Chuck’s Grandma Haven

Margaret Sanchez
Chuck's great grandmother

Her name was Louisa Jane Rawls before she married Charles W. Haven, and her mother was Margaret Sanchez Rawls. Louisa was born near Archer, Florida on August 30, 1865.

I am not sure when her mother moved to Cedar Key; there is a story about Grandma Louisa, when she was a little girl, written by S.E.Gunnell in Search for Yesterday, a series of Levy County History publications.

She was seven years old and wore long skirts, and she carried water in a big bucket from a fresh water pond at Lukens for her mother Margaret, that worked in the laundry at the Bettilini Hotel. The pond no longer exists.

The Bettilini Hotel burned down when it was struck by two burning barges that had broken loose from their moorings during the “Tidal Wave” which was actually a fierce hurricane that had a tremendous storm surge.

Grandma & Grandpa Haven
 standing in front of their
home on Haven Isle

Grandpa on his
rolling handcart

Louisa grew up and married Charles W. Haven November 9, 1879 and they too are listed in the 1880 US census on Depot Key, later named Atsena Otie. I do not know when they moved to Haven Island, grandpa was listed in that census as a railroad worker.

Louisa’s mother, Margaret, was born January 11, 1840 in Alachua County, Florida the daughter of Alexander Bonaparte Sanchez Sr.

Alexander was the son of Francis Xavier Roman Manual Sanchez, he was better known as Francis Roman Sanchez, and he was born February 28, 1792 in Saint Augustine, Florida.

He was a descendant of Jose Sanchez de Ortigosa, one of early families of settlers in St Augustine. Jose was born in Ronda, Spain in the Province of Málaga. He came to St Augustine about 1713. He married Juana Theodora Perez on January 18, 1714 in St Augustine.

Juana was already a native and a descendant of the Lansarete/Alvarez families. The oldest documented permanent family is the Solano family and the second oldest documented families are the Alvarez/Sanchez families.

My husband Chuck Haven and my children Stormy and Bo are descendants of this Sanchez family, as well as my grandchildren and great-grand’s. And so are numerous others in and around central Florida, and Cedar Key. The Sanchez family was a very large family with many descendants in St Johns, Duval, Levy, Gilchrist, Columbia, Hillsborough, and Alachua counties.

Much of my information comes from a study done by another Sanchez descendant in order to file for a Florida Pioneer Certificate. He was Norman K. Brewer, a great grandson of George Washington Sanchez and Norman’s wife is Ranny Elizabeth. (Sanchez 1713-1989 by Ranny Brewer).

They drove many miles, spent many hours pouring over files in Libraries, visiting and interviewing other descendants  and exploring cemeteries; and they compiled all their information so that we can have these records at our fingertips today. I have shared this information with some that I know are descendants.

I am so grateful for their work, I find genealogy to be quite fascinating I have spent many hours myself looking at all kinds of records and saving to my family tree on Ancestry.com.

I decided to post this story next on my Blog site because St Augustine will be the Celebration 500 in April of 2013 celebrating Ponce de Leon’s discovery of the land of Flowers in 1513.

This will give many descendants an opportunity to check out your Roots and see if you are a descendant of any of the original Families who settled in St Augustine, and also an opportunity to attend the Celebration 500!