Generations Later

The Narciso–Juana family

The Narciso–Juana family was one of the respected families in Puntod. They participated in the social, political and religious activities of the community and town. By their hard work, patience, industry and frugality, they were able to honestly acquire sizable lands and properties and built a big house for their family to live in. By the standard of the time, their family belonged to the lower middle class. They were self-sufficient in foods and material needs and economically stable.

Fishing was the mainstay of income, but they also engaged in agriculture. They raised rice, corn, coconut, bananas and root crops on large tracts of land, and domesticated carabao, cattle, pigs and chicken, and planted fruit trees.

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It was a happy family, where parents loved their children and children respected them. It was a big family by present standards, where family planning is not encouraged. God blessed Narciso and Juana’s marriage with ten healthy children — six boys and four girls.

The character of Narciso, called Esok

Narciso’s lifestyle was simple. This could have been due to his humble and self-effacing nature. His choice of things were just within the reach of an ordinary rustic. But in as much as he was the eldest, he had to learn various trades in order to meet some exigencies.

He was already an expert fisherman since his boyhood. Under his father’s apprenticeship, he became a farmer, a carpenter, a craftsman, and even a tuba gatherer and a midwife. His constant struggle to eke out a living as his father’s provider — and even acting as a surrogate father to his orphaned relatives — did not give him the luxury to partake in the light moments of his youthful days.

It was on this same type of occupation — sweeping the seas with his pilang in search of salanga (devil fish) and mullet (balanak) — that Narciso met Juana Maglinao, his lifetime partner. Like Narciso, Juana, or “Wana,” was also a child of one of the leading salanga catchers in town — an exact complement of Narciso’s livelihood, for she too was a child brought up from a fisherman’s family. Wana grew up as an industrious and obedient child.

In assuming family responsibilities as well as in performing his varied skills, Narciso was serious-minded, honest and dedicated — abilities and qualities he passed on to his children. No wonder most, if not all, of his sons and grandsons, and even granddaughters, were either good farmers, carpenters, fishermen and midwives.

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There, he taught his children to preserve the veneration of the cross and to perpetuate the tradition of giving feast in honor of the cross on the third day of May.

The ten children of Narciso and Juana

From the eldest to the youngest, the children, with a note on their families, are as follows:

Narciso and the Sta. Cruz

Sometimes after the death of Narciso’s father in 1890, his brothers, together with some relatives, went into their respective share of the inheritance to live on their own. Narciso, on his part, remained in the vicinity of the Daisog Delta and came into possession of the cross — a cross whose origin is from the island of Bohol.

He led his family to live at Barra, now a part of Purok 4 in Barangay Puntod. Here, he taught his children to preserve the veneration of the cross and to perpetuate the tradition of giving feast in honor of the cross on the third day of May — the date that marks the landing of the Acaac migrant on the shore of Barra.

With the cross as the center of their veneration, it became the symbol of their unity. Narciso used such a symbol as an instrument to weld his descendants into a cohesive organization, calling it the Acaac Santacruzan. It was this Santacruzan which played the dominant role in the formation of the Acaac Clan Organization.

The Grand Reunion

The Grand Reunion of the Acaac Family emerged as the natural outgrowth of the Santacruzan tradition of the family — a Christian tradition which has its root in their ancestral home in the island of Bohol. Celebrated annually on the third day of May to commemorate the historic landing at the coast of Daisog, it also has a religious significance.

At its inception, it was a simple celebration and could have hardly survived the shock of time. But indeed, it survived, because the bearer and founder of the Santacruzan had the missionary zeal to perpetuate the religious devotion they held sacred and obligatory.

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To his descendants, the name Oyong Esok — as he is lovingly and respectfully called — becomes a symbol of their unity and the catalyst in the formation of the Grand Reunion of the Acaac Clan.