| Notes |
- The de Vialis came from Toulon and belonged to the nobility of the sword: the Second Estate. It seems that they spent most of their time in Paris and were probably absentee landlords.
We shall begin with them, because their lofty beginnings, their myths, have been kept alive and embellished more than the rest. They were aristocrats, members of the Second Estate, and in a world where the bourgeois with 'delusions de grandeur rules, aristocratic connections are always a plus. Their coat of arms is very old. First it breaks with several of the rules of heraldry. It places gold on a color. The main emblem is a gold eagle on a field of red, which points to a Frankish connection. The band across is blue and it contains three stars of David. Stars of David indicate, in heraldry, a connection with the Crusades. It is believed that St. Louis of France granted the knights that accompanied him on the last Crusade the right to carry on their coat of arms three stars of David as the symbol of the Trinity. If this is true, not only do we descend from crusaders, but very probably from one of those that accompanied St. Louis in the last attempt to rescue the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the Saracens.
There exists, some where in the National Library of the Dominican Republic, the history of this family written by the first member to come to the New World, Jean Denis de Vialis. It is probably to be found among the papers of Fray Cipriano de Utrera, a noted Dominican historian. Unfortunately for us here in this English speaking world, it is lost because not only does it rests in the bowels of a small bureaucratic little republic, but it is totally written in French. Also, due to neglect his marriage certificate, the last shred of evidence we had with this romantic past, is lost. It was either eaten by termites or destroyed by my sister. Its valuable information is now gone forever. If my memory does not fail me don Juan and doña Bárbara de Mota y Álvarez y Fuentes were married in the cathedral of Santo Domingo by the Bishop (who traditionally is given the title of Primate of America, because his see is the oldest in the New World). The date was December 1816. I do not remember the exact day of the month. There were two witnesses, but I do not remember their names. The place of birth for the bride and groom were give as Paris, France for don Juan and San Carlos de Bauí for doña Bárbara There was a short note from Fray Cipriano to my grandfather. I do not remember its contents.
At this point it is useful to look at France in the years of the Bourbon grandeur. I have stated before that the family came from Toulon and that they were aristocrats . Why were they then in Paris? History can easily answer this riddle.
The reign of Louis XIV was very turbulent. He had a long minority and the nobility of the provinces was in constant turmoil. When he uttered at the age of fifteen his famous phrase "L'etat ce moi" he brought from the provinces the troublesome noblemen and their families, giving them useless positions in his court and making them his personal servants. One has to remember that he seldom relied on them for judgement. Colberg, his great minister, was a member of the bourgeois. Unfortunately for France the kings that followed the Sun King began again to relay on the old nobility. The only exception to this was Necker, and he did not last very long. We can say that this old aristocracy precipitated their fall by their desire to concentrate the power of a powerful land in the hands of individuals who were neither well educated nor very progressive. A noble man at the time of Louis XIV "'derogated or fell into the common mass if he followed a business or profession." It is easy to understand why a complex government in the hands of fools would soon fall.
I know that by the late XVIII my ancestors from Toulon were in Paris. We know that they were members of that provincial nobility that the Sun King had brought to Paris. They were not Parisians, but Provencal. The portrait of Joseph Michel de Fontbelle, dressed in his XVIII regalia - wig, knee high blue breeches and silk lace, existed until the beginning of the XX century. It was a court portrait, for a group that relied on the power of an absolute monarch for its needs. He was the grandfather of Marie Alexandrine de la Chiose who married Jean de Vialis.10 They were the parents of Jean Denis de Vialis, Count de Vialis, Marquis de Fontbelle and Baron de Chateaurouge. 11
We already know that he was born in Paris, his marriage certificate to Barbara de Mota states the fact, and tradition tells us that Jean Dennis was a doctor in medicine. He probably studied at the University of Paris. This is interesting, because as has been stated before, a profession would have virtually abolished his right to be a member of the Second Estate. But, according to Lefevre, by the late XVIII century, both in England and France the nobility had slowly began to attend universities and to enter the profession and business, if not themselves through surrogates.12 At the time of the French Revolution he was probably a member of the medical staff of Louis XVI in Versailles. Perhaps he held a more useful position than that of Master of the Royal Chamber Pot.13
I am inclined to believe, due to the fact that he was a university-educated man, an unusual thing for a member of his class, that he was rather liberal. According to tradition he left in 1793, but tradition also tells us that his parents had been decapitated shortly after the death of Louis XVI. He either went into hiding, or had political convictions different from his parents. 1793 is the beginning of the Terror and it is then that the more liberal members of the Second Estate, like Philippe Egalité, were done away with. This date of departure leads me to believe that he was not a reactionary and that he left France because he feared for his life. Other actions in his life tend to reaffirm this.
He did not come to Puerto Rico, but to Santo Domingo. At that time the Island was not a prosperous place and it lacked all the amenities that the more cultivated city of Santo Domingo offered. Santo Domingo had a university, an inquisition, was close to French speaking Haiti and had land. The Spanish Bourbons had been trying to populate their Caribbean possessions to prevent them from falling prey to the more vigorous English, French and Dutch. Soon after his arrival he began acquiring land in the area of San Carlos de Bauí and Santiago de los Caballeros. In 1816 he married Barbara de Mota y Alvarez y Fuentes, daughter of Francisco de Mota, a Canarian or "isleño," and Margarita Alvarez y Fuentes, a "criolla" of Canarian extraction. The de Mota and Alvarez y Fuentes were quite wealthy. Carlos III to cultivate mahogany had granted them large tracts of land and doña Margarita was a descendant from one of the first Capitanes Generales of the Canary Island, named by the Catholic Kings in the XV century. For her dowry doña Bárbara received 3 farms of 150 "caballerías" each. That, added to the domain that Jean Denis de Vialis had accumulated, made the couple a rather wealthy and important one in the area. It is interesting to note that he probably never practice medicine in America, in spite of his degree.
From this marriage five children were born: Julia, Barbara, Virginia, Elisa and Carlos. All but Carlos and Julia were childless and Carlos had only one daughter who also died childless. Carlos wife was Emma Quinn (or Cuin). She was the daughter of the chief of police in Mayagüez in the 1830-40. They had one child, also named Emma. It is known that Virginia was born blind, this probably alludes to the fact that syphilis was a rather common disease and Don Juan, probably had it. Children whose parents had the disease were born blind. She was also probably the youngest. All the children of Don Juan were born in Santo Domingo.
For me it is a mystery why they left the island of Santo Domingo. They were wealthy, well connected and had what seemed at the time a happy life. It is very probable that Don Juan, as he came to be known in the Spanish speaking world, began acquiring land in Puerto Rico. When, I don't know. I believe this, because one of his wedding presents, now broken in pieces in the basement of our house, was given by the de Loris, a family of French emitters that lived in Mayagüez. This would not be hard to determine when he began acquiring land in Puerto Rico, because the legal transactions must be in the Register of Deeds in the town of Mayagüez. Another possible reason would be the natural unrest of Santo Domingo. The Haitians had conquered the Spanish part of the island and the Dominicans hated the rule of the ex slaves of Haiti. Throughout the 1820's revolutionary movements had been gathering strength and in the early part of the 1830, under the leadership of Duarte, Santo Domingo became the República Dominicana. It is during this period that the de Vialis family establishes itself permanently in Mayagüez. All of this is speculations, and by no means they are meant to be taken as true history. I am sure that a careful research in Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico would yield more accurate information, but lacking the source, extrapolating from history is not a bad substitute.
The only date we know of Don Juan de Vialis is the year of his marriage: 1816. If the portrait that exists of him was done in Puerto Rico by Elijhab Metcalf, he was in Puerto Rico in the year 1827. In Puerto Rico he was the owner of two sugar cane plantations: Las Termopilas y la Palmyra. We also know that he owned a large piece of real estate in what is today downtown Mayagüez. He also owned extensive property in Santo Domingo.
Physically he was a handsome man with dark hair and blue eyes. His portrait shows us a man burned by the sun of the tropics. There is a definite telltale mark on his forehead that shows a definite sun line where his hat rested. His eyes are hard and serene. He looks like a man secure of himself and confident of his future. In his right hand he holds a book and is seated on a chair of red damask. It was also said that he was very tall.
The aspects of his personality that we know are not the most pleasant. He was proud and aloof, uncompromising, demanding and probably stubborn. The disinherited of his daughter, due to her marriage to a "criollo," was stupid. It shows a man completely out of touch with the reality of the world that he lived. We all know that in early XIX century Puerto Rico there were very few, probably no members of a nobility, or of a class that could have compared to the family of his wife. Perhaps for us it is easy to judge him, but history was not kind to the judgement he made: his only descendants come from Julia.
But also, one has to look at him with certain respect. He was after all an immigrant, landless and probably poor. He came to a culture different from his own in a moment of enormous social and political unrest. There is no doubt that his aristocratic lineage helped him, but he never made this his crutch, but a tool to advance himself. He was also a hard working man. The sun line on his forehead tells us that he was probably on the field with his workers, supervising them and seeing those things were done right. One of the stories that have come down to us attests to this fact. It was said that when he lived in Mayagüez he would get up at 5:00 AM and accompanied by a young black slave holding a light, would go to his different plantations and personally supervised their progress. He made a fortune, well earned and, as far as we know, legally acquired. He never dabbled in politics in the New World, probably with good reason. He lived in an age of turmoil, change, unrest and fear and made the best of it. He failed and he won. He adapted and refused to adapt. If anything can be said of him is that he could not see the future, but who can?
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