Family Tree

My grade one nephew has ap-parently been going around telling others that his uncle-in-law is a pirate! It is not, however, just a figment of his childhood imagination. I had shared with my children and their cousins on my wife’s side a story about my family’s supposed blood lines to the Chinese buccaneer, Limahong.  I told them that there was even a local movie in the ’80s starring Da Boy, Rudy Fernandez, entitled Montemayor: Tulisang Dagat (Montemayor: Sea Pirate). While I have neither seen the flick nor am certain about its historical accuracy, there is indeed some factual basis to my tale. After being driven away by Spanish-Filipino forces from Manila in 1574, Limahong and his men retreated to Pangasinan where both my parents are from. The pirates specifically settled for some time in Lingayen where some of my father’s ancestors were natives of. In our nearby hometown of Alaminos, there is even a statue today of Limahong overlooking the famous Hundred Islands. In any event, family lore has it that we do have Chinese ancestry as evidenced by our Chinese-looking features and by the Chinese-sounding family names of some of our forefathers and that these could all be traced back to Limahong and his marauding band. This mysterious tidbit from our family’s history so piqued the interest of my children that they started quizzing their mother on where and how one applies to become a pirate! 

I didn’t really take any serious interest in our family’s history until eight years ago when I completed my father’s unfinished autobiography. Of the many valuable insights that I gained from that effort, one of the most rewarding was how it made history so much more alive to me. Although I enjoyed studying local (and international) history in school, they still seemed a bit abstract. Yes, the stories were interesting, but it was also sometimes just like reading fiction, albeit great fiction. It became quite different, however, when I saw the same history framed against my own family’s past. It then became a personalized history. I am fortunate in that I also have an uncle who had previously written a book about our hometown and our family tree. Through his book and my father’s writings, I was able to learn a lot about my ancestors and trace our roots all the way back to the 1700s. It seems that we are quite a potent brew. Not only have Chinese pirates been mixed up with our Malay stock, we have apparently been seasoned with Spanish friars and unknown Portuguese ingredients as well! Interestingly, my father and mother are also distant cousins. It was amazing to find out that most of the (original) townspeople of Alaminos, my father and mother included, are actually descendants of one and the same couple several centuries ago. Hmmm, now I know why many of us are quite eccentric! 

Be that as it may, it was enthralling to relive the stories that I had previously read about the experiences of the early Filipino settlers through accounts of how my own forefathers from Zambales had braved the seas and laid the seeds of our hometown in 1734. They were a clan of Zambal adventurers who settled on the slope of a hill facing the sea in what is today known as Lucap, a small pier in Alaminos that is the jumping point of boats to the Hundred Islands.   On a small plain with a thick forest behind them, they built their bamboo dwellings and a tiny chapel to enshrine the image of St. Joseph. Over the next 40 years, they relocated their settlement three times around the general vicinity, changing the town’s name as they moved, to Casborran and then to Sarapsap. Each move was in itself full of drama. Not only did they have to build a town from scratch each time, but also circumscribed within this short period were ordeals with nature, superstition, and the dreaded Moro pirates. Internal struggles also caused Casborran to burn down completely and split the townspeople into three separate communities. Finally, amid a supposed miraculous apparition of the town’s patriarch, St. Joseph, the long-separated families were reconciled. The town quickly progressed and its population steadily increased as additional immigrants from as far as Ilocos poured in. Close to a hundred years later, in 1872, the town was visited by the Spanish Governor General of the Philippines, General Alaminos. To commemorate the event, the name of the town was changed for the fourth and final time to Alaminos.

In our increasingly global world where there is now so much diaspora, I think that it is very important for us to remember who we are and where we came from. Many of us wait until we are adults before we start getting to know about our family’s history. In doing so, we often lose valuable opportunities to gain first-hand information, such as interviewing our elders before they pass away or while they are still lucid. I think that it is also advantageous to our children’s development for them to start learning about their families’ histories early on. One genealogist notes, “As a child, there’s something amazing about learning where you come from. As children uncover their family tree, they forge connections to people they didn’t know existed. And every single one of us has a family member or two who have accomplished something notable. Children are able to learn about and connect with personalities and characteristics they see in their ancestors, which are also reflected in themselves. When children discover who and where they come from, it helps them forge a connection not only with their family but also with the world. They’re better able to see their place in the world.” Even though, if I might add, they find out where their piratical tendencies actually came from! 

I would like to acknowledge the book Anak Apo Na Alaminos by Felix M. Montemayor which I used as a source for some of the information in this article.

* * *

Please e-mail your reactions to kindergartendad@yahoo.com.