My Chavana roots are from Lampazos, NL, Mexico. I am researching the Chavana surname in
Northeast Mexico & Southeastern US and would like to contact others with the same interest. My purpose is to make this information freely available to anyone interested in the Chavana lineage.
Currently I have information on some 200 Chavana individuals from the 1700s to early 1900s. Their locations are Nuevo Leon & Coahuila in Mexico and
Texas,
Louisiana &
Alabama in the United States. Someone who knows their Chavana grandparent relations may rapidly find more ancestors in the information I have accumulated.
Growing up (in
Monterrey) I was told the Chavana name came from a French soldier - did you hear a similar story? (Ahi se perdio un regimiento Frances!) At first I thought it was from the French invasion of Mexico (Maximiliano), but that was in the 1860s and there is overwhelming evidence that Chavana were already in Lampazos since the 1700s. Now what?
A web search easily reveals the Chavana surname in France; it is also the name of places in Asturias (Spain) and Italy. I was told that Chavana was probably a derivation of Chavanne (and there are more than a dozen similar names). On a much broader search I found a reference about `a famous sage Chavana` in the legends of India; Chavana is very common surname in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Madagascar, etc. Since so many people from those areas have migrated to
Europe, especially from India to the UK - now what? If you meet another Chavana elsewhere in the world, do you have common roots? Not necessarily.
Let`s get back to our geographical area of interest. A Chavana cousin in
Monterrey has been digging through the historic archives and has indeed found indisputable proof of the evolution of a French surname over to Chavana - in Lampazos, mid 1700s!
Among other sources, a history book of that era (Apellidos de Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon y Coahuila) clearly states that Miguel Chauvain, from Limoursin (
Limoges) France, left in 1735 as a French soldier toward the invasion of
Louisiana. He arrived in New
Orleans, said to have deserted, and went to settle in Lampazos! This and many other, better records describe that he married Catharina
de Leon, granddaughter of Fernando
de Leon - a
Spanish explorer who made several expeditions to
Louisiana in the late 1600s. Explicit mention is made of several of their children and respective spouses; amazingly, some of that information is corroborated by searching the remarkable genealogy database of the Church of the
Latter Saints (Mormons) in Salt Lake City, Utah (
www.familysearch.com). Miguel Chauvain is my ancestor.
Chauvain (
Chauvin?), when spoken in French it sounds like `shavaan` (or similar) to someone who speaks
Spanish. Miguel is listed in the archives of various localities around Lampazos as Miguel Saban; his earlier children were registered as
Saban and later children as Chavana. This marks the evolution of a French name over to Chavana in this area; the legend is true, it was a French soldier! By the way, in this search process there are numerous instances of the same individual being registered in one record as Chavana and
Chaban or Chabana in the next record; therefore they are synonymous - consider the low level of literacy in those days and thus phonetic spelling. Miguel and Catharina
de Leon had 9 children; later he married
Antonia Margarita Peres and had three more children. My Chavana from Lampazos hail to Jose Antonio Chavana (son of Miguel & Catharina), born in Lampazos on June 27, 1767; he married Maria Manuela
Rodriguez in Lampazos on Oct 7, 1788. (Since then, there are several instances of intermarriage between Chavana and
Rodriguez.)
For anyone from
Northeast Texas and onto
Louisiana and
Alabama, there is a well documented Ramon Chavana, (born in Lampazos, 1776) who was the son of Miguel and Catharina. He married Maria
Josefa Sanchez in Nacogdoches, TX. Their 13 children were born in Nacogdoches and Natchitoches,
LA.
While travel was not easy in those days, especially with Indian raids, it is interesting to note that the
Camino Real from Mexico City to New Mexico passed through Monclova, Coahuila (near Lampazos). From Monclova there was a branch of the
Camino Real that went to Natchitoches,
LA.
In my Lampazos roots, after my grandfather Juan
Rodriguez died in 1895 my grandmother Librada Chavana migrated from Lampazos to San Antonio, TX around 1905. Librada was the daughter of Cayetano Chavana (born in 1827) and
Josefa Gonzalez; they married in 1849. Librada`s heritage goes back to Miguel Chauvain and Catharina
de Leon. An important gap in my information is about the Chavana and
Rodriguez that remained in Lampazos around 1900. Can anyone fill in the blanks?
As mentioned above, someone who knows their Chavana grandparent relations may rapidly find more ancestors in the information I have accumulated. My priority is to make contact with others who have been working on their Chavana family tree; I am especially interested in Chavana and
Rodriguez from Lampazos, but also Enriquez &
Gonzalez. I offer to help others find their roots, but please note that my information only reaches up to the early 1900s - thereafter I have concentrated only on my immediate family.
Viva a los Chavana!
Tomás RodrÃguez
rodrigt501@hotmail.com