Place:Isabela, Cagayan Valley, Philippines

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Isabela, officially the Province of Isabela is the second largest province in the Philippines in land area located in the Cagayan Valley region in Luzon. Its capital and largest local government unit is the city of Ilagan. It is bordered by the provinces of Cagayan to the north, Kalinga to the northwest, Mountain Province to the central-west, Ifugao and Nueva Vizcaya to the southwest, Quirino and Aurora to the south, and the Philippine Sea to the east.

This primarily agricultural province is the rice and corn granary of Luzon due to its plain and rolling terrain. In 2012, the province was declared as the country's top producer of corn with 1,209,524 metric tons. Isabela was also declared the second-largest rice producer in the Philippines and the Queen Province of the North.

Isabela is the 10th richest province in the Philippines as of 2011. The province has four trade centers in the cities of Ilagan, Cauayan, Santiago and the municipality of Roxas. Santiago City, one of Isabela's cities, is considered to have the fastest-growing local economy in the entire Philippines.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The province of Isabela used to be a vast rainforest where numerous indigenous ethnolinguistic groups lived. Many of the same ethnic groups still live in the province. Shell midden sites and other archaeological sites throughout the province constitute the material culture of those groups during the classical era.

Spanish colonial period

During the Spanish era, prior to 1856, the Cagayan Valley was divided into only two provinces: Cagayan and Nueva Vizcaya. The Province of Cagayan at that time consisted of all towns from Tumauini to Aparri in the north. All other towns from Ilagan southward to Aritao comprised the Province of the old Nueva Vizcaya. In order to facilitate the work of the Catholic missionaries in the evangelization of the Cagayan Valley, a royal decree was issued on May 1, 1856, creating the Province of Isabela consisting of the towns of Gamu, Old Angadanan (now Alicia), Bindang (now Roxas) and Camarag (now Echague), Carig (now Santiago City) and Palanan, all detached from the Province of Nueva Vizcaya; while Cabagan and Tumauini were taken from the Province of Cagayan.

The province was placed under the jurisdiction of a governor (Lieutenant Colonel of Cavalry Francisco Contreras y Urtasun) with Ilagan as the capital, where it remains up to present. It was initially called Isabela de Luzón to differentiate from other places in the Philippines bearing the name of Isabela. The new province was named after Queen Isabella II of Spain.

American era

Although the province did not play a major role in the revolt against Spain, it is in Palanan that the final pages of the Philippine Revolution were written when United States troops, led by General Frederick Funston, finally captured General Emilio Aguinaldo in the area on March 23, 1901. To commemorate this historical event, Dr. Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS (now a cardiac surgeon in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Munster, Indiana, USA) then a 26-year-old medical missionary volunteer to the Work-A-Year-With-The-People's project of then Senator Raul S. Manglapus, Manuel Quezon, Jr., and Ramon Magsaysay, Jr., in 1962, while ministering to the health needs of the people in Palanan in his medical office at the Carmelite Convent, succeeded in convincing the town officials to construct a marker, a monument by the Palanan City Hall, right on the spot where General Aguinaldo was captured, to memorialize the historical event. The monument was inaugurated on June 12, 1962, Philippine Independence Day, and still stands today.

Isabela was re-organized as a province under the American military government through Act No. 210, passed August 24, 1901.

The Americans built schools and other buildings and instituted changes in the overall political system. However, the province's economy remained particularly agricultural with rice replacing corn and tobacco as the dominant crop. World War II stagnated the province's economic growth but it recovered dramatically after the war. In 1942, Imperial Japanese occupied Isabela. In 1945, the liberation of Isabela commenced with the arrival of the Philippine Commonwealth troops under the Philippine Army, Constabulary, and USAFIP-NL units and recognized guerrillas attacked by the Japanese Imperial forces in World War II.

A new wave of immigration began in the late 19th and 20th centuries with the arrival of the Ilokano who came in large numbers. They now constitute the largest group in the province. Other ethnic groups followed that made Isabela the "Melting Pot of the Northern Philippines".^[1]

Independent era

In 1975, construction began on the Magat Dam on the boundary of Ramon, Isabela with neighboring Ifugao Province, becoming a catchbasin for 8 rivers upstream in Ifugao and serving multiple functions, including: irrigating of agricultural lands; flood control; and power generation. The construction was protested by the Ifugao people due to the flooding of their ancestral lands, but the dam was eventually completed in 1982, partially funded through a loan from the World Bank.

In 1995, Republic Act 7891 was passed, legislating that Isabela be divided into two new provinces: Isabela del Norte and Isabela del Sur. A referendum was held on the same year with a slight majority voting against partitioning the province.

In 2012, the capital town of Ilagan officially became a city, after the move gained 96% of the votes in the plebiscite conducted on August 11, 2012. The night after the plebiscite, Ilagan was declared as a component city of the province.

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