Domingo Lam-co was influential in building up Tubigan barrio, one
of the richest parts of the great estate. In name and appearance
it recalled the fertile plains that surrounded his native Chinchew,
"the city of springs." His neighbors were mainly Chinchew men, and
what is of more importance to this narrative, the wife whom he married
just before removing to the farm was of a good Chinchew family. She
was Inez de la Rosa and but half Domingo's age; they were married
in the Parian church by the same priest who over thirty years before
had baptized her husband.

Her father was Agustin Chinco, also of Chinchew, a rice merchant,
who had been baptized five years earlier than Lam-co. His baptismal
record suggests that he was an educated man, as already indicated,
for the name of his town proved a puzzle till a present-day Dominican
missionary from Amoy explained that it appeared to be the combined
names for Chinchew in both the common and literary Chinese, in each
case with the syllable denoting the town left off. Apparently when
questioned from what town he came, Chinco was careful not to repeat
the word town, but gave its name only in the literary language,
and when that was not understood, he would repeat it in the local
dialect. The priest, not understanding the significance of either in
that form, wrote down the two together as a single word. Knowledge
of the literary Chinese, or Mandarin, as it is generally called,
marked the educated man, and, as we have already pointed out,
education in China meant social position. To such minute deductions
is it necessary to resort when records are scarce, and to be of value
the explanation must be in harmony with the conditions of the period;
subsequent research has verified the foregoing conclusions.