amily was akin in spirit to Jose Rizal,
for he was fined twenty-five thousand pesos by the Supreme Court of
the Philippine Islands for "contempt of religion." It appears that he
put some original comparisons into a petition which sought to obtain
justice from an inferior tribunal where, by the omission of the word
"not" in copying, the clerk had reversed the court's decision but
the judge refused to change the record.

Brigida de Quintos's death record, in Kalamba (1856), speaks of her
as the daughter of Manuel de Quintos and Regina Ochoa.

The most obscure part of Rizal's family tree is the Ochoa branch, the
family of the maternal grandmother, for all the archives,--church,
land and court,--disappeared during the late disturbed conditions
of which Cavite was the center. So one can only repeat what has been
told by elderly people who have been found reliable in other accounts
where the clews they gave could be compared with existing records.

The first of the family is said to have been Policarpio Ochoa, an
employe of the Spanish customs house. Estanislao Manuel Ochoa was his
son, with the blood of old Castile mingling with Chinese and Tagalog
in his veins. He was part owner of the Hacienda of San Francisco de
Malabon. One story says that somewhere in this family was a Mariquita
Ochoa, of such beauty that she was known in Cavite, where was her home,
as the Sampaguita (jasmine) of the Parian, or Chinese, quarter.

There was a Spanish nobleman also in Cavite in her time who had
been deported for political reasons--probably for holding liberal
opinions and for being thought to be favorable to English ideas. It
is said that this particular "caja abierta" was a Marquis de Canete,
and if so there is ground for the claim that he was of royal blood;
at least some of his far-off ancestors had been related to a former
ruling family of Spain.

Mariquita's mother knew the exile, since, according to the custom
in Filipino families, she looked after the business interests of her
husband. Curious to see the belle of whom he had heard so much, the
Marquis made an excuse of doing business with the mother, and went to
her home on an occasion when he knew that the mother was away. No one
else was there to answer his knock and Mariquita, busied in making
candy, could not in her confusion find a coconut shell to dip water
for washing her hands from the large jar, and not to keep the visitor
waiting, she answered the door as she was. No