Vergaras of Ilocandia
Imelda Benitez Vergara-Ragasa in San Diego, California offers this explanation "The first recorded Vergara Mayor of San Esteban is Cornelio, and if I remember San Esteban history right - was about 1865, Philippine revolution. I heard that his father, along with two brothers, came from the Tagalog provinces or Pampanga and settled in Pangasinan, Cagayan Valley, and San Esteban. Could this be connected to the Philippine revolution that started in the Tagalog provinces? I have reason to believe that the Vergara is Spanish in origin, judging by their features. A Vergara probably originally arrived in Manila , some sons/brothers probably moved northward to Vigan, then spread out in the colonization process." A personal visit to some descendants of the Umingan, Pangasinán folks in a Melbourne suburb was both emotionally and gastronomically rewarding.
The last year of Theological studies commenced with more hectic work. Not only was the trip emotionally draining, but, more importantly, more financially draining so that I was forced to look for a part-time job while studying full-time. Another factor was the request of Carmela, my eldest daughter, to make us her guarantors in purchasing a house. Responding to a teaching advertisement in a catholic college ten minutes away by tram from the theological school, I was offered not a part-time job, but more than a full-time job - managing two network operating systems and the internet/intranet system, being a technician and, last but not least teaching. It was a dilemma. I could not study and work full-time simultaneously. But a solution was worked out. Luckily my conscientious application to studies paid off as the lecturers allowed me to miss the normal classes under the conditions that I take arrangements for the lectures to be taped, complete the usual assignments, write an extra essay for the missed tutorials, and sit for the normal examination. How this can be done while working full-time, I had no idea but there was no alternative. Reluctantly, I had to minimize communications with the Vergara folks in the net and the maintenance/update of the web page came to a complete halt for three months. The end of the first semester, June 23 Friday, was a big welcoming relief! A two-week break to recover!
On the saga on the Vergaras of Ilocandia Auntie Imelda and Pol Ilag have become very important sources of information. Auntie Imelda made the observation that "the San Esteban folks got out of San Esteban because of poor harvests when the rains didn't pour as expected. Some went northward to Ilocos Norte and the Cagayán provinces. Others went to Pangasinán - to Binalonan, Umingan, Pozzurubio ... The first recorded Vergara Mayor of San Esteban is Cornelio, and if I remember San Esteban history right - was about 1865, Philippine revolution. I heard that his father, along with two brothers, came from the Tagalog provinces or Pampanga and settled in Pangasinan, Cagayan Valley, and San Esteban. Could this be connected to the Philippine revolution that started in the Tagalog provinces?" Does this mean that the original Ilocano Vergaras were really from Pampanga? If this is so, then the Ilocos folks were blood-related to me! How exciting! Auntie Imelda added that "the Vergaras of the first generation, became landowners in San Esteban, sent their children to school, were more interested in the professions than politics. It is Cornelio's father who seems to be the adventurer, and his descendants who blazed a political trail, This includes Ricardo Mendoza Vergara, and Maximino Vergara Bello, provincial board member of Ilocos Sur, Mayors Juan Vergara Siping and Fidencio Vergara Vergara, Ambassador Ernesto Maceda, etc."
On April 9, 2000 Lúz Ferrér Vergara of the Mangatarem clan emailed the following: "Let me congratulate you for the project you started for the Vergara Family Philippines. When we first had the first Vergara family reunion back in 1970, one of our plans was to trace our roots. One of those assigned to start the research was Teofilo Vergara. They have started to gather data and every reunion there were updates on the progress of the project. In 1998, our country's 100th year of independence a VERGARA CLAN DIRECTORY (CUM FAMILY TREE) was put together by Napoleon Vergara. The Mangatarem, Pangasinan VERGARA descendants would be updated by this directory". A copy of this directory had been posted by Ben Vergara, Ph.D., of the Anao, Mexico clan, who had received it from his colleague Nap Tolentino Vergara, Ph.D. It hat taken Dr. Nap Vergara about a year to craft the Directory of the Mangatarem Vergaras.
On the preface of the of the Directory of the Mangatarem Vergaras, Nap Vergara specifically mentioned that his Lolo Celian (Marceliano Versoza Vergara) had been hanged by the Americans for having killed a Yankee soldier in one of the combat encounters in Pangasinán during the Philippine-American war. Before his death, he had written a brief autobiography (a la José Rizál) where he mentioned that he had been born in Mangatarem to parents who had migrated to Pangasinán from San Esteban, Ilocos Sur. This autobiography discovered by Dr. Nap's father, Niceforo Tadeó Vergara in the 1940s, the papers yellow with age and practically crumbling. As a curious kibitzing 10-year old, Dr. Nap had read portions of the biography, but after over half a century ago, he admits that his memory cannot bring back many details now. Painfully transcribed by Nap's brother, Vidál, into a new notebook, the original autobiography had been completely damaged by termites in the 1970s. Dr. Nap emailed that in the 1960s he had been with a group of UPLB staff invited by then Gov. Carmelíng Crisologo as a resource person in a provincial seminar. Having found out he was a 3rd generation Vergara in Pangasinán with original roots from San Esteban, she was kind enough to bring him there and to show him the names of previous town mayors which were engraved on the front walls of the Municipal Hall. Among them were six Vergaras who had served as mayors. José Raymund Olaez Vergara confirmed that their clan had come from San Esteban, Ilocos Súr. He also added that the reunion takes place every three years with the latest one being held in their ancestral site at Bogtong, Silag, Mangatarem, Pangasinán on April 22, 2000.
Dr. Nap also made these important comments quoted verbatim: "I would like to add a broader historical/cultural reinforcement to Aunt Imelda's thesis about how crop failure prompted some Vergaras to move southward from Ilocos Sur. That province, as we all know, suffers from the paucity if arable land - it has only narrow cultivable coastal plains; the rest are mountains. The climate is very harsh - it has two very pronounced seasons: a wet season punctuated by crop-destroying typhoons, and a very dry season when nothing much other than perennials can be grown. Under these very unfavorable conditions, Ilocanos survived by sheer willpower and hard work. That's how Ilocanos developed the twin virtues of frugality and capacity for hard work that they are so well noted for! But Ilocanos are, like most Filipinos, prolific, and pretty soon the resources of the province were simply not enough to survive on. Thus began the steady stream of Ilocano migration southwards in search of greener pastures. Included in that stream were the Vergaras. So pervasive was the spread of Ilocanos over the rest of the country that they are often referred to, jokingly and otherwise, as the "ubiquitous Ilocanos." The present dispersal of Vergaras over the country lends further credence to this past southward migration phenomenon. And when they moved south, they left some family members in the various provinces: La Union, Pangasinán, Nueva Ecija, Tarlác, Bulacán, Bataan, Zambales, Cavite, Laguna, Rizál, Bicolandia, Visayas (Cebú) and Mindanao (Cotabato and Davao). Unfortunately, communication was so poor in those days that despite our reputation for clanishness, we lost track of most of our relations. Thus, today, we suspect that we are all somehow inter-related but lack hard evidence to prove so. It pleases me very much now to see an increasing number of us working towards the common goal of finding that 'missing link'". Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, this should come about sooner!
An important diversion from the digression of story of the Ilocandia Vergara descendants came in the form of messages from the diffent parts of the world.
A month earlier, from Saudi Arabia had come information on the Vergara Clan of San Simón, Pampanga courtesy of Lorenzo Navarro Vergara
A month later on May 28, 2000, from Vancouver, Canada Emie Vergara Barredo emailed the initial details of her thrice-married-grandfather who started
the Vergaras of Capiz. From the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia came the information of the Vergaras of Bacacay, Albay emailed by Anastacio Vergara, an accountant
working over there. He disclosed that his uncle, Arsenio Bernido Vergara, used to be the Vice Mayor of Bacacay in the 1980s and owned and managed the town secondary school
Zamora Memorial Institute. The Bacacay folks had been established before to be definitely related to those of Catanduanes and Sorsogón.