Jerry Kuntz has been researching the earliest U.S. tours by Cuban teams, which, he has discovered, started in 1899, several years earlier than historians previously supposed.  He writes:

I spent the weekend trying to verify comments made by Abel Linares in a chapter of the 1908 book El Baseball en Cuba y América about the first U. S. visit of the All-Cubans. My interest is his mention that the organizer of the first trip was Al Lawson (subject of my research hobby). Linares mentions Lawson by name, along with several players, and says that tour ended in disaster, with players stranded in New York City.  That fits Lawson’s style to a T.  Lawson still had contacts here in Middletown [New York]—Jack Dooley and Jack Lawlor—who were teammates and partners of Lawson going back to 1892.  I suspect he used their influence to schedule many of the 1899 games.  E. B. Lamar took over the scheduling in 1902, and had much more success.

UPDATE

I previously had articles from 1899 that stated that Lawson was planning to import a Cuban team, but no other evidence.  With Linares’s chapter and the name All-Cubans, I went looking for game scores in digital newspaper archives…[Jerry has posted the 1899 and 1902-1905 All-Cubans rosters, and a partial list of scores for the 1899 tour—g.a.]…This is very incomplete.  I don’t know how many games were played in 1899, but I think from 1902-1905 the All-Cubans were playing over 70 games each summer.

There are a few of us baseball history fans here in Orange County, New York—we’re thrilled to see that the majority of the games of the first “All-Cubans” tour were right here!  And I’m tickled to find the heavy hand of Al Lawson on yet another baseball milestone.

UPDATE 3:49 p.m. Jorge Figueredo’s Cuban Baseball does list the first All-Cubans’ tour, but dates it to 1900 rather than 1899 (perhaps it’s still another tour?).  Clark and Lester’s Negro Leagues Book, González Echevarría’s Pride of Havana, and Sol White’s Official Base Ball Guide, however, all put the earliest tour of the All-Cubans in 1904.  Riley doesn’t have an entry for the All-Cubans, and dates the beginning of their successors, the Cuban Stars, at 1907.