IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 2 ENGLISH | Page 86

of seven (1868-1876), lived in a residence called
Hill Top.
Rose Dimond Phinney, Theodore William Phinney’s oldest daughter, married William
Grosvenor, Jr., of Rhode Island, and had seven
children. One of these daughters, Caroline Rose
(Grosvenor) Congdon (1885-1959), was the
mother a famous U.S. abstract expressionist
painter William Grosvenor Congdon (19121998).
According to the 1870 census, Theodore William’s sisters, Mary Deidamia and Susannah,
lived together in New York (this archive can be
accessed at Ancestry.com). Susannah had married in Cuba, with sugar baron Manuel M. Quintana, while Mary Deidamia married mining engineer James H. West.
The youngest of his brothers, Joseph Manuel
Phinney, married Rose Lindsay, and lived in
Massachusetts, first, and then in Connecticut.
They had four children: Anietta, Lola, Mary and
the only boy, Theodore Phinney (Lindsay).
Theodore William Phinney died on November
30th, 1912. His obituary appeared in the December 1st, 1912 edition of the New York Times. Days
later, the newspaper announced the reading of his
will, in a press release dated December 17th, 1912.
Mayflower zombies
Descendants described mulatto Ceferino Phinney
Morales as kind of blond, green eyed and bilingual. He was born in Cárdenas, in 1843, according to the Colón Cemetery’s archives, in Havana,
where he was buried in 1918. His father was unknown, his mother, the slave woman Victoria
Morales.
If Ceferino Phinney had been given his freedom
upon birth, this could be proof that his father was
also his owner, since it was not possible for him
to be born free. The mestizo was born 25 years
before the issuing of the (Spanish) Law of Free
Wombs, which conceded freedom to any child

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born of a slave born after December 17th, 1868. In
addition, he was born in the Cuban colonial universe 43 years before the official abolition of
slavery, in 1886. Everything indicates he was
born a slave.
Who was Ceferino Phinney Morales’s father?
What has been told from generation to generation
is that his father sold his properties in Cuba and
went to live in the United States in late 1850.
The elder Theodore Phinney died in 1862, according to a number of documents and press released in the New York Times.
Theodore William Phinney, Jr. was the last to
manage the family’s Cuban properties, closed the
family business and left for the U.S., where he
married, raised a family, and died, nearly 60 years
later.
When Ceferino Phinney was born, the elder Theodore, who had established the business and married Ann (Barrett) Phinney, was 67 years old and
famous for having intimate relationships with
other women, including slaves.
At that time, his legitimate male children, Theodore William and Joseph Manuel, were 15 and 11,
respectively.
A Texas company, Family Tree DNA, conducted
a preliminary genomic test on the Y-DNA 37
chromosomes of the paternal lines of Cubans Alfredo Phinney and Enrique Sanler, both descend ants of Ceferino Phinney’s male children.
This male chromosome test revealed the mixed
ancestry of a high percentage of English, Irish and
U.S. descendants, some even bearing the surname
Phinney.
Any revelation of genetic testing allows us to go
back to the past and discover those others that also
inhabit us, those we sing to, don’t know and have.
It allows us to feel, know and understand what
happened. The study offered proof of the relationship between those two Cubans with white Phinneys who lived in Cuba in the early nineteenth
century.