Luisa de Abrego

Origins

Luisa de Abrego was a free African woman who worked as a domestic servant in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain in the 1540s. When she was about 15, a man named Jordan — another free African — proposed marriage to Luisa and she agreed. Alone with no witnesses, the couple exchanged marital vows.

Soon after this secret ceremony (before the couple was even able to consummate the marriage), Luisa fell ill and was bedridden. During the months Luisa was sick, Jordan publicly married another woman. Surely heartbroken, Luisa moved north to Sevilla, Spain once she was well again.

The Founding of St. Augustine

After moving to Sevilla, Luisa met a European blacksmith named Miguel Rodriguez and formed a relationship with him.

In June of 1565, Luisa and Miguel both joined the fleet of Pedro Menendez de Aviles to travel across the Atlantic Ocean and settle in the Spanish colony of La Florida. The couple was present at the founding of San Agustín in September of 1565 and were married soon after.

The Move to Mexico

Sometime between 1565 and 1574, Miguel Rodriguez and Luisa de Abrego moved from the small military outpost of San Agustin to bustling Mexico City, possibly in search of better opportunities.

On Trial for Bigamy

In 1574, while they were living in Mexico City, Luisa witnessed someone being punished for bigamy (marriage to multiple people at the same time).

Remembering her past in Spain, she confessed to a Catholic priest, worried that she was accidentally married to both Jordan and Miguel at the same time. The priest reported Luisa's story to the Inquisition (a government office founded by Spain in 1478 to combat religious heresy).

In February of 1575, she was summoned to speak her piece. The Inquisition investigated Luisa's claims over the course of a year, but she was never charged. According to historian Erika Rummel (author of What They Said About Luisa), Luisa de Abrego was acquitted because the prosecutor could not prove that her first marriage was consummated or that she was acting in bad faith marrying a second time. 

However, the final judgment of the Inquisition office was that Luisa de Abrego was still married to Jordan, her first husband, despite there being no public ceremony or consummation of their union. So, after ten years of making a life in this "New World" together, Luisa and Miguel's marriage was dissolved.

Record of Luisa de Abrego's life seems to stop there. Following the trial, it is possible that Luisa was obliged to walk in an Auto da Fe (a public act of penance) for having unknowingly lived in sin as a bigamist. Historians do not know if she returned to Spain to find Jordan, married again, or stayed in Mexico City.

How do we know all of this?

The story of Luisa de Abrego was garnered from the religious and governmental records of St. Augustine and Mexico City's Archivo Nacional. If it were not for Luisa de Abrego's confession to the church, we may never have known her story. If it were not for the committed efforts of historians, that story would not be accessible to the public.

The La Florida Project

Founded in 2016, LaFlorida.org is a digital archive that is hosted and maintained by the University of South Florida.

Their database contains digital scans, transcripts, and translations of St. Augustine's Catholic records from the First Spanish Period (1565-1763) and the Second Spanish Period (1784-1821). The site also has a variety of tools and resources for researchers, including videos, infographics, and more.

La Florida is a particularly valuable resource for people studying Black History in America, as few written records include Black people from that early era.

Conclusion

Luisa de Abrego's story, pieced together from governmental documents from the 1500s, gives a view into American history that may surprise some people.

To think, the first documented Christian marriage in the continental United States was between a free Black woman and a Spaniard!

Resources

Further Reading

• What They Said About Luisa, a historical fiction novel about Luisa de Abrego, by Erika Rummel from Dundurn Press
  • Dr. Rummel has our immense gratitude as a community stakeholder.
• Tap here to read "Marriage and Community in New Spain, 1550-1580," Masters Theses by Hannah Tweet from the University of South Florida.
• Tap here to read a Tampa Bay Times article about St. Augustine's original Black citizens.

Online Resources

• Tap here to explore La Florida.org.
• Tap here to read the St. Augustine Record article "Piecing together the past," by Sheldon Gardner.
• Tap here to watch "Luisa de Abrego: Marriage, Bigamy, and the Spanish Inquisition," an instructional video from LaFlorida.org.