Pagsanjan is Where the River Branches

Eight Japanese and Chinese merchants migrated to Lumban and married local women. They were Diego Changco, Alfonzo Changco, Mateo Caco, Jose Jagote, Juan Juco, Diego Suico, Marcos Suico, and Eugenio Vinco. In 1663, they settled in a small scenic corner of the town where the river does not only flow but meets, or branches depending where the stream goes or begins. Here they established a trading post that deals with betel nuts. Spaniards used the nuts in the production of gunpowder. Natives customarily masticate it as some westerners habitually chew tobacco. The business flourished and others resettled there until that small corner of Lumban grew to be a major village, ultimately to become a Barangay (The Spanish government retained the term Barangay, a Filipino word, which refers to an administrative division of a town. The Americans later changed this during their occupation to “Barrio” a Spanish word that means neighborhood.} Early settlers call this place “Pinagsangahan,” meaning where the river branched. The Spaniards and the immigrants enunciated it “Pagsanjan.” Hence, everybody called the new Barangay− Pagsanjan.

As times goes by the Barangay grew more and more into an affluent community. The Chinese also like to be called “Don.” They were good merchant-natural businesspersons. They do not like the natives to discriminate them or look down at them as if they were lowly Chinese workers in the sugar cane fields in the haciendas or those digging irrigation canals.

Twenty-five years later in 1668, residents of Pagsanjan made an appeal to the Alcalde Mayor of the province and the Governor General in Manila to elevate the Barangay into a town. They could have bribed their way through, that soon in December 12, 1668, Governor General Juan Gabriel Cruzealegui, thorough the recommendation of Alcalde Mayor Don Mateo Lopez Pera, issued a decree that made Pagsanjan a town.

The original settlers and their second generation mestizos did not stopped here. They used their influence and money to grab the honor of the title “Cabezera Del Provincia” from Bay. If it is not so, why did the Governor General chose Pagsanjan instead of its mother town Lumban?. Lumban was a bigger town and was also a busy trading center. It already had a school, a hospital for Franciscan missionaries and it was the base of the Franciscan missions in the province.

Later in 1668, the seat of the Spanish colonial government moved to Pagsanjan from Bay.

The village that started as a small Sino-Japanese community, rapidly progressed to become the capital of the Provincia de la Laguna de Bay.