He indicates that he will let his cousin in on the ground floor, saying: “If ever anything should be done and any agency accrew . . . . . I shall not forget my old friend.” Meanwhile, a suggestion:
‘Could you demand in my name, or your own, a large extent of good land near San Francisco on the banks of the river? If you can so as to secure the property . . . . . I will either take the whole, or half with you, and I will send out Colonists from England, good men and true, who will not play the Game of Texas. There is money to be made in this way. If you do not act, say nothing about it.’
Once again the golden gleam of a fortune to be made without too much effort! As usual, Hartnell needed money for his growing family. His interpreter job for Commodore Jones was done, and there remained only the poorly paying position as customs official. Shipping was at a standstill, while foreign statesmen were deciding California’s fate.
Perhaps the prospect of literary fame lured him more strongly than material gain. Or his purpose may have been more admirable still – to make an anonymous contribution to world knowledge. We never shall know more than that he answered every one of Wyllie’s questions in considerable detail. That he wrote with style, with informed eloquence, is apparent from the mutilated manuscript which remains among his papers. Originally, it must have been a contemporary account of life in California to rank with his famous brother-in-law’s interest and verity. Dr. Wyllie said of it: “The answers to my queries are full and able, just such as I could have expected from the talent that I always attributed to you.
But once again William Hartnell was fated to have his brains picked without profiting by it. The promised pamphlet never appeared in print, and portions were abstracted, without credit, from the original of Hartnell’s long letter to his doctor-cousin, dated April 20, 1844. Other writers and historians reaped from Hartnell’s sowing, as did other traders, educators, diplomats in other periods of his life. The quality of his reflections is shown in the few pages left intact by vandal scissors:
‘My dear Cousin, as all I advance is to the best of my knowledge true, and nothing secret, you are perfectly at liberty to make what use you may see fit of my name, and it would be highly gratifying to me to hear that what information I am able to give you, may be of any use to you. I will now proceed to answer your questions.’
Of foreign influences in the country which might at one time have operated strongly for or against Wyllie’s colonization plan he mentions the French not at all.
‘The Hudson’s Bay Company have a house and an agent established at San Francisco for the purpose of collecting hides and tallow in exchange for English goods and this is the only commerce which at present exists between the Columbia river and this place. There is now no longer any commerce carried on between the Russian settlements and California. The Russian American Company have disposed of everything possessed in their settlement at Ross to Captain Sutter, a Swiss Gent. established on the South bank of the Sacramento and he, I believe, is to pay in whatever produce (particularly wheat) he may raise at his establishment of “New Helvetia.”
‘Several parties of Americans have come from the United States to California by way of the Rocky Mountains. It has hitherto taken them about six months to perform the journey but I expect that very shortly it may be effected in at least half the time, when the roads become better known. It has been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is possible to travel from the U. S. to settlements in California with wagons.
No mines of any description are at present worked in California, but there is no doubt that coal, asphalts, and the precious metals do exist and the latter in abundance. A “placer de oro” has lately been found in the neighbourhood of “the Pueblo” [Los Angeles] and there are . . . . .a quantity of paisanos employed washing for the gold, which is of very good quality and, although generally found in very small pieces, lumps of the weight of half an ounce have been picked out.’
Answering Wyllie’s question as to the state of missionary establishments in California, Hartnell says:
‘The missions are almost all entirely gone to ruin and can never be brought back to their former state; and there is no doubt but the temporal welfare of a great portion of the inhabitants has been much improved by their ruin, for formerly almost all the land of the country belonged to the Missions and the white inhabitants were not able to obtain any and now the former are barely left with what is sufficient for the cattle they at present possess, and the latter have obtained grants of farms, many of which are not well stocked and in general are improving rapidly.’
As a sobering note on these temporal gains, the educator adds:
‘We are much in want of spiritual assistance in California, and likewise of good establishments for the education of youth [Hartnell is at this time obliging Governor Micheltorena by teaching school in Monterey] and I for my part should be very glad indeed to see 20 or 30 Jesuits introduced into the country.’
The common interest of Micheltorena and Hartnell in education has led them into a friendly relationship. It is therefor easy for Hartnell to get the Governor’s ear, and he feels that Micheltorena can be counted on to keep Wyllie’s proposition confidential. Continuing his report:
‘With respect to the latter part of your letter I have spoken to the Governor; no instructions whatever have been received in California touching the exchange of deferred bonds for land. But His Excellency has assured me that he will do all that he possibly can for you with respect to granting a tract of land for colonization. His faculties do not allow him to give more than 11 square leagues to one person, but I can ask for one tract for you and another for myself, and I am almost certain that I shall succeed in obtaining the privilege to hold onto them a reasonably sufficient time to enable settlers to come out from England (say two years from the time they are granted without being obliged to stock them or cultivate them within one twelve-month, as all others who have hitherto obtained grants of land in California have been obliged to do. The Governor told me plainly that he wished very much that settlers would come out from Europe so that all the vacant lands should not be given to Americans, and he even hinted that he should like to take a share in the speculation himself. He has always professed himself particularly favourable to the English. You will have the goodness to let me know as soon as possible what your ideas are respecting the formation of a settlement, what extent of land you would wish to obtain and what number of settlers you could count upon sending out, etc., etc., etc.’
As tangible evidence of his interest in this colonization scheme, Governor Micheltorena made an immediate and outright grant of fertile land to William Hartnell, eleven leagues on the Cosumnes River to be known as Rancho el Cosumnes.
How brilliant the prospect gleamed for the British cousins to form an “empire” rivaling Sutter’s New Helvetia! Unfortunately, on November 14, 1844, only eleven days after granting el Cosumnes to Hartnell, the friendly Governor Micheltorena was deposed from office. He had no serious faults, save laziness, but the Californians became angered by the depredations of his undisciplined, felon army. Pio Pico was elevated to the highest office in the land.
Now forty-three years of age, Don Pio was heavy and coarse in appearance. Perhaps this derived from self-indulgence, perhaps even from elephantiasis or gland trouble. Suffice it to say that in appearance and action Don Pio symbolized a type of person repugnant to Don Guillermo Hartnell. And Governor Pico nursed a grudge against the former visitador for displacing him as administrador of San Luis Rey Mission, although Don Pio also favored an English protectorate.
Had Hartnell been a friend of the new Governor, as of the old, he could have secured all the land he wanted, as had Hugo Reid and William Workman, who were deeded the mission lands at San Gabriel; Juan Forster and James McKinley, who bought San Juan Capistrano for $710. Pico granted nothing to Hartnell, and shattered the Englishman’s illusion of empire building. At best, it could have lasted only a little while. From the formal installation of Don Pico as governor to the first firing of guns in the war between Mexico and the United States was a matter of months. The Americans did not honor Don Pio’s last-minute legacies of land.
Following the revolt against Micheltorena, Hartnell lost the various government positions through which he had supported his family in the early forties, as customs official, tax collector, court clerk, and teacher in Monterey. Collectively, they had supplied him with cash for family needs beyond the produce of Alisal and Cosumnes, and there were a few months of incessant worry, in late 1844 and early 1845, from which Don Guillermo was rescued by his brother-in-law, returning from Europe. Through Don Pablo’s influence with Pio Pico, Hartnell was offered a new government job which he had no choice but to accept. He was asked to organize a treasury department for the fast-growing pueblo of San Francisco, similar to his Monterey plan which had proved efficient through the years. It meant separation from his family, but surcease from financial worry.
Shortly before his departure, on December 13, 1844, Don Guillermo received a letter from Captain Sutter at New Helvetia aksing – nay, commanding – him to do various commissions in the capital for the king of the northern empire. Sutter wrote in German, ending with a veiled threat: ”I would be very grateful to you especially as the political horizon looks very cloudy and you cannot think of peace any more . . . . . I am here in a martial state, every day we are drilling. I have a strong garrison, and several thousand Indians ready to fight for their fuhrer at any moment.”
Sutter’s courier had orders to return with an immediate answer from Hartnell. Unintimidated and with dignity, Don Guillermo answered the fuhrer: “It will always give me great pleasure to serve you to the utmost of my power but I only received your letter yesterday, and your courier tells me that he must leave today, so that it is impossible in so short a time to form any idea of what may be done for you, but I shall not lose sight of your interests.” He did not trouble to write in German, save a salutation at the end.
Important events crowded each other in California from February 1845, when Pio formally succeeded Micheltorena as governor, to May 1846, when President Polk proclaimed that “by the act of the Republic of Mexico a state of war exists between that government and the United States.”
During htis inexorable march of time, Robert Wyllie continued his effort to transform California into a British colony by peaceful penetration. In rueful mood, Cousin William would read his letters.
[Pages 263 - 267 of Susanna Bryant Dakin's book, THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL, published by Stanford University Press in 1949]
