She was the daughter of José Darío Argüello, the Spanish governor of Alta California and Presidio Commandante. She was born at the Presidio of San Francisco and at 15 she fell in love with Nikolai Rezanov, the visiting head of a Russian expedition to Alaska.
His expedition had hard times in California and his involvement with Argüello was at first motivated by practical considerations, since the Spanish Crown did not permit giving aid to Russians. But the pair fell in love, and Rezanov returned to Russia to ask the Tsar for permission to marry Argüello. During his return trip across Siberia in 1807, he fell from his horseback, became sick and died in Krasnoyarsk, where he is buried.
According to a traditional account, Argüello never learned his fate and continued to wait for him nearly till the end of her life, rejecting all other mentor
The community she entered, which later became the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, soon moved to Benicia. Although freed from her engagement, she chose to stay single and later became a nun.
Argüello died in 1857 and is now buried in Saint Dominic"s Cemetery, Benicia, where her remains were moved from the cemetery of Saint Catherine Convent in 1894, when it closed. A monument marks her grave.
Francis Bret Harte wrote a ballad describing her fate, in which Rezanov is referred to as Count von Resanoff, the Russian, envoy of the mighty Czar.
Novel Concha: My Dancing Saint by Rebecca Lawrence Lee
Soviet rock opera Juno and Avos describes Concepción Argüello"s love story. Concepción Argüello is a character Christopher Moore"s novel Secondhand Souls.
She remained a member of the community until her death there in 1857.
