![]() ![]() ![]() Tinchant also referred to his military and political service during and after the American Civil War, when he was a member of a free colored unit of the Union Army and a representative at the Louisiana convention that drafted a radical state constitution. Furthermore, Tinchant’s claim that his parents had settled in New Orleans after the Haitian Revolution and then left for France to raise six sons (actually five) in relative freedom was also correct. Still, the connection to Haiti was true enough. This assertion was dramatic license, because the father’s birthplace was almost certainly Baltimore, and the mother was from the southern, not western, province of Saint-Domingue. He claimed that his father and mother had been born in Gonaïves, the birthplace of Haitian independence. He mentioned that his family was of Haitian descent. Linking Belgian cigars to the cause of Cuban independence, Tinchant couched his request in ways that might appeal. A marketing ploy, the aim was to add prestige to an everyday product. ![]() ![]() Written to a revered Cuban war hero, it expressed support for the cause of independence and asked permission to use his portrait for a brand of cigar. A letter written in 1899 by a Belgian cigar merchant, Édouard Tinchant, is the starting point for this family saga. ![]()
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