Scot Dr. Stephen Anderson, Lima resident + Mancisidor business associate ‘remained a true friend to Don Guillermo’ HARTNELL

+++  CHAPTER 3  ++ Diplomat  ++  FOR ENGLAND  ++  INTENSE competition distressed William Hartnell.  He envied Father Cabot’s calm assurance that “the soul of commerce is friendly intercourse,” but run-ins with wily rivals like Mancisidor and William Gale had long since disillusioned him.  Begg and McCulloch, being natural-born traders, seemed actually to enjoy the contest, themselves not above trickery, as when the Scot advised his partner “to keep back for a few days” an important letter from Lima addressed to Mancisidor.  ++  We know that Hartnell’s own record of honesty in England and South America had not been without blotches.  But his conversion seemed complete; and the reputation he built for himself in California was as “a man who enjoyed and merited the respect and friendship of all who knew him, being perfectly honest and straightforward in all his transactions, of most genial temperament, and too liberal for his own interest,” according to Bancroft’s ‘Pioneer Register.’  Such a man was considered to be a lamb among wolves, as competition became increasingly intense and unscrupulous.  ++  One rival trader who remained a true friend to Don Guillermo was the Scot Dr. Stephen Anderson, a resident of Lima associated in business with Mancisidor.  Not a great deal is remembered of him today, but during the ‘twenties and early ‘thirties he was known by everyone of consequence living along the west coast.  Early mention of his trading activity in Alta California occurs in the Hartnell-McCulloch correspondence of 1824.  From that year on, Anderson was a frequent visitor to California ports, acting as supercargo aboard various vessels.  Contemporary references indicate not only that he was a good businessman and congenial companion, but that he became famed as a man with magic powers, being an M.D. actually capable of practicing medicine.  Doctors were few and far between in the western hemisphere, and most “cures” were worse than the original complaints.  +++