THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 10, 1994 TAG: 9410100048
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WINSTON-SALEM LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Diego Colon, a 20th generation descendant of Christopher Columbus, has come to Winston-Salem to help the city celebrate Columbus Day and to promote an exhibit of Spanish treasure.
Colon, who runs a shipyard in Majorca, a Mediterranean island off the coast of Spain, will be signing autographs here Monday at Windsor Jewelers.
He is in town as part of preparations for an exhibit the rest of the week of the treasures of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, a ship that went down in 1622 off the Florida Keys.
The shipwreck was discovered in 1985.
Colon is named for the first son of Christopher Columbus. But he feels a closer kinship to his ancestor's scholarly, illegitimate son, Ferdinand.
``He probably was the most interesting man,'' Colon said. ``He sailed with his father and he wrote the first history of Columbus.''
Ferdinand, born in 1488, also amassed one of the best libraries in 15th century Europe, but he died without children, leaving Diego and his children as the only descendants of the man who tradition says discovered America.
For centuries, the Colon family - in Spanish, Columbus' name was Cristobal Colon - went about its business as one of the leading noble families in Spain.
They also collected their annual payments from the Spanish government for their share of New World treasures.
``According to the contract between Christopher Columbus and Spain, he had a percentage of everything that could be found in the Americas,'' Colon said.
Four hundred years passed before historians grew interested in Columbus as a person. As part of the preparations for the fourth centennial celebration of the discovery of America, Colon's great-great-grandfather was invited to the Columbian World Exhibition in Chicago, Colon said.
Since then, Colons periodically have been part of Columbus Day celebrations in the United States and the Caribbean.
By rights, Colon could stake a claim to some of the silver coins from the shipwreck cargo that will be displayed and sold this week. Thousands of those coins were meant for his family back in 1622, as the government's annual payment to Columbus' heirs.
But Colon says he's not so interested in the money or the jewels.
He prefers the navigation instruments, the bits of pottery and the old records.
``It's the small details which can take you back to the 17th century,'' Colon said. by CNB