goldfields

Sorry that it’s taken me so long to get around to the end of the story. But it is no where near as long as Conchita had to wait to learn the fate of her lover, Nikolai Rezanov.

Rezanov left San Francisco Bay on May 11, 1806. By June 7 the Juno was back at Sitka, where he found the colony about to go under from a combination of starvation and the threat of an attack by Tlingit warriors. The provisions and reinforcements they brought were the salvation of the Russian colony in Alaska.

Rezanov did not hasten to cross the North Pacific and begin his return trip across Siberia. He spent most of the summer in Alaska, supervising the revival of the colony and writing lengthy dispatches to the directors of the Russian-American Company and the Tsar. In his dispatches he revealed his intention to marry Conchita, but couched the news in terms of business and politics to make it palatable to his superiors.

At the end of July he set sail for Okhotsk, on the eastern shore of Russia. Arriving in late August, he started off on the trip across Siberia. He fell ill at Irkutsk (by Lake Baikal) and spent three months there, then resumed his travels, only to relapse again at the trading post of Krasnoyarsk, halfway to Moscow. He would never leave it. He died of fever and exhaustion in Krasnoyarsk on March 8, 1807.

Conchita waited, and it was not until 1808 that she heard rumors, brought by Russian otter hunters, that Rezanov had died on his way to St. Petersburg. Still she hoped, but as the years went by she must have known that he would never return. She moved with her family to Santa Barbara, and later to Monterey, when her father became governor of California in 1814. By 1818, 10 years after she first heard rumors of her fiance’s death, she was living in Mexico. As a young woman of good family and renowned beauty, she received many offers of marriage, but she refused them all.

Without exception, the men who sought my hand were worthy and honorable. After much deliberation and prayer I concluded that I could not and would not be joined in marriage to one whom I did not love . . . I felt that a certain lasting loyalty was demanded of me by a Higher Power–a loyalty to Nikolai and myself.

After the death of her parents, Conchita returned to California in 1829 and became a Franciscan lay sister. When a Dominican convent was established in Monterey in 1851, Conchita joined as a novice, and as Sister Maria Dominga, became California’s first native-born nun. She befriended a 13-year-old novice, and it was to this young friend, Sister Vincentia, that she confided the story of her romance with the courtly Russian. Decades later Sister Vincentia related the story to a priest, who wrote down her recollections of Conchita.

Although she never doubted as to his (Nikolai’s) deep loyalty and intense sincerity in her regard, she told me that from the evening he sailed away out through the Golden Gate she had somehow a deep, hidden, eerie feeling that stayed with her night and day.

Maria de Concepcion Arguello died at the convent in Benicia on December 23, 1854. The legend of Nikolai and Conchita, a compound of Spanish gaiety and passion and Russian melancholy and ardor, lives on in novels, poetry, and opera.

The tombstone of Conchita in the nuns’ cemetery in Benicia.

The tomb of Rezanov in Krasnoyarsk, destroyed by Bolsheviks in 1932.

Artist’s conception of Maria de Concepcion Arguello. (Conchita)

In 1805-06 Nikolai Rezanov spent a miserable winter in the Russian outpost at Sitka. Life in the Russian colony was beyond wretched: the log cabins were cold and damp, the food stores were dwindling, the clothing was infested with vermin, the men suffered from scurvy, and there was no work to keep  them occupied—nothing to do but drink, brood, and fight.

In desperation, and in spite of winter storms, Rezanov put to sea and headed south to California. On March 28, 1806 the ship sailed into San Francisco Bay. They were welcomed by the Spanish, who had been expecting a Russian exploratory expedition to arrive. Rezanov was not that expedition, but he didn’t mention that. He told the comandante that he had been entrusted by his emperor with command over all his American territories (i.e., Alaska), and had come to California on orders to confer with the governor of the neighboring territory. This was not precisely true, but it was better than admitting that he and his men were starving.

The commander of the Presidio was Don Jose Dario Arguello. At dinner Rezanov met his gracious wife and eleven of the Arguello’s thirteen children. The eldest daughter was Maria de Concepcion, known to her family as Conchita. Fifteen years old, she was considered “the beauty of the two Californias.” She was tall and slender, with clear fair skin and sparkling brown eyes.

After a stinking, starving winter in Sitka, it’s not hard to see why Nikolai Rezanov fell for Conchita. She was not only beautiful; she was lively, charming, and kind. But what did Conchita see in the 42-year-old emaciated widower from Alaska?

Stay tuned for more of the story of Nikolai and Conchita.

A few paragraphs from an Address by Major John Bidwell to the California State Agricultural Society, 1860:

There is no reason why we cannot supply ourselves with the thousands of barrels, boxes, hogsheads, and casks, of dried apples, peaches, nuts, raisins, and other fruits which are constantly imported hither. It will not do to say that we cannot raise apples in California, for it is too well known that our mountains, the country along our extended sea coast, and numerous intermediate valleys, produce in abundance the finest apples in the world. . . .

Almonds grow to perfection here, and can be raised almost as easily as peaches and in quantities to supply all the markets on the Pacific Ocean. We can also grow the Persian Walnut, or Maderia Nut, and without doubt the Filbert also. . .

California is emphatically the land of the vine; and can there be any doubt that we can produce the finest wines? This is an important question, because we are actually importing in casks, barrels, baskets and cases, millions of gallons every year. And yet it is admitted that there is not a land beneath the sun better suited to grape culture than California. . . .

Of peaches and pears it would be vain to attempt description that would be credited abroad—to be appreciated they must be seen. No country can equal much less surpass them. The unbounded enterprise of our horticulturists, has done wonders in supplying the country with these as well as all other kinds of fruit, and to them the gratitude of the State is due for a large share of her prosperity and renown.

We are importing a hundred thousand dollars in figs and raisins almost every year, which can and should, and, by the aid of horticultural enterprise, will be with us as a home production.

Pres Longley, the Bard of Butte

The Annual Meeting of the Bidwell Mansion Association is coming up on Sunday January 26, and John Rudderow and I will be speaking on our book The Miner Poet: Poems of Pres Longley. There is a reception at 5:30 (cookies, coffee, and lemonade), and the meeting is at 6:00 p.m. After a short business meeting, we will be speaking and answering questions.

If you like poetry, if you are interested in local history, or if you want to know more about what it was like to be a Gold Rush miner, please come. Pres Longley, the poet of Helltown and the bard of Butte, was well-known in for his verse, which appeared in local newspapers. He knew John Bidwell pretty well and was sometimes a guest at the Mansion.

It was Joseph Kennedy, Annie Bidwell’s father, who asked Pres, “Does poetry pay?'” Pres thought about that a moment, and then replied:

Does poetry pay?
No, not in dollars and cents.
But it must be inferred
There is some recompense.

The recompense for Pres was friendship and conviviality, a tale well-told and the occasional pie. If you would like to know more about our own miner poet, join us at Bidwell Mansion Visitor’s Center on January 26.