Vicente Yáñez Pinzón

Personal life[edit]

Pinzón was born in Palos de la Frontera on the Atlantic coast of Huelva, youngest of the three prominent sons of seaman Martín Pinzón and his wife Mayor Vicente.^[4] His birth year is uncertain; it is generally given as c. 1462; Juan Gil concludes from legal documents that his two daughters were over the age of 20 in 1509, that it certainly cannot be later than 1469.^[2] 1469 would be quite a late date, given that there is record of him being a corsair or privateer (with his older brother Martín Alonso) in Mediterranean waters between 1477 and 1479 when other towns failed to provide Palos with an adequate supply of grain in wartime.^[7][8]


He married twice: first to Teresa Rodríguez, by whom he had two daughters, Ana Rodríguez Pinzón and Juana González Pinzón;^[2] second, probably in 1509, to Ana de Trujillo, who some surviving documents refer to as "Ana Núñez de Trujillo".^[3]


It would appear that he was based in Palos at least up to and including the time of Columbus's first voyage (1492); by 1495 he was living in nearby Moguer; after the economic failure of his 1499–1500 expedition,^[9] he appears to have moved no later than 1502 to Seville. He may have moved there to escape creditors.^[10] Historian Juan Gil, researching Pinzón's family life, found strong circumstantial evidence that his first wife left behind a mansion in Triana, across the river from Seville: her own property, not his, which passed into the hands of their daughters.^[11]


The last primary record of him is in 1514, in Seville or Triana. According to the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, he died that year, probably at the end of September. It is not known precisely where he is buried, though Oviedo expressed confidence that it was in the cemetery of Triana.^[12]