Baptismal Records of Old Mission Dolores, vol. 1, fol. 96, No. 931).  The dates of Feb. 26, 1790, given by Bancroft, founded on mere family correspondence, and of Feb. 13, 1791, given by Mary Graham, founded upon a mistaken reading of the baptismal record, are both incorrect.  The Spanish pet-name for Concepcion (pronounced Con-sep-se-own’, with the accent on the last syllable) is Concha (pronounced Cone-cha, the accent strongly on the first syllable, and the cha as in Charles), and its diminutives are Conchita and Conchitita.

Her father was afterward transferred to Santa Barbara, and from there, while he was temporary Governor of California, under the Spanish regime, on Dec. 31, 1814, appointed Governor of Lower California.  Her brother, Luis Antonio Arguello, born June 21, 1784, also at the Presidio, died March 27, 1830.  He entered the military service as cadet, Sept. 6, 1799; was alferez (ensign), Dec. 23, 1800; lieutenant, March 10, 1806; succeeded his father as Comandante of San Francisco in 1806; was the first Governor of California under Mexican rule, and is buried in the old Mission Dolores cemetery, where the finest monument in the cemetery stands erected to his memory.]

I am glad to see this bronze tablet affixed to this noble adobe building.  I take it, that when some of the wooden eye-sores that here abound are torn down, in the necessary beautification that should precede 1915, this old historic building — a monument to Spanish chivalry and hospitality — will be spared.  We have too few of them left to lose any of them now.  And of all buildings in the world, the Presidio army post should guard this one with jealous care, for here was enacted one of the greatest, sweetest, most tragic love stories of the world — a story which is all the Presidio’s own, and which it does not have to share with any other army post.

To you, men of the army, my appeal ought to be an easy one.  You have no desire to escape the soft impeachment that the profession of arms has ever been susceptible to the charms of woman.  The relation of Mars to Venus is not simply a legend of history, is founded on no mere mythology - their relationship is as sure as the firmament, and their orbits are sometimes very close together.

There is one name that should be the perennial toast of the men of this Presidio.  We have just celebrated by a splendid pageant the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Pacific Ocean by Balboa, and we chose for queen of that ceremony a beautiful girl by the name of Conchita.  There was another Conchita once, the daughter of the comandante of this Presidio, the bewitching, the beautiful, the radiant Concha Arguello.

In this old Presidio she was born.  In the old Mission Dolores she was christened.  Here, it is told, that in the merry exuberance of her innocent babyhood, she danced instead of prayed before the shrine.  In the glory of these sunrises and day-vistas and sunsets, she passed her girlhood and bloomed into womanhood.  In this old adobe building she queened it supremely.  Here she presided at every hospitality; here she was the leader of every fiesta.