Donner Party - Rescue - Survivors

Survivors

Of the 87 people who entered the Wasatch Mountains, 48 survived. Only the Reed and Breen families remained intact. The children of Jacob Donner, George Donner, and Franklin Graves were orphaned. William Eddy was alone and most of the Murphy family had died. Only three mules reached California; the remaining animals perished. Most of the Donner Party members' possessions were discarded.

I have not wrote to you half the trouble we have had but I have wrote enough to let you know that you don't know what trouble is. But thank God we have all got through and the only family that did not eat human flesh. We have left everything but I don't care for that. We have got through with our lives but Don't let this letter dishearten anybody. Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.

Virginia Reed to cousin Mary Keyes, May 16, 1847

A few of the widowed women remarried within months; brides were scarce in California. The Reeds settled in San Jose and two of the Donner children lived with them. Reed fared well in the California Gold Rush and became prosperous. Virginia, with editorial oversight from her father, wrote an extensive letter to her cousin in Illinois about "our trubels getting to Callifornia". Journalist Edwin Bryant carried it back in June 1847, and it was printed in its entirety, with some editorial alterations, in the Illinois Journal on December 16, 1847. Virginia converted to Catholicism in fulfillment of a promise she had made to herself while observing Patrick Breen pray in his cabin. The Murphy survivors lived in Marysville. The Breens made their way to San Juan Bautista where they ran an inn and became the anonymous subjects of one writer's story about his severe discomfort upon learning he was staying with alleged cannibals, printed in Harper's Magazine in 1862. Many of the survivors encountered similar reactions. George and Tamsen Donner's children were taken in by an older couple near Sutter's Fort. The youngest of the Donner children, Eliza, who was three years old during the winter of 1846–1847, published an account of the Donner Party in 1911, based on printed accounts and those of her sisters. The Breen's youngest daughter Isabella, who was one year old during the winter of 1846–1847, was the last survivor of the Donner Party. She died in 1935.

I will now give you some good and friendly advice. Stay at home,—you are in a good place, where, if sick, you are not in danger of starving to death.

Mary Graves to Levi Fosdick (her sister Sarah Fosdick's father-in-law), 1847

The Graves children lived varied lives. Mary Graves married early, but her first husband was murdered; she cooked his killer's food while he was in prison to ensure the condemned man did not starve before his hanging. One of Mary's grandchildren noted she was very serious; Graves once said, "I wish I could cry but I cannot. If I could forget the tragedy, perhaps I would know how to cry again." Mary's brother William did not settle down for any significant time. Nancy Graves, who was nine years old during the winter of 1846–1847, refused to acknowledge her involvement even when contacted by historians interested in recording the most accurate versions of the episode; Nancy was reportedly unable to recover from her role in the cannibalism of her brother and mother.

Eddy remarried and started a family in California. He attempted to make good on his promise to murder Lewis Keseberg, but was dissuaded by James Reed and Edwin Bryant. A year later, Eddy recollected his experiences to J. Quinn Thornton, who, also using Reed's memories of his experiences, wrote the earliest comprehensive documentation of the episode. Eddy died in 1859.

Keseberg brought a defamation suit against several members of the relief party who accused him of murdering Tamsen Donner. The court awarded him $1 in damages, but also made him pay court costs. An 1847 story printed in the California Star described Keseberg's near-lynching by the salvage party and his actions in ghoulish terms, reporting that he preferred eating human flesh to the cattle and horses that had become exposed in the spring thaw. Charles McGlashan, a historian, amassed enough material to indict Keseberg for the murder of Tamsen Donner, but after interviewing Keseberg concluded that no murder occurred. Eliza Donner Houghton also believed Keseberg to be innocent. As Keseberg grew older, he did not venture outside, for he had become a pariah and was often threatened. He told McGlashan "I often think that the Almighty has singled me out, among all the men on the face of the earth, in order to see how much hardship, suffering, and misery a human being can bear!"