The Family Tree That Keeps Fascinating Me
By Karl M. Garcia
I have always been awed and fascinated by my maternal family tree.
Not because I think a family becomes important simply because it contains famous names. Rather, I find it fascinating to discover how many different lives, professions, personalities and stories can grow from the same ancestral roots.
My mother’s name is Ma. Rosario Cauwenbergh Misa.
She is one of the six children of Pedro “Nonoy” Misa Sr., who was one of the 11 children of Simplicio Misa and Gregoria de Castro.
The six children of Pedro Misa Sr. are:
Pedro
Tomas
Ma. Rosario
Crecencia Lourdes
Ma. Socorro
Paulina Gloria
I am a descendant of the third child in that branch—my mother, Ma. Rosario.
And from my mother and my father, the late Plaridel Comentan Garcia, came four children:
Lara
Karl
the late PG
the late RJ
That is where this enormous family tree eventually reaches me.
So my own line can be traced:
Simplicio Misa + Gregoria de Castro
↓
Pedro “Nonoy” Misa Sr.
↓
Pedro • Tomas • Ma. Rosario • Crecencia • Ma. Socorro • Ma. Paulina
↓
Ma. Rosario Cauwenbergh Misa + Plaridel Comentan Garcia
↓
Lara • Karl • the late PG • the late RJ
That final generation is, of course, the most personal part of the tree.
A genealogy can tell us names, dates and relationships. It cannot fully capture what those people meant to one another.
My mother came from the Misa family.
My father, the late retired Commodore Plaridel Comentan Garcia, brought the Garcia side into the story.
Together they became our immediate family.
Four children.
Lara.
Me, Karl.
PG.
RJ.
Two of my siblings, PG and RJ, are no longer with us. Their names nevertheless remain part of the family tree—and more importantly, part of the family itself.
That is something a family tree should never lose sight of.
The dead do not disappear simply because a generation moves forward.
Their names remain.
Their stories remain.
Their place in the family remains.
And so, when I look backward at Simplicio and Gregoria, I am not merely looking at distant ancestors from the nineteenth century. I am looking at the beginning of a chain that eventually reaches my mother, my siblings and me.
But that is only one small branch of a much larger tree.
Simplicio and Gregoria had eleven children: Victoria, Jose, Eriberto, Rosario, Francisco, Gaudencio, Antonio, Asuncion, Nicolas, Maria and Pedro. A 2020 Philippine Star account of the family’s reunion described the descendants as a remarkably widespread clan, with branches extending across the Philippines and overseas.
And when I begin following those branches, the family tree starts to look less like a simple genealogy and more like a small map of Philippine life.
One of the most prominent branches is that of Eriberto Buenaventura de Castro Misa Sr.
Eriberto became Director of the Bureau of Prisons from 1937 to 1949. His career became deeply intertwined with the history of the prison system and with Muntinlupa itself.
His son, Eriberto B. Misa Jr., would later also become Director of Prisons.
That is remarkable enough.
But the Misa story does not stop with government service and corrections.
Another branch leads to technology.
Rudy Misa Villarica, from the Asuncion branch, became known for his pioneering role in Philippine Internet development.
And then there is the branch that makes the family tree particularly recognizable to generations of Filipinos.
Jim Paredes.
Jim became one-third of the legendary APO Hiking Society, together with Danny Javier and Boboy Garovillo. APO became one of the defining groups of Original Pilipino Music.
So there is a musician in the extended family whose songs became part of the soundtrack of Filipino life.
When I hear an APO song, I don’t merely hear an important piece of Philippine popular music.
I can also think:
That’s my cousin.
And that is a peculiar and wonderful feeling.
Jim’s career was not simply about entertainment. His work also became connected to one of the defining political moments of modern Philippine history. His “Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo” became associated with the 1986 People Power Revolution.
The family tree therefore reaches into very different chapters of Philippine history.
One branch served in the prison system.
Another entered technology.
Another entered music and popular culture.
And other branches went into the ordinary professions and lives that make up any large Filipino family.
That last part matters.
A family tree should not be judged only by its famous people.
For every recognizable name, there are dozens or hundreds of people whose contributions may never appear in newspapers or history books.
They raised children.
Built businesses.
Worked in government.
Taught.
Migrated.
Served communities.
Supported their relatives.
They are the connective tissue of the family.
And that is why knowing the six children of Pedro Misa Sr. matters to me.
Pedro. Tomas. Ma. Rosario. Crecencia. Ma. Socorro. Ma. Paulina.
They are not simply names in a genealogy.
They are the generation through which one branch of the larger Misa family continued.
My mother, Ma. Rosario, is one of them.
And through her, the Misa story eventually reached me.
The 2020 Misa reunion is revealing precisely because the descendants themselves realized how little they knew about one another. The reunion brought together descendants of the eleven children of Simplicio and Gregoria, with relatives who had become scattered geographically and generationally.
That is one of the paradoxes of a large family.
The bigger it becomes, the easier it is for relatives to become strangers.
We know our immediate families.
We know the grandparents we met.
We may know the famous uncle or cousin.
But beyond two or three generations, the branches become names on paper.
Until somebody starts asking questions.
Who was Simplicio?
Who was Gregoria?
Who were their eleven children?
What happened to the six children of Pedro?
Where did their descendants go?
Who married into the family?
What professions did their descendants enter?
Which branches stayed in the Philippines?
Which went abroad?
Which stories have simply disappeared because nobody wrote them down?
These questions make genealogy much more than the construction of a family chart.
It becomes an act of preservation.
And perhaps that is what fascinates me most about my maternal family tree.
It is not a story about one family that produced a few famous people.
It is a story about possibility.
From one couple in the nineteenth century came eleven children. From those eleven came generations of Filipinos who entered very different worlds.
A prison director.
A public servant.
A technology pioneer.
Musicians.
Businessmen.
Professionals.
Parents and grandparents.
Migrants.
And people whose names may never become publicly known but whose lives are equally part of the story.
And eventually, one branch became my own family.
Ma. Rosario Cauwenbergh Misa and Plaridel Comentan Garcia
↓
Lara • Karl • the late PG • the late RJ
That is my place in the tree.
Not its beginning.
Certainly not its end.
Just one more generation.
That may be the most humbling part of genealogy.
We inherit a story we did not start, and we become responsible for carrying at least some of it forward.
Every family has famous people.
Every family has ordinary people.
Every family has people whose stories have been forgotten.
And every family has people who are remembered simply because they were loved.
My maternal family tree contains all of them.
And somewhere at its roots are Simplicio Misa and Gregoria de Castro, who could never have known how many lives would eventually grow from the family they began.
I am one of those lives.
And I am still discovering the tree.
