Hacienda La Florida was located in Barrio Barinas of Yauco and was acquired in 1840 by my 2nd Great Grandfather and Corsican immigrant from Capo Corso Antoine Francesco “Antonio Francisco” Negroni Mattei (1794-1861) from the family of Fernando Pacheco de Matos, the founder of the town of Yauco.  Based on research, Hacienda La Florida originally included lands that when segregated gave origin to Hacienda Maria.

 Antonio Francisco arrived in Yauco in 1822 and dedicated his life to agriculture.  As a sugar farmer he owned Hacienda La Florida and later Hacienda San Colombano.  As a coffee farmer he owned Hacienda La Fortuna in the Yauco mountainous region known as Indiera, inherited by one of his daughters. 

By 1846 Hacienda La Florida had an oxen driven mill and was reportedly Yauco's largest with an area of nine hundred seventy acres worked by thirty eight slaves and having a declared capital of 23,661 pesos.  On May 13, 1846 Antonio Francisco received permission to use waters from the Duey River and the Yauco River and built an irrigation system for the hacienda which also provided water to the town of Yauco, thus becoming the first aqueduct in town.  

According to historian Col. Hector Andrés Negroni, the "Ermita de Nuestra Señora del Rosario" was within the lands of Hacienda La Florida. The chapel was the first Catholic Church in Yauco dating back to 1729, before Yauco was chartered as a town in 1756. No remains are left of Hacienda La Florida's factory building or owner's house.  There are still remains of the Ermita which photos are in the gallery below.  In front the Ermita remains there is a hoist used to load sugarcane on to oxen driven carts to be transported from the field to the factory.  This suggest agricultural activity right in the immediacies of the Ermita and confirms Col. Negroni's statement.  Architect Jorge Ortiz Colom in his publication Yauco: Ciudad de Historia y Patrimonio states that for almost a century the Ermita was a dependency of Hacienda La Florida used as warehouse, barnyard and drinking trough.

In 1852 under financial pressure caused mostly by the cost of constructing the irrigation system mentioned above, Antonio Francisco sold Hacienda La Florida to Juan Maria Antongiorgi Paoli (1799-1888) and his wife Ana Maria Paoli Mari.  Upon Juan Maria's death, the hacienda passed to his son Angel Antonio (Angelino) Antongiorgi Paoli (1843- ) and his wife Lucia Boagna Rafaelli (1854-1934).