Ion Perdicaris - Family Life

Family Life

Ion Perdicaris' father, Gregory Perdicaris, was a Greek who had emigrated to the United States from Athens, marrying into a wealthy family in South Carolina and becoming a US citizen. He later returned to Greece as US consul. In 1846 the family moved to Trenton, New Jersey where Gregory Perdicaris became wealthy as one of the organizers of the Trenton Gas Company. His son Ion lived the life of a dilettante until the American Civil War. By 1862, the family's property in South Carolina was in danger of confiscation by the government of the Confederate States of America. Ion Perdicaris travelled to Greece, intending to renounce his United States citizenship and acquire Greek nationality to forestall any confiscation.

Perdicaris later moved to Tangier, where he built a house known as the Place of Nightingales and filled it with exotic animals. In 1871, Perdicaris met Ellen Varley, wife of the eminent telegraph engineer C.F. Varley in Malvern, England. Varley was away on a cable-laying expedition and Ellen abandoned him for Perdicaris. The Varleys divorced in 1873 and Ellen settled in Tangier with Perdicaris and her two sons and two daughters. Fascinated by Moroccan culture, Perdicaris wrote several books (few of them published to a wide audience) on Morocco, and became the unofficial head of Tangier's foreign community. He maintained business interests in England and the United States and frequently visited New York.