Commonwealth Network
Concepcion Arguello
This woman's tale is perhaps the saddest on this page and one of the most magnificent examples of devotion told anywhere. When she was young, the daughter of the Presidio Commandant fell in love with Nikolai Rezanov, a young Russian officer from Fort Ross who had come to San Francisco to establish trade between his settlement and the still tiny village. She could not marry him because he was not a Catholic, but as he left he promised her that he would go to the Czar and ask his permission to convert so that he could. Many years passed and Nikolai did not return. Doña Concepcion entered a convent and waited, convinced that he had not forgotten her. In 1846, some forty years after their romantic affair ended, she learned that she'd been right: Nikolai had left immediately for St. Petersburg, but had died during the long overland trek and was buried in Yakutsk, Siberia. His lover never married.