Mary Hartnell, William Hartnell’s sister, was the first in the family to look up Don Juan de la Guerra in Liverpool

+++  The visits of Captain Lincoln always delight the young Californian.  Shuttling between the two oceans during Juan’s school years in England, Lincoln is a periodic witness of his progress.  The boy does not boast, he merely tells the truth, writes Lincoln to Hartnell during January, 1827.  ”Don Juan improves wonderfully in all his studies. . . . He will make a clever man if he is allowed to remain a few years.”  ++  But Juan himself was dreaming of the day of his return to the land of sunshine and happiness.  Liverpool seemed a dreary town to him; he did not greatly like the people, and felt that to them he was still a stranger from a strange land, and always would be.  He commenced to worry beyond his years about his faraway family and friends.  Communication seemed maddenly slow and unreliable.  After the first burst of interest and pride in his intellectual powers, he commenced to feel cut off from all he held nearest and dearest in life.  ++  With the long-delayed news of the birth of a son to Teresa and Guillermo came a lock of its hair from the mother, his sister.  This homely little token touched off his inner unhappiness.  Writing from Liverpool on April 28, 1827, Juan confides to his “dear Brother”:  ++  ’I hope my time to go home will soon come because I am already tired of this country, and I do not like very much to stop so long from Home, and I hope the next time you write, you will say something about it.’  ++  He mentions, as partial solace, the approaching visit of Mary Hartnell to Liverpool, the first of the family actually to look him up.  Mr. Brotherston, who from the first has been like a father to the young Californian, lately seems distraught by grief over the death of his daughter and worry over the current business depression.  This makes Juan feel more friendless and without family than ever.  According to William Logan, now living in Liverpool, the boy’s reputation increases as being a very clever but wild youth. . . . +++