DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL wrote to Don Jose de la Guerra telling him that Padre Patricio Short paid, in part, for a fine funeral and burial plot at Mision San Carlos for Don Jose’s son Don Juan de la Guerra

+++  When Don Guillermo was in attendance on the Russian Governor, Juan de la Guerra fell suddenly ill at the Hartnell home in Monterey.  Dona Teresa sent an Indian to find her husband, but before he could return, the youth died in agony.  No one knew the cure, much less the cause, for this fatal illness.  Juan was nursed to the limit of their skill by his sisters and Father Patrick Short.  ++  Don Guillermo writes a sad letter to the boy’s father in Santa Barbara, an elegy on the untimely cutting off of this flower of the family.  They all mourn, says he, “parents, brothers and sisters, all relatives, and indeed everyone who knew our dearest Juan.”  On the day of his departure to fulfill the obligations which he had contracted with the Russians, he says that he left Juan suffering from a slight indisposition, but in good hands and with no thought of danger.  Anxiously he assures the bereaved father that carelessness has not contributed to the boy’s death, and inquires with the deepest love and solicitude about “la salud de mi amada Mama.”  ++  Of the friends and relatives surrounding Juan during his last hours, Don Guillermo told Don Jose that no one exceeded Father Patrick in kindness and good care of his pupil.  The priest even paid, in part, for a fine funeral and burial plot at the San Carlos Mission, and refused to be reimbursed, either by Hartnell or Don Jose.  All he asked for himself, in the division of Juan’s possessions, were two English books, translations of Homer and Virgil.  The remainder of an extensive library of English and Latin books which Juan had kept in the mission Hartnell begged for his school, saying they would not be missed in Santa Barbara “and here would be of great use to me.”  ++  In his last illness, Juan gave a most prized possession to his sister Angustias.  This was a small painting which had been admired by Frederick Beechey, the previous decade.  The British officer saw it at San Carlos Mission and offered a considerable sum for it, but was turned down by a padre who knew the true value of his church’s property. . . . +++