Historic Ybor Cigar Documents Found

(St. Petersburg Times) Tampa's last Ybor recently was asked to come by Tampa Antiquarian Books to check out a carton from Cuba. It appeared to be full of century-old papers related to his great-grandfather, Vicente Martinez-Ybor, the founder of Ybor City, eulogized as the Great Benefactor when he died on Dec. 14 114 years ago. ... Before Vicente Martinez-Ybor died in 1896, he had — over a frenzied 10-year span — turned malarial swamp into Cigar City. All the locks, stocks and beer barrels in Ybor City had been his doing — from the cigar factory to the bank, to the brick factory, brewery, gashouse and icehouse, to even the $1,495 worth of turkeys, cigars, wines and Japanese lanterns that went into the annual employee Christmas party he threw at his house. Continued

Photo: Vicente Martinez-Ybor (Wikipedia).