Gonzales family.

In 1856, Harriett Rutledge Elliott (1838-1869) married Ambrosio Jose Gonzales (b. 1818), a Cuban revolutionary in exile in U.S.; this union produced six children, all of whom used more than one name at various times: Ambrosio Jose; Narciso Gener; Alfonso Beauregard; Gertrude Ruffini; Benigno; and Anita; before the Civil War, the Gonzales family lived primarily in Washington, D.C., returning to Elliott family property while Gonzales served as a general in the Confederate Army; in 1869, the Gonzaleses moved to Cuba, where Harriett Gonzales died of yellow fever in October 1869.

After their mother's death, A.J. Gonzales took four of his children to Oak Lawn plantation in S.C., leaving Narciso and Alfonso in Cuba with friends for a year. In 1870, he moved the two boys to Oak Lawn as well, where all the Gonzales children were raised by their grandmother, Ann Hutchinson Smith Elliott; the two older boys, Ambrose and Narciso, worked as telegraphers and then as correspondents for the Charleston News and Courier to help support the family in the 1870s and 1880s; Ambrose, Narciso, and William Elliott Gonzales are best known for establishing and publishing a daily newspaper, The State, in Columbia, S.C.