Marcela Mariño de Agoncillo

Marcela Coronel Mariño was the daughter of Don Francisco Diokno Mariño and Doña Eugenia Coronel Mariño, a rich family in her hometown of Taal, Batangas. She finished her studies at Santa Catalina College, Marcela acquired her learning in music and feminine crafts. At the age of 30, Marcela Coronel Mariño married Felipe Encarnacion Agoncillo, a Filipino lawyer, and a jurist, and gave birth to six children. Her marriage led an important role in Philippine history. When her husband was exiled in Hong Kong during the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution, Marcela Mariño Agoncillo and the rest of the family joined him and temporarily resided there to avoid the anti-Filipino hostilities of the occupying Spain. While in Hong Kong, General Emilio Aguinaldo requested her to sew the flag that would represent the Republic of the Philippines. Doña Marcela Mariño de Agoncillo, with her eldest daughter Lorenza and a friend Delfina Herbosa Natividad, niece of Dr. Jose Rizal, manually sewed the flag in accordance with General Emilio Aguinaldo's design which later became the official flag of the Republic of the Philippines.

While the flag itself is the perpetual legacy of Doña Marcela Mariño de Agoncillo,[5] she is also commemorated through museums and monuments: like the marker in Hong Kong (where her family temporarily sojourned), at her ancestral home in Taal, Batangas which has been turned into a museum,[6] in paintings by notable painters as well as through other visual arts.

Marcela Coronel Mariño was born on June 24, 1859 in Taal, Batangas, Philippines[7] to Don Francisco Diokno Mariño and Doña Eugenia Coronel Mariño. She grew up in her ancestral Mariño house in Taal, Batangas built in the 1770s by her grandparents, Don Andres Sauza Mariño and Doña Eugenia Diokno Mariño.[8]

As a daughter of a rich and religious family,[9] Marcela Coronel Mariño was referred to in their town as Roselang Bubog which means "a virgin enthroned in the town church". Stories told in the area related that people kept waiting patiently by the church patio for her appearance in the morning to attend mass accompanied either by a maid or an elder relative.[10]

Marcela Coronel Mariño was sent to a convent after her education in Manila. The convent she was studying in was the Santa Catalina College of the Dominican nuns, an exclusive school for girls,[11] established in the Walled City of Intramuros where she finished her elementary and secondary education. In college, she learned Spanish, music, the feminine crafts and social graces.[12] She spent her girlhood partly in their hometown and partly in the convent.[13] Accordingly, Marcela was skilled in needlework.

Doña Marcela Coronel Mariño-Agoncillo was a renowned Filipina in the Philippine history as the principal seamstress of the first and official flag of the Republic of the Philippines, gaining her the title of "Mother of the Philippine Flag". More here: http://bit.ly/Ixmtt7.

Source:

• Felipe Agoncillo and Marcela Mariño's Marriage Information: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSMN-GS7X-X
• Dr. Slavstan Mariño, MD, PHD (Historian)