How Churches in Balayan, Bauan, Ibaan, Lemery, Lipa, San Jose, San Juan, Tanauan and Taysan Looked Like in 1911

The images were all taken in the year 1911 by the American Luther Parker, who first came to the Philippines in 1901 and stayed in the Philippines until 1931. He worked in the Bureau of Education and rose to the position of Superintendent. He retired in 1926.

He travelled extensively around the Philippines and amassed an amazing collection of pictures of peoples and places he visited. These pictures have been preserved in digital form and are publicly available at the National Library of the Philippines’ online presence.

For some curious reason, although he took numerous pictures to depict the culture of the country in his visits to many places, those he took in Batangas were mostly limited to religious edifices. In this collection, for instance, all pictures fall under the religious edifice category except for one street scene in Lipa and a picture of houses in Lemery destroyed by an earthquake preceding the 1911 eruption of Taal Volcano.

Note that the captions under the pictures in this post are as Parker himself wrote; and that he spelled Taysan as Taisan and Tanauan as Tanauan.