High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Vicente Martinez Ybor (September 7, 1818 - December 14, 1896) was a Spanish American industrialist and cigar manufacturer, best known for founding the cigar-manufacturing town of Ybor City near Tampa, Florida in 1886. Ybor was born in Valencia, Spain, in 1818. He immigrated to Cuba in 1832, in part to avoid the military service then mandatory for all male Spaniards, and took a job as a grocery clerk before learning the cigar business. In 1848, Ybor married Palmia Learas, and they had four children before her death. In 1856 Ybor founded his own company in Havana, Cuba and began manufacturing his El Principe de Gales("Prince of Wales") brand. The brand quickly became popular, and Ybor's factory was soon producing 20,000 cigars a day. In his personal life, Ybor remarried in 1862. He and his wife Mercedes de las Revillas would have eight additional children.