Across the Plains in the Donner Party

Across the Plains in the Donner Party PDF Author: Virginia Reed Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Donner Party
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Across the Plains in the Donner Party

Across the Plains in the Donner Party PDF Author: Virginia Reed Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Donner Party
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description


Across the Plains in the Donner Party (1846-47)

Across the Plains in the Donner Party (1846-47) PDF Author: Virginia Reed Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Donner Party
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Across the Plains in the Donner Party

Across the Plains in the Donner Party PDF Author: Virginia Reed Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780896460997
Category : Donner Party
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description


Across the Plains in the Donner Party

Across the Plains in the Donner Party PDF Author: Virginia Reed Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780877706373
Category : Donner Party
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Across the Plains in the Donner Party

Across the Plains in the Donner Party PDF Author: Virginia Reed Murphy
Publisher: Outbooks
ISBN: 9780896460638
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
Previously published: Golden, CO by Outbooks 1980.

Across the Plains in the Donner Party

Across the Plains in the Donner Party PDF Author: Virginia Reed Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781539568711
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Virginia Elizabeth Backenstoe was born June 28, 1833 in Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois, the daughter of Lloyd Backenstoe and Margaret Keyes. She was the sister of Martha J. (Reed) Lewis, James F. Reed Jr, Thomas K. Reed, Charles C. Reed and Willianoski Y. Reed. Virgina's family was part of the ill-fated Donner Party which was trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during a snow storm in 1846 while emigrating to California. They suffered extreme hardship. The survivors resorted to consuming human flesh to stay alive. Virginia's father was banished from the wagon train after killing a teamster in the Wattach Mountains during a dispute. Virginia wrote an extensive account of the trip which was published in Century Magazine. Virginia died February 14, 1921 in Los Angeles County, California. She is buried in Oak Hill Memorial Park, San Jose, Santa Clara County, California, USA The Donner Party (sometimes called the Donner-Reed Party) was a group of American pioneers led by George Donner and James F. Reed who set out for California in a wagon train in May 1846. They were delayed by a series of mishaps and mistakes, and spent the winter of 1846-47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the pioneers resorted to cannibalism to survive. The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed by following a new route called Hastings Cutoff, which crossed Utah's Wasatch Mountains and Great Salt Lake Desert. The rugged terrain and difficulties encountered while traveling along the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada resulted in the loss of many cattle and wagons and splits within the group. By the beginning of November 1846, the settlers had reached the Sierra Nevada where they became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee (now Donner) Lake, high in the mountains. Their food supplies ran extremely low and, in mid-December, some of the group set out on foot to obtain help. Rescuers from California attempted to reach the settlers, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became trapped. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived to reach California, many of them having eaten the dead for survival. Historians have described the episode as one of the most bizarre and spectacular tragedies in Californian history and western-US migration.

Across the Plains in the Donner Party

Across the Plains in the Donner Party PDF Author: Virginia Reed Murphy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
Diary entries, letters, and a newspaper memoir tell the tragic true story of a wagon train trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California

The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California PDF Author: Lansford Warren Hastings
Publisher: Applewood Books
ISBN: 1557092451
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
Published in 1845, this guidebook for pioneers is a reproduction of one of the most collectible books about California and the Western movement. It was the guidebook used by the Donner Party on their fateful journey. In addition, because Hastings' shortcut route through the Rockies produced such tragedy, the War Department commissioned The Prairie Traveler.

Desperate Passage

Desperate Passage PDF Author: Ethan Rarick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198041500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
In late October 1846, the last wagon train of that year's westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force. After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter. The conclusion is known: by spring of the next year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human survival. But until now, the full story of what happened, what it tells us about human nature and about America's westward expansion, remained shrouded in myth. Drawing on fresh archaeological evidence, recent research on topics ranging from survival rates to snowfall totals, and heartbreaking letters and diaries made public by descendants a century-and-a-half after the tragedy, Ethan Rarick offers an intimate portrait of the Donner party and their unimaginable ordeal: a mother who must divide her family, a little girl who shines with courage, a devoted wife who refuses to abandon her husband, a man who risks his life merely to keep his word. But Rarick resists both the gruesomely sensationalist accounts of the Donner party as well as later attempts to turn the survivors into archetypal pioneer heroes. "The Donner Party," Rarick writes, "is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity." A fast-paced, heart-wrenching, clear-eyed narrative history, A Desperate Hope casts new light on one of America's most horrific encounters between the dream of a better life and the harsh realities such dreams so often must confront.

The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny

The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny PDF Author: Michael Wallis
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 0871407701
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 575

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Book Description
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award A Publishers Weekly Holiday Guide History Pick “A book so gripping it can scarcely be put down.... Superb.” —New York Times Book Review "WESTWARD HO! FOR OREGON AND CALIFORNIA!" In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime. But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream," this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. With The Best Land Under Heaven, Wallis has penned what critics agree is “destined to become the standard account” (Washington Post) of the notorious saga. Cutting through 160 years of myth-making, the “expert storyteller” (True West) compellingly recounts how the unlikely band of early pioneers met their fate. Interweaving information from hundreds of newly uncovered documents, Wallis illuminates how a combination of greed and recklessness led to one of America’s most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes. The result is a “fascinating, horrifying, and inspiring” (Oklahoman) examination of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny.