Photos of Santo Tomas, Batangas, Early American Colonial Period

Below are four pictures showing snippets of life in the then-municipality of Santo Tomas, Batangas early during the American colonial period. The pictures are from the Manila Railroad Company Collection¹ of the United States National Archives Digital Library. No dates were given about when these pictures were taken, but from similar pictures in the collection, the likelihood is that these were taken between the years 1908 and 1912.

This was an era when the town of Santo Tomas, along with neighboring Tanauan, made the Province of Batangas essentially the “citrus capital” of the Philippines². Among the citrus products that were exported to other towns and localities in the Philippines were the “dalandan” and the “dalanghita,” both varieties of what is called “soft peel oranges,” i.e. can be peeled using one’s fingers without the need for a knife.

In Batangas, the orange is called “sinturis” or “sintunis,” depending on the locality. This type of orange is called Mandarin orange in English and is grown in tropical or subtropical environments such as Southeast Asia, including, of course, the Philippines.

Below are the pictures with descriptions. The reader will please note that captioning is not a strength of the United States National Archives, so that most of the pictures of the Manila Railroad Company Collection are scantily labeled and provide very little information.

These first two pictures show workers preparing to load oranges, contained in large rattan baskets, onto railroad cars parked near the train station in the town of Santo Tomas.

These next photos show passenger movement at the train station in Santo Tomas. The labels at the National Archive do not provide enough information as to where this particular train was headed, but the Batangas line went straight into what is now Batangas City and onto Bauan, branching out at Malvar to go to Laguna as far as Santa Cruz.

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