Dona Teresa accompanied DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL to Santa Barbara with her newborn second son Nathaniel, “alias the Bishop”
+++ Wyllie has no news, at the moment, but refers him to Trader Virmond “for all the news. . . . from Cape Horn to Cape Mendocino - touching as he does from place to place and having everywhere so many friends.” ++ It was the ubiquitous German who came to carry off Don Guillermo and his father-in-law on their separate missions. Don Jose insisted on proceeding to Mexico against the advice of all his family and friends. Stern decrees recently had excluded all Spaniards from Mexican territory. Even from California, Spaniards were fleeing in fear of their lives. Such men as Don Antonio Cot and the respected padres Ripoll and Altimira, intimates of the de la Guerra-Hartnell-Carrillo clan, already were slipping away in secret. ++ Don Guillermo received an anxious inquiry from Captain Beechey on this subject. He in Sandwich and Wyllie in Mazatlan each had heard rumors of trouble on the coast for all non-Mexican residents, not only Spaniards. Wyllie, writing on December 14, graphically describes the situation in Mexico: “Almost all the states of this Republic are successively issuing decrees expelling the old Spaniards and I believe soon none will be left in this country except married individuals that is, individuals married to Mexican citizens, the aged and the decrepit. These measures have caused a great stagnation in commerce.” ++ Don Jose, so long a well-loved and important resident of California, found it impossible to credit the presence of personal danger. As his daughter Angustias remarked, his only crime consisted in having been born in Spain; he had come to live in Mexico at the age of eight or nine. He departed on schedule, taking with him two sons, Pablo and Francisco, to be educated in Mexico City. His family and friends were assembled around him in a series of farewell festivities. ++ Dona Teresa’s baby, a second son named after her British brother-in-law Nathaniel, “alias the Bishop,” had been born in time for her to accompany Don Guillermo to Santa Barbara. From this port the men embarked on Virmond’s brig ‘Fulham,’ leaving the mother and little children to keep grandmother company. +++
