother-in-law of Admiral William Brown, the founder of the Argentinian Navy.
  
  
• 1828   Juan Cohen was appointed to the Tribunal del Consulado (a court) in Cartagena. This was shortly after his wife, my 4th-great-grandmother Manuela Arévalo, died of yellow fever.
  
  
• 1828   Juan Cohen joined prominent cartageneros in signing a letter to Simón Bolívar expressing gratitude for his surviving an assassination attempt on September 25. The letter curses the conspirators against Bolívar: "These traitors do not belong to Colombia; nor have they been able to belong to the heroic and magnanimous people who have received independence and freedom from the hand of Your Excellency; and whom Your Excellency has saved many times, and saves today from dissolution and anarchy."
  
  
• 1830s  Juan Cohen served as the administrator of the hacienda of the English merchant Henrique Grice in Arjona, Colombia. During this era in Arjona, Juan Cohen had a relationship with Pastora Herrera. By 1838, Juan was listed as a Barranquilla agent of Henrique Grice y Compañía. Also in 1838, Grice was prosecuted in Popayán for a large-scale smuggling operation of clothes in 1836 through the Pacific port of Buenaventura, Colombia. 
  
  
• 1830   Juan Cohen bought an enslaved man named Lundy from Carlos Dean in Cartagena. In 1832, Juan Cohen sold Lundy, who he said was the property of his young son Juan Agustín, to Manuel Castillo.
  
  
• 1831   Juan Cohen sold an enslaved man named Juan José to Ramón Benedetti in Cartagena. He also bought in Barranquilla an enslaved man named Pedro from Juan Burke for 200 silver pesos. 
  
  
• 1835   Juan Cohen bought in Cartagena an enslaved man named Mariano from Roberto M. Key, a landowner in Quibdó, Colombia. The slaving seller was Robert Marshall Key, a British (Scotch) doctor who had served as a surgeon-major with General José de San Martín in Peru, and then after the war sold gold dust mined by Afro-Colombian hands in Chocó Department, Colombia.  
  
  
• 1837   Earliest known mention of Juan Cohen as "del comercio de Barranquilla" (a Barranquilla trader). 
  
  
• In August 1837, Juan Cohen donated two of his slaves to his own son, Juan Agustín, who was age 10 or 11 at the time. These two enslaved people were Pedro, the man bought in Barranquilla in 1831, and Mariano, the man bought in Cartagena in 1835.
  
  
• In March 1838, Juan Cohen and Pablo Carles, a French-born privateer, founded the commercial firm Cohen & Carles in Barranquilla. Pablo Carles was naturalized as a citizen of Gran Colombia in 1824.
  
  
• In April 1838, Juan B. Elbers, the pioneer entrepreneur of steamboat travel along Colombia's Magdalena River, gave a loan to Juan Cohen, listed as an agent of the Jamaican firm Singleton, Gourgues y Compañía. 
  
  
• 1839   The firm of Cohen & Carles issued a mortgage, and the borrower's collateral was a "criado" (here meaning slave) named Juan José Rebelo and two small bongos (boats) named El Rosario y El Patente.
  
  
• 1840   Juan Cohen served on the district council of Barranquilla.
  
  
• 1840   Henrique Cohen, Juan's son who lived in Campo del Cruz, sold an enslaved man named José Catalino Carazo in Cartagena. 
  
  
• 1842   Juan Cohen bought a house on the Calle de San Blas (now Calle 35) in Barranquilla in the name of his son Juan Agustín, who was 15 or 16 years old. Juan paid the 130 pesos using money left by Manuela Arévalo, the late mother of Juan Agustín. 
  
  
• 1843   Juan Cohen bought the enslaved man Juan José Rebelo in March and then sold him in September. This was the same person used as collateral in the 1839 loan issued by Juan.
  
  
• 1849   Juan Cohen was the inspector of Barranquilla's bogas, commercial rowers who were free men of color bringing passengers up and down the Magdalena River.
  
  
  
  “El champán del Magdalena” (1845), watercolor by Edward Walhouse Mark. The bogas (rowers) usually stood on the curved roof when pushing the sampan.
  
  
• 1850   The Colombian government abolished the state monopoly on cultivation and export of tobacco, resulting in a boom in Colombian tobacco cultivation. During the 1850s, Juan Cohen and his sons became involved in the growing and exporting of tobacco from El Carmen de Bolívar, Colombia. 
  
  
• 1854   Juan Cohen was the accountant for the customs office of Sabanilla.
  
  
• 1858-1862   Juan Cohen was the receiver for the British firm Powles, Gower & Co., which was trading tobacco grown in El Carmen de Bolívar, Colombia. One of the firm's founders, John Diston Powles (1787-1867), spent his career speculating on Latin American debt and mining operations, ever since he helped arrange a £2 million loan for Gran Colombia in 1822.
  
  
• 1863, April 24: Juan Cohen, "resident of the city of [El] Carmen [de Bolívar]," received power of attorney from the heirs of the late Santiago Wilson of Barranquilla, a merchant who had served as a British vice-consul. 
  
  
• 1864, May 15: Juan Cohen helped his [unacknowledged] companion, Bartola Villalobo, sell a house on the Callejón de San Miguel in Barranquilla that was inherited from her "legitimate" parents, José de los Santos Villabolo and Victoria de la Sala. So far, this is the last business record I've found bearing Juan Cohen's signature. 
  
  
• 1864, August 22: Enrique Cohen and Guillermo Cohen, the son and grandson of Juan Cohen, sold two haylofts [pajares] in El Carmen de Bolívar, with one bordering "the banana and tobacco fields [el platanar i tabacal] of señor Juan Bautista Cohen." A business record from 1868 also made passing reference to a land sale made by Juan. 

Juan Cohen's signatures from 1821 (left) and 1864 (right).

Henrique Cohen and Juan José Cohen joined their father Juan in El Carmen de Bolívar, where they became the town's first tobacco growers. Most of the Cohen half-siblings stayed in El Carmen de Bolívar, and there are still residents in the area with the last name "Cohen." 

Juan Cohen died at 83 years of age on July 16, 1869 in El Carmen de Bolívar. Cándida Amelia Cohen said Juan Cohen died in a house fire, but Juan José's descendants say old Juan died after falling off a horse. Given that Juan died in a neighbor's house, the horse riding accident seems more likely.  

An entire letter written in Juan Cohen's hand (1842)

There's one more story to share about the El Carmen de Bolívar branch of the Cohen family. Víctor Cohen Salazar (1896-1989), grandson of Juan José Cohen, moved from El Carmen de Bolívar to Valledupar, Cesar, Colombia where he ran the "Hotel Welcome." In March 1953, a starving young writer arrived in Valledupar, attempted to sell encyclopedia subscriptions, and stayed for 15 days and took his meals in the Hotel Welcome. The writer's name was Gabriel García Márquez, and they bonded because Victor was a close friend of Gabo’s uncle, Juan de Dios Márquez. 

It was during this same visit to Valledupar that García Márquez met the great vallenato composer Rafael Escalona (1926-2009). On March 30, 1953, García Márquez signed a voucher for his unpaid debts and left Valledupar shortly thereafter. 

When Don Victor met Gabriel García Márquez again in 1984, he showed the Nobel laureate the old voucher and joked that he still owed him money:

El anciano hilvanaba el diálogo que se estableció entre los dos.

—Pero Cohen, ¿cómo ha sido esto?

—Pues que usted se fue corriendo y se le olvidó pagarme la cuenta.

—Pero Cohen, insistía Gabriel, ¿ y cómo carajo quieres tú que yo te pague esto ahora?

Rápido como acostumbra ser, el antiguo hotelero le respondió:

—Pues si usted me firma los libros suyos que yo tengo, me siento muy bien pagado…

Entonces Gabriel le puso un brazo sobre los hombros y conmovido le comentó: “Pero mi

amigo, si eso no vale nada…”. (Source 1, Source 2)

THE EXTENDED FAMILY OF JUAN COHEN

Juan Bautista Cohen's family tree. Click to view full size.

My 5th-great-grandfather Cohen (Nathan Cohen? John Cowen?) and my 5th-great-grandmother Cohen (Elizabeth?) had at least 5 children: 

1. Hannah Cohen (born 1770s; died before 1827), who first married Nathan Lear on February 26, 1794 in the Great Synagogue of London. They had at least one child:

1a. Hester Lear (born 1790s), who was unmarried in 1827, fate unknown.

Hannah then married Benjamin Dias Fernandes (born in England; died in Jamaica) on October 27, 1801 in the St. George's, Hanover Square church in London. They had at least one child: 

1b. Jacob Thomas Dias a.k.a. Dr. John T. Dias (born February 14, 1803 in London; died before 1870 in Jamaica), the dentist. He married Elizabeth Robbins in 1828 in Kingston, Jamaica and had at least two children:

i. Wallace Emanuel Dias (born January 17, 1830 in Kingston) 

ii. Henrietta Isabell Dias (born July 31, 1837 in Kingston; died August 27, 1934 in Albert Town, Trelawny, Jamaica), who married the accountant William John Carter (born c.1815) on April 8, 1856 in Kingston, Jamaica.  

2. Catherine Cohen a.k.a. "Mrs. Catherine Knight" (born c.1773; died July 17, 1833 in London), who was in a relationship with Gabriel Tucker Steward, MP (1768-1836), and they had at least two children: 

2a. [name unknown], a son who died by 1827 and who had received a ring from the "Emperor of Russia."

2b. Catherine Urania Steward (born May 27, 1801 in London; died August 23, 1864 in Saxonbury Lodge in Frant, UK), who married the widower Walter Stevenson Davidson (1785-1869) on May 18, 1837. They had no children, but Catherine helped raise Walter's children from his first marriage. 

3. Elizabeth Cowen (born c.1783 in Bristol; died November 25, 1870 in Brixton, UK), who lived with her brother Morrice in later years and died unmarried. It seems she was the last surviving English Cohen. 

4. Jacob Cohen a.k.a. Jacob Cowen, John Cohen, John Cowen & Juan Cohen (born c.1786 in Bristol; died July 16, 1869 in El Carmen de Bolívar, Colombia), whose family continues below. 

5. Morrice Cowen (born July 6, 1791 in Bristol; died January 5, 1869 in Stockwell, UK), a Royal Navy commander who died unmarried. 

THE CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN OF JUAN COHEN

Juan Bautista Cohen (born c.1786 in Bristol, UK; died July 16, 1869 in El Carmen de Bolívar, Colombia) had 4 women who bore him at least 8 children, and given family stories that he had over a dozen children, there were probably more:

First, Juan Bautista Cohen and Eliza Macfarlane had at least 1 child:

1. Henrique Cohen (aka Henry Cohen, born c.1810 in Jamaica; died July 6, 1872 in El Carmen de Bolívar). His descendants claim he was born in England and had an older brother, but neither story has been proven. He is probably the same Henry Cohen listed in February 1826 as a 16-year-old “gentleman” sailing from Cartagena to New York aboard the brig Abigail, with the intention of settling in England. Henrique was back in Barranquilla, Colombia by 1830, lived in Mahates in the 1850s, and later became one of the first tobacco farmers in El Carmen de Bolívar. Henrique Cohen had at least five relationships:

Henrique and Evarista de la Cera had at least 1 child: 

1a. Micaela Cohen de la Cera (born c.1830 in Barranquilla; died 1921 in Barranquilla), who married José Ángel Benavides. 

Henrique and Bernardina Cortina Rodriguez had at least 3 children: 

1b. Guillermo Cohen Cortina (born c.1840; died 1886 in El Carmen de Bolívar), who married Vicenta Lamadrid Fernandez. While Guillermo's death record started his age as 38, he was likely older, because by 1864 he was listed in business records as a legal adult. 

1c. María Susana Cohen Cortina (born 1852 in Mahates)

 

1d. Enrique Cohen Cortina, who married Amalia Bernal Locarno. 

Henrique and Juana E. Terán had at least 1 child: 

1e. Teodosia J. Cohen Terán (c.1849-1927), who first married Pedro R. Herrera and then married Vicente Cohen Villalobos, her half-uncle, in 1881.

Henrique and Manuela Fernández had at least 1 child: 

1f. Sofía Cohen Fernández, who married Trinidad Sierra.

Henrique and Celedonia Navarro had at least 1 child:

1g. Teolinda Cohen Navarro, who married Pedro Corredor. 

Second, Juan Bautista Cohen and Manuela Arévalo (died c.1827 in Cartagena) had at least 1 child. Tía Memé Cohen claimed her grandmother Manuela was from Madrid, but it's possible she came from the Arévalo family of Cartagena. Manuela died of yellow fever three months after the birth of her son:

2. Juan Agustín Cohen Arévalo (born c.1827 in Cartagena; died 1878 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), whose life story will be told in the next section.

Juan Agustín first married Andrea Herrera (died 1856 in Cartagena) in 1847 in Cartagena and they had at least 3 children:

2a. Ana Manuela Cohen Herrera (born 1851 in Cartagena; died 1880 in Cartagena), who married Francisco Padrón Navarro in 1879 in Cartagena. 

2b. José Cohen Herrera (born c.1852 in Cartagena; died 1920 in Cartagena), who first married Cayetana Villanueva Vásquez (born 1857 in Villanueva, Bolívar, Colombia) in 1879 in Villanueva. José then married Concepción Rodríguez San Juan, another native of Villanueva, in 1917 in Cartagena.

2c. Mercedes Cohen Herrera (born c.1855 in Cartagena) married José Ángel Vásquez Gelis (c.1850 - c.1900?) in c.1878. They are my great-great-grandparents. 

Juan Agustín then married Emilia de Marchena Sánchez (born 1843 in Santo Domingo; died 1927 in Santo Domingo) in 1863 in Santo Domingo, and they had 5 children:

2d. Leonor Tomasa Cohen de Marchena (born 1864 in Santo Domingo; died 1924 in Santo Domingo) married Angelo Porcella Vicini (born 1864 in Zoagli, Genoa, Italy; died 1927 in Genoa, Italy) in 1886 in Santo Domingo. 

2e. Enrique Marcelino Cohen de Marchena (born 1866 in Santo Domingo; died 1942 in Santo Domingo) married Ana Virginia Soler Machado in 1891 in Santo Domingo. 

2f. Alejandrina Isaura Cohen de Marchena (born 1869 in Santo Domingo; died 1942 in Santo Domingo) married Alvaro Logroño (born 1855 Santo Domingo; died 1915 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) in 1887 in Santo Domingo. 

2g. Cándida Amelia Cohen de Marchena a.k.a. "Tía Memé" (born 1873 in Santo Domingo; died 1968 in Santo Domingo) married Alejo Sánchez Valdés (born 1859 in Santo Domingo) in 1898 in Santo Domingo.

2h. Luis Julio Rafael Cohen de Marchena (born 1876 in Santo Domingo; died 1908 in Curaçao), who never married. 

"Tía Memé" Cohen de Marchena, who wrote a valuable account of Cohen and de Marchena family history. Photo from: Reynaldo Logroño Alsace

Third, Juan Cohen and Pastora Herrera had at least 1 child: 

3. Juan José Cohen Herrera (born c.1830s in probably Arjona, Colombia; died 1886 in El Carmen de Bolívar), who also became an early tobacco grower in El Carmen de Bolívar. 

Juan José Cohen and Patricia Hernández de Cohen, c.1870s. Courtesy of Ernesto Rubio.

Juan José married Patricia Hernández Ibañez, and they had 11 children:   

3a. Desideria Cohen Hernández (born 1861; died 1920 in Barranquilla) whose consorts were Nicolás Menta and José Sandoval Gómez  

3b. Aníbal Cohen Hernández (born 1863), whose consorts were Candelaria Morante Montes and Evangela Hernández.  

3c. Jenaro Cohen Hernández (born 1866)

3d. Marceliano Cohen Hernández (born 1868)

3e. Elías Tranquilino Cohen Hernández (born 1870), whose consorts were Dolores Salazar, Candelaria Perez, and María Concepcion Tapia Torres 

 

3f. Lucía Cohen Hernández (born 1873) whose consort was Julio More Fernández  

3g. Simeón Epigmenio Cohen Hernández (born 1875; died 1899 in El Carmen de Bolívar), whose consort was María Diaz. 

3h. Isac Cohen Hernández (born 1877) who married María de las Mercedes Buelvas  

3i. Patricia Justiniana Cohen Hernández (born 1879)

 

3j. Teresa de Jesús Cohen Hernández (born 1881 in El Carmen de Bolívar; died 1969 in Barranquilla) who married Pablo Bustillo. 

 

3k. Julio Cohen Hernández (born 1884)

 

Fourth, Juan Cohen and Bartola Villalobos had at least 5 children: 

4. Mauricio Cohen Villalobos (born 1830s), who was listed in an 1860 notarial record as over age 21. He was deceased by the time of his son Juan's marriage in 1897.

 

Mauricio married Mercedes González, and had at least 5 children:

4a. Juan Cohen González (born 1862) who married Juana Estrada in 1897 in San Jacinto, Bolívar, Colombia.

4b. Isabel Cohen González (born 1866 in El Carmen de Bolívar)

4c. Manuel Cohen González (born 1868 in El Carmen de Bolívar)

4d. Vicente Cohen González (born 1871 in El Carmen de Bolívar)

4e. Juana Cohen González (born 1875; died 1931 in Santa Ana, Magdalena, Colombia)

5. Vicente Cohen Villalobos (born c.1841 in El Carmen de Bolívar; died 1901 in El Carmen de Bolívar)

Vicente first married Nicolasa Cazabón Lapa, and had at least 3 children:  

5a. Ana Dolores Cohen Cazabón (born 1874) 

5b. Catalina Cohen Cazabón (born 1875)  

5c. Cristina de Jesús Cohen Cazabón (born 1877 in San Jacinto) 

 

Vicente then married Teodosia J. Cohen Terán, his half-niece, in 1881 in El Carmen de Bolívar. Given that Teodosia had at least two illegitimate children before her incestuous marriage, perhaps this pairing resulted from sexual abuse? They had at least 6 (or 7?) children: 

5d. (possibly) María Bremilda Cohen (born 1877), whose baptismal record refers to her as the illegitimate child of Teodosia Cohen. 

5e. Adolfo Cohen Cohen (born 1880), whose baptism record refers to him as the "legitimate" son of Vicente Cohen and Teodosia Cohen, even though they married the following year. 

 

5f. Víctor Cohen Cohen (born 1882)

5g. Héctor Cohen Cohen (born 1883; died 1941 in El Carmen de Bolívar)

5h. Constantino Cohen Cohen (born 1884), whose consorts were Petrona Inés Truyol and Ana María Movilla Caciani.  

5i. Bienvenida Cohen Cohen (born 1888)

 

5j. Vicente de Paul Cohen Cohen (born 1890), whose consort was Digna Rosa Romero.  

6. Mercedes Cohen Villalobos (born c.1844 in Barranquilla, died 1878 in El Carmen de Bolívar)

Mercedes married José de Jesús Torres Torres in 1872 in El Carmen de Bolívar, and had at least 1 child: 

6a. Luis Torres Cohen (born 1877)

7. Jorge Cohen Villalobos (born c.1853 in Barranquilla)

 

Jorge married Emilia Barrios Tapia in 1879 in El Carmen de Bolívar. 

Jorge also had a relationship with Natividad Mejia Peinado and had at least 5 children: 

7a. Luis Cohen Mejía (born 1887 in Zambrano; died 1974 in Barranquilla), who married Lusila Viaña. 

7b. Pedro Manuel Cohen Mejía (born c.1894), who married Silvia Puche Araque in 1924 in María La Baja, Bolívar, Colombia.

 

7c. Tomás Dionicio Cohen Mejía (born 1895) whose consort was Francisca Rico  

7d. María Cohen Mejía  

7e. Isabel Cohen Mejía  

8. Leandro Cohen Villalobos

Leandro married Adriana Fuentes Pupo and had at least 1 child:

8a. Leandro Cohen Fuentes (born 1885)

Cohen family grave in El Carmen de Bolívar's cemetery. Courtesy of Verónica Escolar.

JUAN AGUSTÍN COHEN: FROM COLOMBIA TO THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Cartagena (1845) by Edward Walhouse Mark

Juan Agustín Cohen (c.1827-1878) started out his life in Cartagena and he lost his mother to yellow fever at a few months of age. He had a foreign-born father who was likely absent due to business, and his caretaker Constanza was an Indian woman. Although Juan Agustín was baptized, his clearly Jewish last name probably invited anti-Semitism in a time when Catholicism was still the only official religion in Colombia. 

Perhaps haunted by his wife's premature death, Juan Cohen made more documented business deals on behalf of Juan Agustín than for his other children. Unfortunately, many of these transactions involved enslaved people. As early as 1830, Juan Cohen bought an enslaved man named Lundy for his son to "own," and then sold that man in 1832. In 1837, Juan "donated" to his son two more enslaved men, named Pedro and Mariano, and then in 1842 bought his son a house on Calle de San Blas in Barranquilla, using money Juan Agustín inherited from his mother. 

Also in 1842, Juan Cohen named a guardian for his son: Ramón León Sánchez, who was born in 1803 in Spanish-controlled St. Augustine, Florida and served as the long-time U.S. consul in Cartagena from 1840 through the late 1850s. Ramón clearly knew influential people: he appears as a witness on a surviving 1822 slave sale record for future President Andrew Jackson, who bought an enslaved man named Fernando for $500 in Charleston, SC. By 1832, Ramón was in Cartagena working with the commercial house Henrique Grice & Co., where he worked alongside Juan Cohen. Henrique Grice was also the godfather of at least two of Ramón's children.

The 1857 book New Granada: Twenty Months in the Andes by Isaac Farwell Holton describes Ramón León Sánchez as "a model of American consuls," adding, "Speaking both languages [English and Spanish] with facility... an experienced merchant and a polished gentleman, if anything is wanted to enable him to serve his countrymen, it must be the will to do so, and of this will I have never heard of anyone that has yet found him lacking." Juan Agustín Cohen later taught English, which I can imagine he learned from his father and practiced with this U.S. diplomat. 

(Duncan's Masonic Ritual and Monitor)

Also likely through his father's influence, Juan Agustín Cohen entered a strong social network that would nurture him his entire life: Freemasonry. The first Freemasons in Colombia included independistas like Antonio Nariño, Simón Bolívar, and Francisco de Paula Santander. Family lore says Juan Bautista Cohen was a Freemason who helped José Prudencio Padilla join the Cartagena lodge. Juan Agustín certainly followed in the tradition of Sephardic Jews becoming Masons in England, Jamaica and other British colonies, and Curacao since the 1700s. 

After Gran Colombia fell and Santander became president, the secret societies began to open permanent lodges. Juan Agustín Cohen was probably the 18th-degree Mason "Juan A. Cohen" who helped found Logia Unión No. 9 in Cartagena on July 14, 1847. Among the lodge's members were General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, who served as president of Colombia four times, and General Juan José Nieto, who became governor of Cartagena and president of the federal state of Bolívar.

These Masons mostly belonged to the newly formed Liberal Party, which stood for laissez-faire economics, a federalized government, and separation of church and state. For generations the Caribbean coast of Colombia was a stronghold for Freemasonry and Liberal politics, and many costeño families like mine included numerous Freemasons, Liberal Party members, soldiers of the Liberal army in various Colombian civil wars, and people who married into similarly Liberal families.

Juan Agustín Cohen formed his own family in 1847, when he married Andrea Herrera in Cartagena. The wedding record, erroneously dated "February 29th," says that Juan Agustín was an illegitimate child, and Andrea was an "hija expósita" (foundling) raised by Francisco de Paula Herrera. They needed a marriage dispensation, possibly due to Juan Agustín's Jewish background and/or Andrea being adopted. 

On October 4, 1847, Andrea Herrera de Cohen bought from Henrique Grice, the business associate of her new father-in-law, for 100 pesos a "casa bujío [hut-like house] made of wood, mud, and palm" on a plot 46 varas (38.5 meters) long, on the road named Camino Arriba in Pie de la Popa, an area outside Cartagena's walls. The transaction is quoted in the book El encanto de un barrio cartagenero: historia del Pie de la Popa by Claudia Eugenia Abello Gómez. 

Signatures of Henrique Grice, Andrea Herrera de Cohen, and Juan Agustín Cohen (1847)

Andrea Herrera appears in another Cartagena real estate record, when on July 28, 1848, Joaquín del Castillo sold her "una casa alta notoria" [a high and well-known house] on "la Calle del Antiguo Estanco de Aguardiente" for 5,800 pesos. I wish I understood more of the context of how Andrea came to own property in her own name, but it clearly shows that she was a more privileged woman of her time. 

The judge Francisco de Paula Herrera, Juan Agustín's father-in-law, was the son of Lázaro María Herrera Leyva y Cornelis and María Teresa Paniza y Navarro de Azevedo, two descendants of Cartagena high society. On his paternal side, Francisco de Paula Herrera was the great-great-grandson of Juan Toribio de la Torre y López, a successful Cartagena military officer who in 1690 bought from the Spanish crown the title of "Conde de Santa Cruz de la Torre." Francisco de Paula Herrera Leiva's genealogy is discussed in a separate blog entry, and there is sufficient DNA evidence that Andrea was biologically related to the Herrera Leiva family. 

Francisco de Paula Herrera's signature (1832)

Meanwhile, the California gold rush led thousands of would-be prospectors from around the world to flood the Colombian province of Panama, to cross the isthmus and sail up the Pacific. An intriguing news item from Panama in U.S. newspapers from May 1854 suggests that maybe Juan Agustín Cohen joined the Panamanian frenzy: "A large amount of gold has been stolen from the agent of the Royal Mail Steamship Company, at Aspinwall [now Colón, Panama]. Three men, named John A. Cohen (formerly Alcalde [mayor] of Aspinwall), Dr. Casey and Diego G. Caro have been arrested on suspicion of having committed the robbery." The French-language New York paper Le Republicain added that the three suspects were British, which matches Juan Agustín's claim of British citizenship. I have no other record so far of Juan Agustín being in Panama, let alone running the newly-founded town of Aspinwall or committing crime, but maybe this was an ill-fated sojourn during his Colombian years.

Juan Agustín Cohen and Andrea Herrera had three children:

1. Ana Manuela Cohen Herrera (born April 12, 1851 in Cartagena; baptized June 13, 1851; died 1880), who married Francisco Padrón Navarro on November 29, 1879 in the Iglesia de la Santísima Trinidad in Cartagena. She had a daughter: 

1a. Ana María Padrón Cohen (born and died 1880?)

2. José Cohen Herrera (died October 17, 1920 in Cartagena), who had a long-term relationship with Concepción Rodríguez San Juan (who was born in Villanueva). They lived in the Espinal section of Cartagena, and on May 5, 1917 were wedded inside their house, which legitimized their seven children:

2a. Luis Cohen (born c.1873)
2b. Mercedes Cohen (born c.1875)
2c. Juan Cohen (born c.1877)
2d. María Isabel Cohen (born c.1884), who married Alberto Jurado in 1905 in Cartagena.
2e. Ana Teresa Cohen (born c.1887)
2f. Guillermo Cohen (born c.1889)
2g. Aura María Cohen (born c.1893)

I also found an 1879 civil marriage record for José Cohen and Calletana de Villanueva (probably Cayetana Villanueva Vásquez). I do not know whether they had children or whether this marriage endured.

3. Mercedes Cohen Herrera, my great-great-grandmother and the wife of José Ángel Vásquez, had 7 children:

3a. Dr. Ramón Vásquez Cohen (born August 30, 1879; baptized March 29, 1880 in the Iglesia de la Santísima Trinidad in Cartagena) was a well-respected medical doctor and the mayor of Santa Catalina, near Cartagena. He had 11 children with Marcelina Rodríguez, another 5 children with Matilde Estrada Castillo, and a third family with a woman named del Puerto. 

3b. Ana Manuela Vásquez Cohen (born September 4, 1881; baptized February 5, 1882 in the Iglesia de Santo Toribio in Cartagena), who probably died in childhood.

3c. Dr. José Arcadio Vásquez Cohen, my great-grandfather (born January 12, 1883 in Villanueva; baptized November 12, 1883 in the Iglesia de Santo Toribio in Cartagena; died 1924 in San Bernardo del Viento, Córdoba, Colombia), was a medical doctor who married Ana Lara Martelo and had at least 7 children, but only 3 of them survived to adulthood.  

3d. Mercedes Vásquez Cohen (born January 7, 1885; baptized November 8, 1885 in the Catedral de Santa Catalina de Alejandría in Cartagena; died 1963 in Barranquilla), a pharmacist, married José Mejía Ospina (1876-1969) and adopted the oldest son of her sister, María Teresa. 

3e. Rosa del Carmen Vásquez Cohen (born August 30, 1888; baptized August 30, 1888 in the Catedral de Santa Catalina de Alejandría in Cartagena) married Carlos Molina Pacheco and had 4 children. 

3f. Dr. Israel Vásquez Cohen (born c.1891 in Villanueva; died 1947 in Barranquilla), a general practitioner in Barranquilla, married Helena Martínez and had 4 children.

3g. María Teresa Vásquez Cohen (born May 28, 1895; baptized July 27, 1896 in the Iglesia de la Santísima Trinidad in Cartagena; died 1941 in Barranquilla) married Guillermo Pacheco, the first cousin of Carlos Molina Pacheco, and had 6 children. 

Left to right: José Arcadio Vásquez Cohen, Mercedes Vásquez Cohen de Mejía, Carmen Vásquez Cohen de Molina, Israel Vásquez Cohen

For more information on the Vásquez Cohen family and their descendants, visit my Vásquez family page. 

Andrea Herrera de Cohen died on October 7, 1856 and was buried the following day, and following her untimely death the family split. Ana Manuela Cohen went to her godmother, her aunt Eloisa Herrera de Castillo who was a director of a school, while José and Mercedes Cohen went to their "grandmother." Could the "grandmother" have been Andrea Herrera's biological mother, or the wife of Francisco de Paula Herrera, or the spouse of Juan Cohen? Juan Agustín Cohen corresponded regularly with his father and sister-in-law, but he never returned to Colombia.

(It's an interesting coincidence that Eloisa Herrera de Castillo lived to be the godmother of her great-niece, Mercedes Vásquez Cohen (1885-1963), a woman who similarly acted as a maternal figure to many of her late siblings' children and grandchildren. Mercedes in turn was the godmother of my father, a great-nephew who was treated more like a grandson.)

Cándida Amelia Cohen wrote that her father first spent four years in New York City teaching English, which is an impressive career move for a son of an Englishman who had only lived in South America. Juan Agustín Cohen probably spent a shorter time in New York, because by 1861 he was living in Ponce, Puerto Rico.

While in Ponce, Juan Agustín Cohen befriended a fellow Mason, Rafael de Marchena y de Sola (1813-1879), a Sephardic Jew from Curacao who owned a store with two employees and three slaves. The De Marchena family took kindly to the young widower with three young children left behind in Colombia, and Juan Agustín fell in love with Rafael's oldest daughter, Emilia de Marchena Sánchez (1843-1927).

Rafael de Marchena (1813-1879), painted by Alejandro Bonilla, exhibited in Centro Leon.

Rafael de Marchena's family had lived on Curacao since 1659, when his 4th-great-grandfather Isaac de Marchena joined a group of Jewish settlers bringing from Amsterdam a Torah scroll that is still being used in Curacao's Mikvé Israel Synagogue, the oldest continually used synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. Rafael de Marchena's maternal side, the de Sola family, also came from Amsterdam to Curacao. The de Solas claim an illustrious family tree that dates back to the 9th century AD in Spain, but genealogist Ton Tielen's research only traced the family back to 17th century Amsterdam. 

Curacao's Jews prospered in the 18th century as they became more involved in Caribbean shipping and the Atlantic slave trade. From the 1790s on, Curacao dealt with several invasions and its economy began to suffer, prompting Jewish migrants to leave for better economic opportunities throughout the Caribbean. 

The riveting book Once Jews: Stories of Caribbean Sephardim by Josette Capriles Goldish (a descendant of Rafael de Marchena's brother) gives the full story of the Curacao Jews and their diaspora, as well as the De Marchena family history. According to Josette Capriles Goldish, Rafael's older brother, Mordechai de Marchena, was the first member family to come to Hispaniola and took part in the Dominican war of independence from Spain in 1821. Mordechai returned to Curacao but his younger brothers, Benjamin and Rafael de Marchena, settled in Santo Domingo in 1835, purchased haciendas and ran successful import-export stores. The few Jewish settlers in Santo Domingo did not have organized congregations, but many Jewish men like the De Marchena brothers became dedicated Freemasons.

Rafael de Marchena fell in love with a local Catholic woman, Justa Sánchez Carrera, their first child Emilia was born in 1843, and they married in a civil ceremony on November 9, 1848. They eventually had nine children — Emilia, Eugenio, Abraham, Dília, Rosa Julia, Ofelia, Amelia, Rafael, and Enriquito de Marchena — and reached an unusual compromise on religion, baptizing their daughters but not their sons.

Once civil war erupted again on Hispaniola in 1849, Rafael de Marchena and his family found refuge in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Being a Spanish colony, Puerto Rico outlawed Freemasonry and actively persecuted Masons. In 1861, the governor of Puerto Rico, Rafael Echagüe y Bermingham, visited Ponce and accepted the dinner invitation of a professor, Colombian ex-pat Federico Matos González (1829-1900). When Matos and three friends — Juan A. Cohen, Rafael de Marchena, and José Rivas — presented the governor with a degree, the governor was shocked to see the degree named him a "Sovereign Prince of Rose Croix" — an 18th degree Mason! The governor alerted the Spanish Minister of War of this illicit Masonic activity, and the four men were detained, questioned about any existing Masonic lodges, and faced expulsion from Puerto Rico. Juan Agustín Cohen and his friends did not reveal any details, and in June 1861 the authorities allowed them to stay in Puerto Rico, after they took an oath to not join any Masonic group. This episode is preserved in La masonería de obediencia española en Puerto Rico, en el siglo XIX by José Antonio Ayala.

While Juan Agustín Cohen and Rafael de Marchena could technically stay in Puerto Rico, they left for the Dominican Republic, which had recently returned to Spanish rule. Juan Agustín Cohen married Emilia de Marchena in Santo Domingo's Iglesia de Santa Bárbara on June 18, 1863, and with his new brother-in-law Eugenio de Marchena started a successful tile-making business.

Dominicans rebelled against Spain and their Spanish-supporting president in August 1863. Juan Agustín Cohen fought and killed Spaniards on the battlefield, while Rafael de Marchena helped smuggle war materials and gun powder to the rebels. Spanish soldiers destroyed Juan Agustín's tile factory and Rafael's store, the entire family's livelihoods.

In December 1863, Rafael took his wife and children, including his newly-married daughter Emilia, to join his relatives in Curacao. Juan Agustín Cohen sent his bride off with two forlorn poems that Cándida Amelia Cohen included in her family memoirs more than a century later. One of the poems, which is an acrostic of Emilia's name, concludes:

Horrible es la ausencia, infierno constante.
Es Ay! para aquellos que amor los unio.
No olvides, mi esposa, mi bien un instante
a aquel que por siempre su alma te dio.

The Dominicans won the Guerra de la Restauración in March 1865, and Juan Agustín Cohen planned to reunite his wife and newborn daughter Leonor, his aging father, and his three children from his first marriage. Yet a few months later, Juan Agustín learned in a letter that his father had died in a house fire, and the plans to gather the Cohen family never came to pass. My great-great-grandmother Mercedes Cohen remained in Colombia, destined to never see her father again or meet her Dominican siblings. (Keep in mind, this is Tía Memé's narrative. As seen above, Juan Bautista Cohen died in 1869, so the truth may be murkier.)

For the remainder of his life, Juan Agustín Cohen was dedicated to Freemasonry, the Catholic Church, and education. From 1872 to 1875, Juan Agustín was one of three editors of La colmena masónica [The Masonic Beehive], the newsletter of the Santo Domingo Freemasons, where he is listed as a 30th-degree Mason. Amazingly, the Instituto Dominicano de Genealogía digitized and posted online all issues of La colmena masónica from 1872 and 1873, giving a vivid glimpse into Juan Agustín's Masonic work and the fraternal organization's philosophy. Of particular note, the newsletter criticizes U.S. Masonic lodges for practicing racial segregation. 

Front page of the first issue of "La colmena masónica" (1872).

It seems Juan Agustín's primary Masonic lodge was the Logia "La Esperanza" No. 9 in Santo Domingo, which was founded in 1867. Among the Masonic lodge officer roles he was elected to during this two-year window were Grand Orator, Secretary, Grand Chancellor, Keeper of the Seals, and "guarantor" of friendship agreements with other Dominican lodges. He sent letters to Freemasons overseas, including Ohio, Brazil, and Vienna, Austria. When the famed "Humanitas" Lodge in Vienna wrote back and officially recognized Dominican Freemasonry, as Hungary and Italy had done earlier, Juan Agustín was named the official Dominican representative to Vienna. It's doubtful he ever visited in person. 

On June 24, 1873, when the Logia "La Esperanza" celebrated the feast day of its patron saint, San Juan Bautista, Juan Agustín proudly presented his 7-year-old son Enrique to become one of the "leutones" (junior Masonic members whose fathers were also Masons). La colmena masónica also preserves two poems Juan Agustín read at gatherings in 1872. These elegant poems contain rhyming schemes, consonance and assonance in Spanish that are mostly lost in translation.  

One poem starts, "Give me the lyre that Heredia played," referring to José María Heredia (1803-1839), a Cuban poet and Freemason born to Dominican parents, who lived in exile in New York before settling in Mexico. After praising "this sacred and concurring Temple, / Where all is love, all is concordance / And where I see Brothers everywhere," Juan Agustín praises Masonic values, and ends by saying Freemasons ask of God, "He who gave movement to the Orbs, / To the angry sea demarcated its limits, / And the terrible hurricane its course", that He will "make the Sublime Ideal, / That is found nestled in our brain, / Be very soon tangible truth / Realized in both Hemispheres." 

The other poem, using the octava bermudina style, also describes the Masonic lodge as "the sacred temple / erected to the Eternal Jehovah alone" and says Freemasonry shields "the helpless, the orphan / The sad, poor and unhappy widow". Juan Agustín then addresses Freemasonry's critics: "... you judge us as the children of Cain, / Don't you see the goods that the Mason brings forth / To the family, Society and State? / Don't you see his name is respected / In this immense globe to its limit?" He finishes, "But oh! Crude war must always exist / Between good and evil / Well, if evil were missing on earth / What would our mission finally be?"

With Freemasonry came business partners as well. In 1875, Juan Agustín and Jaime Ratto, a Spanish-born Mason, got from the Dominican government the "exclusive right" to open a playing cards factory. Meanwhile, Juan Agustín befriended Padre Francisco Xavier Bilini (1837-1890), a spirited educator and philanthropist who founded a hospital and organized what became the national lottery of the Dominican Republic to fund schools. When Bilini founded in 1875 the Colegio de San Luis Gonzaga, a night school for artisans and soldiers, he got Juan Agustín Cohen to teach English.

Three Dominican stamps honoring the 150th birthday of Padre Francisco Xavier Bilini

Juan Agustín Cohen had one more brush with history on September 10, 1877, when his colleague Padre Bilini chanced upon the tomb of Christopher Columbus. As his daughter Cándida Amelia Cohen wrote, "Padre Bilini who was the priest of the [Santo Domingo] Cathedral was making an excavation in the presbytery, Papá was with him, when upon opening a vault they found the remains of Columbus, with the inscriptions. Papá very happily told this to Mamá." Perhaps Juan Agustín was among the couple of workmen helping Padre Bilini with renovations that fateful morning, and/or he was among the crowd of dignitaries who viewed the opening of Columbus’s lead coffin that afternoon.

The lead box holding the supposed bones of Christopher Columbus, discovered in Santo Domingo in 1877.

The claim that Columbus still lies in Santo Domingo remains controversial. His body was transferred from Spain to Santo Domingo in the mid-1500s, but the Spanish say they moved his body twice more, to Havana in 1795 when the French occupied Santo Domingo, and then to the Cathedral of Sevilla in 1898 when the United States took Cuba. Dominicans claim that the Spanish took the wrong body in 1795, while the Spanish call the coffin uncovered in 1877 a forgery. If Columbus did remain buried in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo, then it's poignant that my ancestor Juan Agustín Cohen, a Catholic converso of Jewish descent, helped locate the bones of Columbus, another rumored converso of Jewish descent.

Less than five months after "discovering" Columbus, Juan Agustín Cohen died suddenly at the age of 51 of a heart attack, received the final sacraments, and was given a Catholic burial on February 4, 1878. He left behind three adult Colombian children and five Dominican children ranging in age from 13-year-old Leonor to 1-year-old Luis, who had not yet started walking. His widow, Emilia de Marchena de Cohen, entered a deep Victorian mourning and wore only black thereafter.

Emilia and her children moved in with her father Rafael de Marchena and unmarried sisters on Calle El Conde, where they lived above Rafael’s import-export store. In 1879, Rafael de Marchena also died, and his granddaughter Cándida Amelia Cohen remembered his unusual funeral full of Sephardic Jewish customs and Jewish attendees. Rafael de Marchena had a plain wooden casket and the "rabbi" who led the service circled the casket seven times. After Rafael’s death his son Eugenio de Marchena took over the family store, which was named "La Canastilla" (The Little Basket).

Calle El Conde and its horse-drawn tramway, Santo Domingo (c.1894)

Juan Agustín Cohen Arévalo (c.1826-1878) and Emilia de Marchena Sánchez (1843-1927) had 5 children:

Left to right: Leonor Cohen de Porcella, Enrique Cohen de Marchena, Isaura Cohen de Logroño, Luis Cohen de Marchena

1. Tomasa Leonor Cohen de Marchena (1864-1924), who married Angelo Porcella (1864-1927), an Italian, in 1886 and had 9 children:

1a. María Porcella Cohen (1889-1986)

1b. Angelo Porcella Cohen (1890-1969)

1c. Enrique Porcella Cohen (1892-1958)

1d. Margarita Porcella Cohen (1894-1978)

1e. Leonor Emilia Porcella Cohen (1896-1979)

1f. Italia Porcella Cohen (1898-1948)

1g. Juan Bautista Porcella Cohen (1902-1973)

1h. Mafalda Porcella Cohen (1905-1987)

1i. Santiago Porcella Cohen (1907-1963)

2. Enrique Marcelino Cohen de Marchena (1866-1942), who married Ana Virginia Soler Machado (1869-1946) in 1891 and had 4 children:

2a. Alicia Aurora Cohen Soler (1892)

2b. Marina Angélica Cohen Soler (1894)

2c. Juan Agustín Cohen Soler (1895-1975)

2d. Ramón Rafael Cohen Soler (1900-1956)

3. Alejandrina Isaura Cohen de Marchena (1868-1939), who married Alvaro Logroño (1855-1915), the illegitimate son of Santo Domingo's Archbishop Fernando Arturo de Meriño, in 1887 and had 11 children:

3a. Primitivo Virgilio Logroño Cohen (1887-1960)

3b. Isabel Emilia Logroño Cohen (1889-1971)

3c. Leiticia Abigail Logroño Cohen (1890-1890)

3d. Alvaro Arturo Logroño Cohen (1891-1949)

3e. Miguel Ángel Logroño Cohen (1893-1947)

3f. María Cristina Logroño Cohen (1896-1970)

3g. Margarita Isaura Logroño Cohen (1898-1962)

3h. Rosa Angélica Logroño Cohen (1901)

3i. Luis Gerardo Logroño Cohen (1904-1964)

3j. Marina Logroño Cohen (1906-1906)

3k. Blanca Lidia Logroño Cohen (1909-2000)

4. Cándida Amelia Cohen de Marchena (1873-1968), aka "Tía Memé," who wrote a family chronicle in 1967, married Alejo Sánchez Valdés (1859) in 1898. Their children included: 

4a. José Antonio Manuel Sánchez Cohen (1900)

4b. Enrique Nicolás Sánchez Cohen (1901-1965)

4c. Luis Emilio Sánchez Cohen (1904)

5. Luis Julio Rafael Cohen de Marchena (1876-1908), who settled in Curacao, where he died a young bachelor. He was a pharmacist and a published poet. One of his poems begins: 

“Yo no soi trovador que le canta

a la luna desdichas i penas,

ni al riachuelo que blando murmura

le dice sus quejas,

ni a la brisa que pasa aleteando

le refiere sus hondas tristezas.

Que la luna, el riachuelo i la brisa

su rauda carrera

seguirán , sin que llegue a tu oído

el rumor de mis cuitas acerbas!”

Emilia de Marchena de Cohen (center) surrounded by her children, in-laws, and grandchildren, c.1900. Photo from: Reynaldo Logroño Alsace

Many Dominican descendants of the De Marchena and Cohen families became accomplished in the fields of business, politics, and the arts, including:

Eugenio Generoso de Marchena (1842-1893), a nephew of Rafael de Marchena, was an executive of the National Bank of Santo Domingo who served as the governor of Azua and helped acquire major European loans for railroad construction. His concerns about misappropriation of funds and growing political influence of U.S. investors led him to run for president of the Dominican Republic in 1892 against the incumbent dictator, General Ulises "Lilís" Heureaux. Eugenio Generoso lost, and when he tried to freeze the president's bank accounts the following year, Heureaux had him imprisoned, tortured for months, and finally shot on December 22, 1893. Heureaux ruined the Dominican economy with his disastrous borrowing and spending, and then was assassinated in 1899. Eugenio Generoso's son, Dr. Pedro Emilio de Marchena (1863-1939), became an accomplished doctor and a hospital in Bonao bears his name today.

Amelia Francisca de Marchena Sánchez (1850-1941), daughter of Rafael de Marchena, is considered the first Dominican novelist. She wrote four novels under the pen name "Amelia Francasci," including Madre Culpable (1893) and Francisca Martinoff (1901). 

Arturo Logroño Cohen (1893-1949), son of Isaura Cohen de Logroño and a grandson of Juan Agustín Cohen, studied for a pharmacy degree but then took to law, becoming an accomplished lawyer, writer, journalist, historian, and orator. By age 18 he was the private secretary of President Juan Isidro Jiménes and he published the following year a major work of Dominican history, Compendio Didáctico de Historia Patria. His writings and speeches were intensely artistic, florid, and patriotic, and he was a vocal opponent of the U.S. invasion and occupation of the Dominican Republic in 1916. 

Arturo's accomplishments are overshadowed by his close association with General Rafael Trujillo, the bloody dictator who seized control of the Dominican Republic in 1930. Since Arturo served in at least nine ministerial positions under Trujillo, including Secretary of Justice and Secretary of State of the Interior and Police, he probably had full knowledge of the regime's repression. Arturo was remembered by his son Carlos Arturo Logroño and aunt Cándida Amelia Cohen as a quiet critic of Trujillo, privately opposing such moves like the 1936 renaming of Santo Domingo as "Ciudad Trujillo." But publicly Arturo sang the regime's praises, famously comparing the Generalissimo after an assassination attempt to "the sandalwood that perfumes the ax that hurts him." In another speech, Arturo called the horrific 1937 massacre of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic the "exasperation and just anger of working men stripped of their patrimony." 

Arturo Logroño Cohen suffered from diabetes and fell out of favor with Trujillo shortly before his final decline in health. A Santo Domingo street was renamed in Arturo's honor, but the street name was changed again after the end of the Trujillato. Another son of Arturo, Reynaldo Logroño Alsace, has written extensively about family history and preserved and digitized old family photos.  

Enrique de Marchena y Dujarric (1908-1988), a great-grandson of Rafael de Marchena, was a composer of over 90 works, mostly in an Impressionist style, a music critic, and a founding member of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Santo Domingo (1932) and the Sociedad Pro-Arte (1937). With notoriety came access to Trujillo's inner circle, and Enrique served the ruthless dictator as a diplomat. Enrique attended the 1947 United Nations Assembly that voted for the partition of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state, and then served Trujillo as the ambassador to the United States and the Secretary of State for Education and Fine Arts. His grandson, Enrique de Marchena Kaluche, helped develop the Dominican Republic's tourism industry.

(juancohen.com.do)

Juan Alberto Cohen Sander (born 1960), a great-grandson of Enrique Cohen de Marchena and great-great-grandson of Juan Agustín Cohen, is president of the Partido Nacional Voluntad Ciudadana and was the party's candidate in the 2016 presidential election.

The Cohen family history is part of a larger historical saga of immigrants helping to develop and modernize their new homelands throughout the Caribbean. As Barranquilla became Colombia's most important trading port during the late 1800s and early 1900s, its small immigrant communities, including Germans, Curacao Jews, and Syrians and Lebanese, founded crucial, pioneering businesses. For example, local German and Jewish businessmen created in 1919 the world's second airline, SCADTA (its full name in English was "The Colombian-German Air Transport Partnership"). In 1941, the Colombian government took over the airline, renaming it Avianca.

As Colombia developed its trade and industry, the Vásquez siblings began a family legacy in medicine. Gabriel Vásquez Marrugo and Mercedes Vásquez Cohen became pharmacists, and Ramón, José Arcadio, and Israel Vásquez Cohen became doctors. Some of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren still practice medicine today.

Questions? Comments? Please email me at ruedafingerhut [at] gmail.com.