About Josephine Bracken

Marie Josephine Leopoldine Bracken
(August 9, 1876 - March 15, 1902)
was the fiancee of Philippine national hero,
José Rizal. Some believed that she was married to Rizal,
although no proof of a civil or church wedding has ever been found.

A girl with piercing blue eyes. Bracken was born in Hong Kong on August 9, 1876 to Irish parents, James Bracken, a corporal in the British Army, Elizabeth Jane McBride who married on May 3, 1868 in Belfast, Ireland. When her mother died shortly after childbirth, she was adopted by an American named George Taufer.

Bracken met Rizal when the latter spent several months in Hong Kong in 1891-92. She later recommended that her blind adopted father see Rizal, who was a respected ophthalmologist. By this time, he was a political exile in Dapitan, on the Zamboanga Peninsula. Although Taufer's condition was beyond Rizal's help, the physician fell in love with Bracken. They were allegedly wed in a civil union,[1] unable to obtain Catholic Church sanction for the marriage.

They lived together in Dapitan. She bore a stillborn child with Rizal, Francisco Rizal y Bracken, who was buried in Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte, Philippines. The day before his execution on charges of treason, rebellion and sedition by the Spanish colonial government, the Catholic Church claimed that Rizal returned to his Catholic faith and was married to Bracken in a church ceremony, although there has never been proof that this event happened.

After Rizal's death, Bracken joined the revolutionaries for a time. When called before the Spanish Governor-General, she was threatened with torture and imprisonment if she did not leave the Philippines, so she voluntarily returned to Hong Kong.

She subsequently married Vicente Abad, a Cebuano mestizo, who represented his father's Tabacalera Company in Hong Kong. A daughter, Dolores, was born to them on April 17, 1900. On March 15, 1902, Bracken died of tuberculosis.