PEACEMAKER: William Edward Petty Hartnell ‘loved his wife [Dona Maria Teresa de la Guerra Hartnell] so deeply and enduringly that she was sustained for the time she must spend on earth without him’

With the passing of Hartnell went a leading character from the California scene.

Yet so crowded had the stage become that few seemed conscious of his absence, aside from family and close friends.

An English companion of his youth wrote shortly before his death: “I have looked anxiously for your name in different accounts I have seen of California, but unsuccessfully.”

To this day, in recounting his time, historians overlook Hartnell.

Only in his home community has the name been honored.

One hundred years after the establishment of Hartnell’s school at Alisal, Salinas named its junior college for him.

A few miles away, adobe walls of the parent institution still are standing on the abandoned Camino Real, among the unchanging hills.

William Hartnell’s contribution to California history is difficult to define.

He created a plane of understanding in a primitive, polyglot community, and presided over it for many years.

By the end of his life, Monterey had become a microcosm, a little world inhabited by people from many countries.

Each stranger was assured of welcome and understanding at la casa Arnel.

Only discourteous conduct ever barred the door.

Hartnell played the undramatic, indispensable role of interpreter his whole life through.

Procedure at California’s constitutional convention might have ground to a standstill, lacking Hartnell’s contribution, his ability to explain and reconcile clashing convictions.

Instead, it became one of the most successful congresses in history, accomplishing its many aims in a few hard-working weeks.

Without respite, following the period when he represented people ignorant of their conquerors’ language, Hartnell spent the last years of his life in translating the new laws so that they could be understood by all who must obey them.

The first school of higher learning and liberal arts, the first girls’ school, and the inception of public education in California – all these we owe to a man who considered himself a failure in every career he embarked upon.

William Petty Hartnell was a man of many failures, many faults.

Yet unremittingly he tried “to promote harmony among all classes.”

Through stern effort, he helped to bridge from war to peace, to conduct his conquered country out of chaos into order.

He educated his own and other children for enlightened citizenship, girls as well as boys, red Indians along with white students.

And he loved his wife so deeply and enduringly that she was sustained for the time she must spend on earth without him.

Teresa de la Guerra Hartnell lived on at Alisal into the ‘eighties, surrounded by children and children’s children.

They delighted in her tales of the days that were gone, of the father who built firm the foundation of their lives in California.

The End

 

THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL

Susanna Bryant Dakin

Published by Stanford University Press 1949

Pages 292 – 293

 

LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL PACIFICAN HISTORY 1854 – 1949 – 2010

PEACEMAKER: ‘I… appoint as my sole executor, and as Tutor and Guardian to such of my children as may remain under age at the time of my death, my dearly beloved wife Maria Teresa de la Guerra,’ THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL, Susanna Bryant Dakin, pages 291 – 292

Don Guillermo left a will which was followed to the letter (translation):

‘I declare that it is my desire to live and die in the bosom of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and I request that when it may please the Almight to call me out of this world my funeral will be conducted in as plain and modest a manner as possible and without any unnecessary pomp. . . . .

‘I do further declare that I hereby constitute and appoint as my sole executor, and as Tutor and Guardian to such of my children as may remain under age at the time of my death, my dearly beloved wife Maria Teresa de la Guerra, and her brother and my good friend Don Pablo de la Guerra; requesting that they will as soon after my demise as possible pay off my debts and satisfy my bequests.

‘It is likewise my desire that my debtors be not in any way disturbed on account of the amounts they may owe; but that they be merely requested to pay and that whatever they may choose to pay be received in full of all demands.’

To his brother-in-law, Don Guillermo gave instructions as to distribution of his possessions among members of his large family in California, and surviving sisters and brothers in England.

“My principle object,” said the dead to Don Pablo, “is to prevent any member of the law from having anything whatsoever to do with my property or with my executors or heirs.”

Hartnell had written this will when lawyers were in demand to settle land disputes.

Several old friends, now destitute, had been defrauded within the law.

He detailed his own holdings of land, including the Rancho Cosumnes so nearly lost in a long lawsuit.

In deepest affection he made special bequests: to Teresita, his mother’s picture drawn long ago by his brother Nathaniel; to the three oldest sons, rings and a silver watch; “to the rest of my children I give my library to be divided amonst them as their mother may see fit; and to all of them I give my paternal blessings in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.”

THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL

Susanna Bryant Dakin

Published by Stanford University Press in 1949

Pages 291 – 292

 

LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL PACIFICAN HISTORY 1854 – 1949 – 2010

PEACEMAKER: ‘It was no longer in Dona Teresa’s power to aid her husband, save that her herbs and salves eased his pain, and her presence always comforted him,’ The Lives of William Hartnell, Susanna Bryant Dakin, page 291

When he returned to Alisal, when his laborious task was done, Hartnell wrote to the secretary of state, Van Voorhies, enclosing the last of his translations, the index to the laws.

Explaining a delay he said, “I have been extremely unwell and unable to work . . . . but as it is, I have done all that it was in my power to do.”

It was no longer within Dona Teresa’s power to aid her husband, save that her herbs and slaves eased his pain, and her presence always comforted him.

A brief note in the San Francisco Alta California told the world, a little later, that “W. E. P. Hartnell, an old resident of California and ex-State Translator, died at Monterey on the 2nd of February, 1854.”

Accompanying him in death within a week was his brother-in-law, Don Manuel Jimeno, “formerly Secretary of various old California Governors. . . .

“Both were persons widely known, and held many responsible positions under the former Government.”

Obviously both belonged to the past and already were forgotten by the world.

In contrast to the brief obituary in the northern California paper and a similar notice in the Los Angeles Star was a seemingly endless procession to the Catholic cemetery in Monterey.

A host of friends accompanied William Hartnell to his final resting place and, to everyone, Dona Teresa seemed the embodiment of strength in sorrow.

She comforted her sister Angustias, who knew not of her own loss, knew not that Don Manuel lay dying on that very day, estranged from his wife and far from home.

With the sisters in a closed carriage rode a young woman heavily veiled, and a three-year old boy.

This was Eduardo, hijo natural to Dona Felipin Manuel, the last child to be fathered by Hartnell.

Eduardo always had his place in Dona Teresa’s motherly heart, for his resemblance to her loved one.

LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL PACIFICAN HISTORY 1854 – 2010

 

THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL

Susanna Bryant Dakin

Published by Stanford University Press 1949

Page 291

 

 

PEACEMAKER: Don Guillermo Hartnell offered ‘a building and part of his town property as a dormitory site for Dominican nuns recently arrived with Bishop Alemany, to establish a girls’ school in California’

This was an unexpected testimonial of friendship from a man regarded generally as cold blooded and all business.

Hartnell performed one more civic service in offering a building and part of his town property as a dormitory site for Dominican nuns recently arrived with Bishop Alemany, to establish a girls’ school in California.

They also acquired an adobe which Don Manuel Jimeno had built next to his own house for a hotel, when an increasing number of house guests put too great a strain on Dona Angustia’s household.

Here was launched a pioneer project in the education of women, the realization of a twenty-year dream of William Hartnell’s.

Naturally his own daughters were among the first to enroll.

And on April 11, 1851, Dona Concepcion Arguello, long known as La Beata, entered the order as a novice, at sixty years of age.

She was drawing near reunion with her lover, the long-dead Russian Resanov.

Don Guillermo retired to Alisal, closeted with the task of translating thirteen hundred folios of laws from English into Spanish.

It was the complete code composed for California by delegates to the constitutional convention.

Immersed in paper work, Hartnell never heard or saw the strange sights and hectic sounds of the transition period from Mexican territory to American state.

Once only he went again to San Francisco, to attend a meeting of the Society of California Pioneers, on July 7, 1853.

Here he met most of his old friends who were alive and well.

Hugo Reid was dead, but not Juan Bandini or Abel Stearns from southern California.

From San Francisco came Thomas Larkin and Selim Woodworth, who had lived with the Hartnells during the early occupation of California by Americans.

From Sonoma, General Vallejo; from Colusa, Robert Semple; from Feather River, Captain Sutter; Jacob Leese, who had been Hartnell’s fellow delegate from Monterey; and Captain Cooper, who had been elected to the board of directors.

A few years earlier, how happy Hartnell would have been to greet them all and talk far into the night on every subject under the sun.

But that time was past, and Hartnell’s days were numbered.

He must finish the task he had been given.

All the time he stayed in San Francisco, old friends remarked that his thoughts were elsewhere.

Hartnell, the convivial soul, seemed not to be among them.

PEACEMAKER: Governor General Bennett Riley asked Don Guillermo Hartnell ‘to translate the laws, made in English at the convention, into Spanish for the Californians’

Aside from establishing the boundaries of the state, defining a mode of election of executive, legislative, and judicial officers, making the usual provisions for protection of life and property, and devising a system of taxation, they also ordered the foundation of a state-wide public school system, and outlawed slavery in any form.

A constitution, patterned after those of Iowa and New York, was signed by all delegates on October 13, 1849.

The convention then adjourned, and proceeded in a body to General Riley’s house.

Three cheers went up for Riley as governor of California, and three more for him as a gallant soldier.

After a short but heartfelt speech in which the “old man” said he had no fears for a California that chose her representatives so wisely, each one went to his own home glowing with the consciousness of a hard task done to the best of his ability.

Only the interpreter, Hartnell, had no rest.

One job finished; the next commenced immediately.

The Governor asked him to translate the laws, made in English at the convention, into Spanish for the Californians who would live by them.

His task was indispensable dull routine, and it took him the rest of his life.

He received impetus from a letter penned by Henry Halleck on January 1, 1850:

‘General Riley has directed me to communicate to you officially his retirement from office as Governor of California. . . .

‘The General also directs me to present you his warmest thanks for the able and faithful manner in which you have for nearly three years, performed the responsible and often very laborious duties of your office, and to assure you of his kindest regard and friendship.

‘Permit me, my dear Sir, to add to these assurances my own hearty thanks for the able and willing assistance which I have received from you in the performance of my duties as Secty. of State for California.

‘We have been associated together in office for nearly two years and a half, and during that period I have had full opportunity to learn your varied talent and great accomplishments as a linguist, and at the same time to appreciate your character as a man.

‘It is therefore with no ordinary feelings that I now announce to you the termination of our official relations.’

THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL, by Susanna Bryant Dakin,

Published by Stanford University Press in 1949, page 289.

 

LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL HISTORY 1849 – 2010

PEACEMAKER: ‘Unanimously, DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL was elected interpreter of the [Monterey state constitutional] convention,’ pages 288 – 289, Susanna Bryant Dakin

An initial difficulty arose when it was discovered that a number of the delegates did not speak English, and could not understand a word of what Halleck was saying.

Unanimously, Don Guillermo Hartnell was elected interpreter of the convention, to preside over a table of those who did not know the language of their conquerors.

At his right always sat General Vallejo, who styled himself ” foremost friend of the Americans.”

Everyone else, however, used this title with considerable irony.

During the Bear Flag Revolt, General Vallejo had been taken prisoner by some of the men who now hung on his every word.

A few years earlier, he himself had kidnapped Hartnell and held him prisoner for days, in resentment over el visitador‘s challenge to his authority.

But past differences now seemed forgotten by everyone.

The schoolmaster and the soldier, together, succeeded many times in preventing misunderstanding.

An arresting appearance these men made.

Don Guillermo was called pestana blanca for the snow that had fallen, capriciously, on the lashes and brow of one keen eye.

With the Californians’ fondness for nicknames, they also called him la perla negra (the black, or rare, pearl) among foreigners.

On his right always sat the younger man, Don Mariano, not as popular, perhaps a little pompous.

But he was most impressive in appearance, with fine black side whiskers curling like his hair, keen eyes, and a high forehead, obviously a hidalgo of high degree.

Both Hartnell and Vallejo from long custom wore the clothes of Spanish Californians, the embroidered waistcoat and trousers, bearskin botas, and elegant capa in cool weather.

Forty-eight men of varied nationality, age, religion, occupation, and poltical conviction crowded into the transformed ballroom at Colton Hall and “disputed like the devil at home” (according to Hugo Reid, delegate from San Gabriel) about such endlessly controversial subjects as the rights of women and Indians and Negroes.

But they accomplished their purpose in six weeks of hard thinking, spirited discussion, and final, intelligent compromise.

THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL, by Susanna Bryant Dakin, published by Stanford University Press, pages 288 – 289.

PEACEMAKER: ‘The kind Mrs. Hartnell [nee Maria Teresa de la Guerra]– one of the noblest among the native ladies of California’ saved the life of Monterey alcalde Walter Colton with ‘her roots and herbs’

Even the Indians caught the fever and, within a month, members of the gente de razon who remained in Monterey were without servants, besides other comforts of life.

Ruefully Colton describes his own situation:

‘We have a house and all the table furniture and culinary apparatus requisite, but our servants have run.

‘A general of the United States army, the commander of a man-of-war, and the alcalde of Monterey in a smoking kitchen, grinding coffee, toasting herring and peeling onions.

‘Those gold mines will upset all the domestic arrangements.’

The alcalde, overworked and underfed, fell ill at this time, and would have been in serious condition had it not been for Dona Teresa Hartnell.

With undying gratitude he says:

‘In a half-delirious state, which followed close upon the attack, I looked up and saw bending over me the kind Mrs. Hartnell — one of the noblest among the native ladies of California. . . . . I resigned myself to all her drinks and baths; she did with me just what she pleased. 

‘She broke the fever without breaking me; restored my strength and in a week I was in my office, attending to my duties.

‘What she gave me I know not, but I believe her roots and herbs saved my life.’

The hardships of a servantless life at home grew to seem worse to Colton than any the mines had to offer; so he locked his office and joined the rush himself.

Hartnell, with a deliberation which came from advancing years and ill health, finished his legal assignment.

He then went, by order of General Riley, who succeeded Richard Mason as military governor of California, to oversee the printing in San Francisco.

It was to be done by the press of the Alta California, which had absorbed the first little paper, the Californian, edited and published by Colton, Semple, and Hartnell himself.

Three hundred copies he ordered “for distribution among the officers of the existing Government, to be paid out of the Civil Fund.”

Hartnell arrived in San Francisco toward the end of May, to find great changes from the sleepy little pueblo of his early visits.

Overnight, almost she had become a crude American city, powerless to resist the horde of “argonauts” who were hastening by land and sea to wrest a fortune out of the rich northern lodes.

San Francisco already was a boom town.

The original community of adobe houses centering around the plaza had simply been absorbed into a sprawling, noisy city of frame and canvas.

Susanna Bryant Dakin: The Lives of William Hartnell, published by Stanford University Press, 1949, pages 284 – 285.

PEACEMAKER: ‘Don Guillermo and Dona Teresa [Hartnell] then sold pieces of property owned together in the township of Monterey to Americans of their acquaintance, including [California Governor] Richard Mason and Henry Halleck’

In strange contrast to the tumult of the next few years in California was the life lived by William Hartnell in the seclusion of Alisal.

It was mostly of the mind, spent within his library walls.

Once again Hartnell became a “quill-pusher” for the best part of each day.

Several sons were old enough to work on the ranch under supervision of Father Patrick’s protege, old Gorman.

Dona Teresa, aided by Teresita, and even the younger daughters, ran both the ranch household and la casa Arnel in Monterey with her accustomed grace and gaiety.

Bachelor Dr. Wyllie often expressed envy of his cousin’s “happy enjoyment of all domestic comforts.”

Hartnell applied for American citizenship through Abel Stearns, in order to secure his land grants made by four Mexican governors: town property in Monterey granted by Sola to McCulloch and Hartnell, when the partners first arrived in California; the portion of Alisal recorded as el Patrocinio de San Jose, granted by Figueroa for the establishment of a boys’ boarding school; Todos Santos and San Antonio, by Alvarado in appreciation of Hartnell’s service as visitador de misiones; and Rancho Cosumnes, by Micheltorena during the Wyllie-inspired dream of British colonization.

Titles seemed clear to all save this last grant, made so near the end of the Mexican regime.

Because of Cosumnes, Hartnell himself (while serving as United States surveyor and title arbiter) was drawn into the land-grant muddle and involved in litigation which lasted for years after his death.

At one time even Alisal was threatened, when David Jacks of Monterey claimed it for $122, the amount of taxes unpaid by the widowed Dona Teresa in 1861.

Mr. Jacks (a Scotch tailor turned legal expert) and many others became land barons in this manner, when their victims were not members of families like the de la Guerras, with reserves of influence and wealth.

Taking advantage of the postwar real estate boom in Monterey, William Hartnell subdivided a portion of his town property; he signed a quit claim deed for one dollar to John Gorman, giving him title to a lot in the rear of la casa Arnel.

This was in appreciation of long and faithful service.

Don Guillermo and Dona Teresa then sold pieces of property owned together in the township of Monterey to Americans of their acquaintance, including Richard Mason and Henry Halleck who were then acting as governor and secretary of state, respectively.

For a time, a naval officer from New York named Selim Woodworth, and Philip Roach of the New York Volunteers were quartered in the Hartnell home, while Walter Colton lived with the Larkins close by.

THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL

Susanna Bryant Dakin

Published by Stanford University Press in 1949

Pages 279 – 280

PEACEMAKER: ‘Proverbially hospitable, [Don Guillermo] ‘Hartnell hesitated only a second before inviting the American [Captain John C. Fremont] in, to stay with the family in the main house,’ Susanna Bryant Dakin, The Lives of William Hartnell, page 271

Proverbially hospitable, Hartnell hesitated only a second before inviting the American in, to stay with the family in the main house.  Fremont’s men he gave permission to camp under the sycamores, close by the stream that watered Alisal.  The evening glow of their fires, the sound of their songs and talk and laugher, exerted an irresistible attraction to children of the neighbourhood, and for a few days the soldiers enjoyed a respite from their hard and cheerless life.

On March 5, their captain sent a message to the American Consul Larkin, in Monterey, saying he hoped to spend the spring, the lovliest time of year, among the California wild flowers.  From this dream he was rudely awakened.

Three of Fremont’s men, who had been too long in the wilderness, went to the near-by house of Don Angel Castro (uncle to General Jose Castro) and offered insult to his pretty daughters.  Later in the day, a courier rode through head-high mustard to the American camp at Alisal, carrying a message from yet another Castro, Don Manuel, the Monterey prefect.  It was brief and to the point, telling the American to take his men and leave the country because of this breach of hospitality.

Fremont became enraged and would not listen to his hosts’s counsel of peaceful departure.  He paid no attention, either, to a letter from the American consul containing the same advice.  Insead, he moved his men up the hill behind the Hartnell adobes, to the very top of Gavilan (hawk) Peak, and there raised the Stars and Stripes in preparation for battle.  This was three months before the actual declaration of war between the United States and Mexico.  Like Commodore Jones, Fremont made a “mistake” and started a never-ending controversy as to which side was most to blame for the end of peace.

We need not enter the controversy or look long upon war’s desolation if we fellow the course of Hartnell’s life.

On July 7, Captain William Mervine, commander of the U. S. S. Cyane and the U. S. S. Savannah, acting under orders from Commodore John D. Sloat, raised the American flag over the customhouse at Monterey, thus formally taking possession of California for the United States.  A cannonade followed, consisting of a salute with twenty-one guns for each ship in the American squadron.  Such a display of martial strength discouraged the Californians from firing even one shot in retaliation.  A proclamation then was issued  by the commodore, saying that quietude must be the “condition of security and repose,” and enjoining Americans stationed on shore not to molest the Californians “in their lawful occupations.” 

[Susanna Bryant Dakin, The Lives of William Hartnell, PEACEMAKER, pages 271 - 272]

 

LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL PACIFICAN HARTNELLIANA 1846 – 2009

la rosa revue

PEACEMAKER: ‘Wild excitement swept over Alisal on the first of March, 1846, when Fremont’s men, two hundred strong, turned from El Camino Real… to the Hartnell home site’… pages 269 – 271 of Susanna Bryant Dakin’s LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL

General Vallejo ended the speeches with a stirring appeal for annexation, then and there, to the United States.  It was growing late, so Prudhon called for a vote before refreshments.  This was the signal for pandemonium, which increased in violence until the meeting broke up.  No vote was taken, but much ‘ardiente was consumed.

When arbitration failed and the cause of England was lost, William Hartnell retired again to Alisal.  Many visitors appeared, for El Camino Real still was the state highway, and it passed close by the rancho.  The most famous guest at this time was the American Captain Fremont.  He and Hartnell had met a few years earlier, when Fremont first came to California on an exploration tour.

The American and the Englishman possessed in common a good education and brilliant conversational powers.  Dona Teresa was attracted by the captain’s aire of refinement and courtly manners, his wavy brown hair and deep blue eyes.  She had heard of his lovely wife Jessie, daughter of Senator Thomas Benton, who would one day accompany her husband to the coast.  With enthusiasm, the Hartnells had invited the Fremonts to visit.

But here was the American with an army following him, instead of a wife.  Wild excitement swept over Alisal on the first of March, 1846, when Fremont’s men, two hundred strong, turned from El Camino Real and started up the side road, clattering past the Alvarado place and right on to the Hartnell home site.  They were well mounted, and had three hundred extra horses in their train.  The Hartnell children were first transfixed with fear and then slowly fascinated by the sight of the rifles, revolving pistols, and long knives which glittered in the pale spring sunlight.

Captain Fremont knocked at the door, ready to renew friendship with the Hartnells.  But it was with difficulty that Don Guillermo recognized the polished gentleman of his former acquaintance in the fierce-looking fellow who now confronted him.  Like the rest of his men, Fremont wore his untrimmed hair flowing from under a foraging cap, and an untrimmed beard.  White teeth flashing in a smile actually added to the ferocity of his appearance.  Like his men, he was clad in buckskin from head to toe and armed to the teeth. 

 

[Pages 269 - 271 of Susanna Bryant Dakin's important history of Alta California: The Lives of William Hartnell,published in 1949 by Stanford University Press.]

LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL PACIFICAN HARTNELLIANA 1846 – 2009