Volume 90, Number 1 - California Historical Society

them. In a letter written to his family not long
after he reached Monterey, Sully described her
as “a tall majestic looking woman, about 30 or
35, remarkably handsome . . . very agreeable, very
good natured & very smart. In fact she is a well
read woman & would grace any circle of society.”
With her husband away temporarily and there
“being no male in the house,” he added, “Me
Madre (that is the name she calls herself though
she is rather young & handsome to have so old
a boy as me) requested me to make her house
my home.” This might have been considered
improper if she lived alone, but the house was
brimming with servants and family members,
including her eldest daughter, Manuela, who was
fifteen and of marriageable age. Manuela was
“remarkably pretty & gay,” he wrote, and “like all
Spanish girls, monstrous fond of a flirtation. I
fear she finds this rather a hard job with me, for
my bad Spanish always sets her a laughing.” 6
Sully was captivated by Manuela and eventually
proposed marriage. But until he made his
intentions clear he remained quite close to her
mother, who served officially as godmother to
many youngsters in California and continued in
that capacity informally by taking Sully under her
wing. She was only six years older than he was,
and he at first found her a more congenial companion
than Manuela, who struck him initially as
too young and impulsive for an officer approaching
thirty. In letters home, he mentioned the
mother more often than the daughter and used
language that caused family members to worry
that he was straying into an affair. “Could I come
across another Doña Angustias de la Guerra,” he
wrote in August 1849, “I don’t think I would long
be an old bachelor. She has given me a piece of
gold from which I wish you to have made a ring.”
To ease his family’s concerns, he later explained
that he wanted the ring “to adorn my person &
at the same time show my respect for the lady
(who is by-the-by a married lady with 7 children).”
There was, in fact, nothing improper in
Angustias de la Guerra (1815–1890) sat for this portrait sometime
after her marriage to Dr. James Ord in 1856. The daughter
of José de la Guerra y Noriega (1779–1858), one of Mexican
California’s leading figures, she told of her experiences in a diary
she kept during the Mexican War and in a lengthy dictation to
Thomas Savage, who interviewed her in 1878 while conducting
research for Hubert Howe Bancroft’s multivolume History of
California. Perhaps because the subject remained painful to her,
she made little mention of her beloved daughter by her first marriage,
Manuela Jimeno (1833–1851), who died ten months after
wedding Alfred Sully without parental consent.
California Historical Society, CHS2012.1014.tif
his relationship with Angustias, but he was less
than truthful when he claimed that he had “not
yet seen anybody in this country good enough for
me.” 7 Indeed, when later deprived of the company
of Angustias and Manuela he found that
they had been almost too kind and too good for
him and left a void in his life that he found hard
to fill.
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