SIMEON LIGDA

SIMEON LIGDAMale View treeBorn: 1867Died: 1888-12-13
Father: VICTOR NICHOLAS LIGDAMother: EMILIE CRAMER
Children: none
Siblings: VALENTINA LIGDA, MARY LIGDA, ELIZABETH LIGDA, ALEXANDER LIGDA, PIERRE LIGDA , PAUL VICTOROVITCH LIGDA, OLGA VICTOROVNA LIGDA, VLADIMIR LIGDA

Simeon was the first son born to Victor and Emilie Ligda.  He was not a robust child.  His poor health was an important consideration in his parents’ decision to move the family to the milder climate of Italy in 1874 when Simeon was 7.  He probably began his formal education while living in Italy.  He would have been 11 when the family moved to France in 1879.  Almost certainly, he went to school in France which had compulsory public education for all children 6 – 13 at that time.

His brother, Alec, recalled Simeon as upright and studious; he: ” . . . always had his nose in a book.”  Alec says Simeon was apprenticed to a microscope maker in Paris and actually made a microscope for his own use.  He also recalls that in 1885 or 86, Simeon took his brother, Paul, on a three week walking tour thru Normandy.  Each boy carried a knapsack.

When Simeon was 20 and military age, his father sent him to the America to determine if there were places the family might move.  There is a record of his arrival in New York on October 17, 1887 aboard the SS La Champagne which sailed from La Harve.  On arrival, he gave his occupation as a farmer and claimed French citizenship.  Edith Ligda recalls family accounts that Simeon first visited the Midwest and wrote that he did not like the area.  He moved on to Portland, Oregon where he caught a terrible cold.  While still suffering, he traveled down the coast to San Francisco where his condition worsened into consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis).  Simeon was cared for in the Russian Community and by Dr. Russell Sizelofsky, a family friend from Paris.  He wrote his parents that San Francisco was a good place to live.

Despite the care he was given, Simeon died on December 13, 1888 while a patient in the City and County Hospital. 1  He was buried in a cemetery belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church on Geary Street in San Francisco.  By some family accounts, the family was never able to locate Simeon’s grave because the records kept by the Church were inaccurate.  The cemetery has since been closed and the graves moved to make way for commercial development.

Notes:

  1. The official death records were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire.  Simeon’s death was reported in the San Francisco Morning Call of December 15, 1888.  His age was shown as 21.