Aurora Quezon - Early Life

Early Life

Quezón was born on February 19, 1888 to Pedro Aragón and Zeneida Molina, in the town of Baler in Tayabas province. During the Philippine Revolution, her father was imprisoned by the colonial authorities for being suspected as being a member of the Katipunan; he would die in captivity. Among her tutors during her youth was her mother's sister, María Dolores Molina, who was the mother of her first cousin and future husband Manuel Luis Quezón. After her father's imprisonment, she was taken in by her aunt María Dolores and uncle Lucio, and she lived for a time under the same roof as her future spouse. After Manuel's own parents had died, he would stay with the Aragón family whenever he was in Baler.

After Pedro Aragón's death, his survivors, including daughter Aurora, had been cast into extreme poverty, surviving on subsistence farming. This experience was said to have shaped young Aurora's lifelong attitude of according equal treatment to everybody, no matter their status in life. The Aragón family later moved to Lucena where Manuel was then serving as the provincial fiscal of Tayabas. Aurora, who had wanted to become a school teacher, enrolled at the Philippine Normal College in Manila at the expense of her future husband, but had to stop her studies after two years due to her poor health.