RIZAL’S FAMILY, CHILDHOOD, AND EARLY EDUCATION

The Mercado Rizal Family

During their time, the Rizal family was better known as Mercado. The surname Mercado was changed to
Rizal in accordance with the Claveria decree of 1849. “Rizal”, which was originally Ricial, means “the
green of young growth or green fields.”

In a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Jose Rizal said “I am the only Rizal because at home, my parents,
my sisters, my brother, and my relatives have always preferred our old surname Mercado. Our family
name was in fact Mercado, but there were many Mercado’s in the Philippines who are not related to us.
It is said that an alcalde mayor, who was a friend of our family added Rizal to our name. My family did
not pay much attention to this, but now I have to use it. In this way, it seems that I am an illegitimate
son.”

Jose Rizal came from a 13-member family consisting of his parents, Francisco Mercado and Teodora
Alonso Realonda, and nine sisters and one brother.

FRANCISCO MERCADO (1818-1898) - Father of Jose Rizal who was the youngest of 13 offsprings of Juan
and Cirila Mercado. Born in Biñan, Laguna on April 18, 1818; studied in San Jose College, Manila; and
died in Manila.

TEODORA ALONSO (1827-1913) - Mother of Jose Rizal who was the second child of Lorenzo Alonso and
Brijida de Quintos. She studied at the Colegio de Santa Rosa. She was a business-minded woman,
courteous, religious, hardworking and well-read. She was born in Santa Cruz, Manila on November 14,
1827 and died in 1913 in Manila.

SATURNINA RIZAL (1850-1913) – Eldest child of the Rizal-Alonzo marriage. “The hero’s second mother”.
Married Manuel Timoteo Hidalgo of Tanauan, Batangas. Published the first Tagalog/Filipino translation,
by Pascual H. Poblete, of her brother's revolutionary novel Noli Me Tangere, making Rizal's words
accessible to the common Filipino.

PACIANO RIZAL (1851-1930) – Second child. “The big brother”. The only brother of Jose Rizal. Studied at
San Jose College in Manila; became a farmer and later a general of the Philippine Revolution. A member
of the Katipunan.

NARCISA RIZAL (1852-1939) - Third child. “The hospitable sister”. Married Antonio Lopez of Morong,
Rizal, a teacher and musician. Took in her parents when they were driven out of their house in Calamba
by the Spaniards. Took in Josephine Bracken when the rest of the family suspected Jose’s wife as a spy
for the friars. Searched and found the place where authorities secretly buried the dead Jose. Mother of
Angelica, the Katipunera niece of Jose.

OLYMPIA RIZAL (1855-1887) - Fourth child. “The sister whom Jose loves to joke about”. Married Silvestre
Ubaldo, a telegraph operator. Died in 1887 from childbirth.

LUCIA RIZAL (1857-1919) - Fifth child. “The partaker of Jose’s sufferings”. Married Mariano Herbosa of
Calamba, Laguna. In Jose’s article in La Solidaridad entitled Una Profanacion (‘A Profanation’), he
scornfully attacked the friars for declining to bury in ‘sacred ground’ a ‘good Christian’ (Mariano
Herbosa) simply because he was the brother-in-law of Rizal. Mother of Delfina (1879 –1900), one of the
three women (along with Marcela Agoncillo and her daughter Lorenza) who together seamed the
Philippine flag.

MARIA RIZAL (1859-1945) - Sixth child. “The confidant”. Married Daniel Faustino Cruz of Biñan, Laguna.
The sister to whom Jose confided his desire to marry Josephine Bracken and his plan to establish a
Filipino colony in North Borneo. Mother of Mauricio, Jose’s “favorite” nephew and student in Dapitan.
Great grandmother of the country’s first Miss International Gemma Cruz Araneta.

JOSE RIZAL (1861-1896) - The second son and the seventh child. “The foremost national hero”. He was
executed by the Spaniards on December 30, 1896.

CONCEPCION RIZAL (1862-1865) - Eight child. “The hero’s first grief”. Died at the age of three.

JOSEFA RIZAL (1865-1945) - Ninth child. “The Katipunera”. President of the women’s sector of the
Katipunan. Learned the English language. An epileptic. Died a spinster.

TRINIDAD RIZAL (1868-1951) - Tenth child. “The feminist”. Co-founder of the Philippines' first feminist
organization, the Asociación Femenista Filipina. Had interactions with the Katipunan. Died a spinster.
The last of the family to die.

SOLEDAD RIZAL (1870-1929) - The youngest child. “The savior of Teodora”. A teacher, she was said to be
the best educated among Jose’s sisters. Married Pantaleon Quintero. Their daughter Amelia married
Bernabe Malvar, son of Gen. Miguel Malvar.

Early Childhood (In Calamba, Laguna)

June 19, 1861 - Jose Rizal, the seventh child of Francisco Mercado Rizal and Teodora Alonso y Quintos,
was born in Calamba, Laguna.

June 22, 1861 - He was baptized Jose Rizal Mercado at the Catholic of Calamba by the parish priest Rev.
Rufino Collantes with Rev. Pedro Casañas as the sponsor.

September 28, 1862 - The parochial church of Calamba and the canonical books, including the book in
which Rizal’s baptismal records were entered, were burned.

1864 - Barely three years old, Rizal learns the alphabet from his mother.

1865 - When he was four years old, his sister Conception, the eight children in the Rizal family, died at
the age of three. It was on this occasion that Rizal remembered having shed real tears for the first time.

1865 – 1867 - During this time his mother taught him how to read and write. His father hired a
classmate by the name of Leon Monroy who, for five months until his (Monroy) death, taught Rizal the
rudiments of Latin. Rizal at a young age learned relevant habits, talents, and skills from his three uncles,
brothers of Teodora Alonzo. Tio Gregorio was a scholar and lover of books. He encouraged Rizal to read
good books and think for himself. Tio Manuel was big and strong man. He aroused Rizal's interest in
sports. Thus Rizal learned swimming, rowing, fencing, and wrestling. Tio Jose, (the youngest brother of
"donya" Teodora.) He was educated in an English college of Calcutta, India. He inspired Rizal to paint,
sketch, and make statues of clay.

June 6, 1868 - At the age of seven he traveled with his father for the first time to Manila and thence to
Antipolo to fulfill the promise of a pilgrimage made by his mother at the time of his birth. They
embarked in a casco, a very ponderous vessel commonly used in the Philippines. When they proceeded
to Antipolo, he experienced the sweetest emotions upon seeing the gay banks of the Pasig and the
towns of Cainta and Taytay. In Antipolo he prayed, kneeling before the image of the Virgin of Peace and
Good Voyage, to whom he would later sing elegant verses. Then he saw Manila, the great metropolis,
with its Chinese stores and European bazaars. And visited his elder sister, Saturnina, in Santa Ana, who
was a boarding student in the Concordia College.

Early Education (In Calamba and Biñan)

Rizal had his early education in Calamba and Biñan. It was a typical schooling that a son of an ilustrado
family received during his time, characterized by the four R’s- reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion.
Instruction was rigid and strict. Knowledge was forced into the minds of the pupils by means of the
tedious memory method aided by the teacher’s whip.

Despite the defects of the Spanish system of elementary education, Rizal was able to acquire the
necessary instruction preparatory for college work in Manila. It may be said that Rizal, who was born a
physical weakling, rose to become an intellectual giant not because of, but rather in spite of, the
outmoded and backward system of instruction obtaining in the Philippines during the last decades of
Spanish regime.

The hero’s first teacher was his mother, who was a remarkable woman of good character and fine
culture. On her lap, he learned at the age of three the alphabet and the prayers. "My mother," wrote
Rizal in his student memoirs, "taught me how to read and to say haltingly the humble prayers which I
raised fervently to God". As tutor, Doña Teodora was patient, conscientious, and understanding. It was
she who first discovered that her son had a talent for poetry. Accordingly, she encouraged him to write
poems. To lighten the monotony of memorizing the ABC’s and to stimulate her son’s imagination, she
related to him stories such as the story of The Moth.

He also had tutors. The first was Maestro Celestino and the second was Maestro Lucas Padua. Later, an
old man named Leon Monroy, a former classmate of Rizal’s father, became the boy’s tutor. This old
teacher lived at the Rizal home and instructed Jose in Spanish and Latin. Unfortunately, he did not live
long. He died five months later. After Monroy’s death, the hero’s parents decided to send their gifted
son to a private school in Biñan.

One Sunday afternoon in June 1869, Jose, after kissing the hands of his parents and a tearful parting
from his sister, left Calamba for Biñan. He was accompanied by Paciano , who acted as his second father.
The two brothers rode in a carromata, reaching their destination after one and one-half hours’ drive.
They proceeded to their aunt’s house, where Jose was to lodge. It was almost night when they arrived,
and the moon was about to rise. That same night, Jose, with his cousin named Leandro, went
sightseeing in the town. Instead of enjoying the sights, Jose became depressed because of
homesickness. "In the moonlight," he recounted, "I remembered my home town, my idolized mother,
and my solicitous sisters. Ah, how sweet to me was Calamba, my own town, in spite of the fact that was
not as wealthy as Biñan”.

The next morning Paciano brought his younger brother to the school of Maestro Justiniano Aquino Cruz.
The school was in the house of the teacher, which was a small nipa hut about 30 meters from the home
of Jose’s aunt. Paciano knew the teacher quite well because he had been a pupil under him. He
introduced Jose to the teacher, after which he departed to return to Calamba. Immediately, Jose was
assigned his seat in the class. The teacher asked him: "Do you know Spanish?". "A little, sir," replied the
Calamba lad."Do you know Latin?""A little, sir". The boys in the class, especially Pedro, the teacher’s son
laughed at Jose’s answers. The teacher sharply stopped all noises and started the lessons of the day.

Jose described his teacher in Biñan as follows: "He was tall, thin, and longnecked, with sharp nose and a
body slightly bent forward, and he used to wear a sinamay shirt, woven by the skilled hands of the
women of Batangas. He knew by the heart the grammars by Nebrija and Gainza. Add to this severity
that in my judgment was exaggerated and you have a picture, perhaps vague, that I have made of him,
but I remember only this.

In the afternoon of his first day in school, when the teacher was having his siesta, Jose met the bully,
Pedro. He was angry at this bully for making fun of him during his conversation with the teacher in the
morning. Jose challenged Pedro to a fight. The latter readily accepted, thinking that he could easily beat
the Calamba boy who was smaller and younger. The two boys wrestled furiously in the classroom, much
to the glee of their classmates. Jose, having learned the art of wrestling from his athletic Uncle Manuel,
defeated the bigger boy. For this feat, he became popular among his classmates.

After the class in the afternoon, a classmate named Andres Salandanan challenged him to an arm-
wrestling match. They went to a sidewalk of a house and wrestled with their arms. Jose, having the
weaker arm, lost and nearly cracked his head on the sidewalk. In succeeding days he had other fights
with the boys of Biñan. He was not quarrelsome by nature, but he never ran away from a fight.

In academic studies, Jose beat all Biñan boys. He surpassed them all in Spanish, Latin, and other
subjects. Some of his older classmates were jealous of his intellectual superiority. They wickedly
squealed to the teacher whenever Jose had a fight outside the school, and even told lies to discredit him
before the teacher’s eyes. Consequently the teacher had to punish Jose.

In spite of his progress, he received many whippings and strokes from the ferule. Rare was the day when
he was not stretched on the bench for a whipping or punished with five or six blows on the open palm.
Jose’s reaction to all these punishments was one of intense resentment. But he had to endure all these
in order to go through his studies and carry out his father’s will.

Jose spent his leisure hours with Justiniano’s father-in-law, a master painter. He took his painting lessons
together with the master’s two sons, two nephews, and a grandson. His way of life was methodical and
well regulated. He heard mass at four if there was one that early, or studied his lesson at that hour and
went to mass afterwards. Returning home, he might look in the orchard for a mabolo fruit to eat, and
then he took his breakfast, consisting generally of a plate of rice and two dried sardines. After that he
would go to class, from which he was dismissed at ten, and then home again. He ate with his aunt and
then began at ten, then home again. He ate with his aunt and then proceeded studying. At half past two
he returned to class and left at five. He might play for a short time with some cousins before returning
home. He studied his lessons, drew sketches, and stared at the night sky especially if there was a moon.
His friends would invite him to play in the street in the company of other boys.

He returned to his hometown now and then. How long the road seemed to him in going and how short
in coming. Seeing the roof of his house from afar filled his heart with joy. How he looked for pretexts to
remain longer at home. A day more seemed to him a day spent in heaven, and how he wept, though
silently and secretly, when he saw the calesa that would bring him back to Biñan. Everything looked sad;
a flower that he touched, a stone that attracted his attention, fearful that he might not see them again
upon his return. Such was a sad but delicate moment. Quite pain possessed him during such a time.