Diary of Patrick Breen

Diary of Patrick Breen PDF Author: Patrick Breen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Donner Party
Languages : en
Pages : 22

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Book Description

Diary of Patrick Breen

Diary of Patrick Breen PDF Author: Patrick Breen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Donner Party
Languages : en
Pages : 22

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Book Description


Diary of Patrick Breen

Diary of Patrick Breen PDF Author: Patrick Breen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Donner Party
Languages : en
Pages : 22

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Book Description


Diary of Patrick Breen

Diary of Patrick Breen PDF Author: Patrick Breen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Donner Party
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description


The Diary of Patrick Breen

The Diary of Patrick Breen PDF Author: Patrick Breen
Publisher: San Francisco : Book Club of California
ISBN:
Category : Donner Party
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description


Ordeal by Hunger

Ordeal by Hunger PDF Author: George R. Stewart
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547525605
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
“Compulsive reading—a wonderful account, both scholarly and gripping, of a horrifying episode in the history of the west.” —Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. The tragedy of the Donner party constitutes one of the most amazing stories of the American West. In 1846 eighty-seven people—men, women, and children—set out for California, persuaded to attempt a new overland route. After struggling across the desert, losing many oxen, and nearly dying of thirst, they reached the very summit of the Sierras, only to be trapped by blinding snow and bitter storms. Many perished; some survived by resorting to cannibalism; all were subjected to unbearable suffering. Incorporating the diaries of the survivors and other contemporary documents, George Stewart wrote the definitive history of that ill-fated band of pioneers; an astonishing account of what human beings may endure and achieve in the final press of circumstance.

History of the Donner Party

History of the Donner Party PDF Author: Charles F. McGlashan
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486287122
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This gripping account of the doomed expedition combines survivor interviews with diary entries to reveal not only a stark tale of desperation but also many inspiring acts of heroism.

The Indifferent Stars Above

The Indifferent Stars Above PDF Author: Daniel James Brown
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061348104
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
From the #1 bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat comes an unforgettable epic of family, tragedy, and survival on the American frontier “An ideal pairing of talent and material.… Engrossing.… A deft and ambitious storyteller.” – Mary Roach, New York Times Book Review In April of 1846, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Graves, intent on a better future, set out west from Illinois with her new husband, her parents, and eight siblings. Seven months later, after joining a party of pioneers led by George Donner, they reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. In early December, starving and desperate, Sarah and fourteen others set out for California on snowshoes, and, over the next thirty-two days, endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors. In this gripping narrative, New York Times bestselling author Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most legendary events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah’s journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.

The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate

The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate PDF Author: Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
Publisher: IndyPublish.com
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Eliza Houghton (b. 1843) was the youngest child of George Donner, one of two Springfield, Illinois, brothers who organized the ill-fated California-bound emigrant party that bore their name. Eliza and her older sisters were rescued by relief parties that made their way to the stranded travellers at Donner Lake, but their parents perished, and the girls were left to make their way alone in the West. The expedition of the Donner party and its tragic fate (1911) begins with Mrs. Houghton's account of her childhood and the family's tragic overland journey, and rescue. She continues with her life as an orphan, first at Fort Sutter, and then with a family in Sonoma and with her older half-sister in Sacramento. She describes the impact of the gold rush and new immigration on the area, farm work and domestic work, and her own education in public schools and St. Catherine's Convent in Benicia. She writes at length of the emotional scars caused by contemporary rumors of cannibalism among the Donner Party and offers full accounts of Donner family history as well as the background of her husband, Samuel Houghton. An appendix contains several documentary sources for the history of the Donner Party.

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 : 305

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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.