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 : 224

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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.

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 : 224

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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 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 : 320

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Book Description
“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.

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.

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 : 474

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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 Donner Party Chronicles

The Donner Party Chronicles PDF Author: Frank Mullen
Publisher: a Halycon
ISBN: 9781890591014
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
The Reno Gazette-Journal and the Nevada Humanities Committee present Frank Mullen's account of the Donner Party, accompanied by hundreds of historical illustrations and Marilyn Newton's photographs of the trail today.

The Donner Party

The Donner Party PDF Author: George Keithley
Publisher: George Braziller
ISBN: 9780807612354
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
The Donner Party consists of three books of poems. Each book has nine poems.

Death in the Donner Party

Death in the Donner Party PDF Author: Emily Rose Oachs
Publisher: Lerner Publications (Tm)
ISBN: 1512411159
Category : Donner Party
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
Explore the tragedy of the Donner party, a group of American pioneers trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the harsh winter of 1846-1847. Cause-and-effect analysis reveals how the decisions made by leaders of the expedition ended in disaster.

Donner Dinner Party (Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales #3)

Donner Dinner Party (Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales #3) PDF Author: Nathan Hale
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1613125240
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
In author-illustrator Nathan Hale’s Donner Dinner Party, discover the shocking and true story of the ill-fated expedition in this Hazardous Tale from the New York Times bestselling graphic novel series. “These books are, quite simply, brilliant. . . . Thrilling, bloody, action-packed stories from American history.” —New York Times In the spring of 1846, a group of families left Illinois and began the long journey toward a new life in California. To save time, they took an ill-advised shortcut—with disastrous consequences. Their story would not take them to California but into history. Bad weather, bad choices, and just plain bad luck forced the pioneers to spend a long, cold winter in the mountains, slowly starving. What they did to stay alive and the lengths that others went to in order to rescue them make this one of the most tragic and infamous stories of the American frontier. Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales take young readers into American history with graphic novels that bring the dangerous, bloody, exciting history of America to life. The Revolutionary War and the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the Donner Party, the Marquis de Lafayette, Harriet Tubman, the Alamo, and more all come to life in a way that will excite young readers of history. Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales! Read them all—if you dare! One Dead Spy: A Revolutionary War Tale (#1) Big Bad Ironclad!: A Civil War Tale (#2) Donner Dinner Party: A Pioneer Tale (#3) Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood: A World War I Tale (#4) The Underground Abductor: An Abolitionist Tale about Harriet Tubman (#5) Alamo All-Stars: A Texas Tale (#6) Raid of No Return: A World War II Tale of the Doolittle Raid (#7) Lafayette!: A Revolutionary War Tale (#8) Major Impossible: A Grand Canyon Tale (#9) Blades of Freedom: A Tale of Haiti, Napoleon, and the Louisiana Purchase (#10) Cold War Correspondent: A Korean War Tale (#11) Above the Trenches: A WWI Flying Ace Tale (#12)

What I Saw in California

What I Saw in California PDF Author: Edwin Bryant
Publisher: IndyPublish.com
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description


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.