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From "Year Book of the Pasquotank County Historical Society (NC) Volume 4," compiled and edited by Edna M. Shannonhouse:
"Tamsen Donner was only 24 when she arrived in Elizabeth City, NC in 1825 to take a job as teacher of botany with the Elizabeth City Academy. She met and married Tully B. Dozier of Camden County and they had two children, believed to be twins. A short time later, within a period of two months, Tansen lost her husband and the two children, all three taken from her by 'the fever.' When she left Elizabeth City to go to Springfield, Illinois, she was just 28. She met George Donner there, they were married and had three girls. In 1846, Tamsen and George planned a summer holiday trip to California which would take them across the Sierra Mountains to Sacramento."
(This was an advertisement in 1980) "This is the courageous and often humorous story told by 'Tamsen Donner, A Woman's Journey.' It is an exciting story of raw courage brought to life on stage by Martha Neil Hardy."
In the next article on Tamsen "She was born in Massachusetts on November 1, 1801, the daughter of William and Tamsen Eustis....(after the death of her family) "she returned to the home of her parents in Massachusetts where she remained until 1836 when she went to an area near Auburn, Illinois to make a home for her widowed brother and to teach his children."
"There she met and married George Donner, his third wife. Thy had three daughters, Georgia, born 4 July 1840; Frances born 3 December 1841; and Elizabeth born 8 March 1843. As of 1977 France's (sp?) daughter was still living in a rest home in California. George had two daughters by a previous marriage, living with them. He had ten children in all."
"George Donner was a prosperous farmer but soon got the urge to move west and offered his farm for sale during the last of 1845 and through March of 1846.....In a letter written to her sister in May of 1846, Tamsen says that probably 7,000 wagons will leave that year for California (it was nearer 700). They would be bound for the bay of Francisco (San Francisco), and that they think the trip will take four months. Her brother William Eustis was planning to move to Wisconsin."
"By June of 1846 they had reached the junction of North and South Platte, 200 miles from Fort Laramie, and she writes that the trip so far had been pleasant, the roads good and the food plentiful. Tamsen was interested in Botany, and she mentioned 'wild tulips, primroses, lupine, and creeping hollyhock.' She said there were 450 wagons between Fort Laramie and Oregon and California."
"By August they were just sough of the Great Salt Lake. She wrote many pages of descriptions of the scenery and their experiences along the way. The heat and dryness was taking its toll on the wagons, and Indians had stolen some of their stock, slowing them up."
"It was october 20 when they approached the Pass over the Sierra Nevada mountains. They were told that the Pass was usually open until about the middle of November. Beset by difficulties, they arrived in Alder Creek Valley (21 miles from present Reno, Nevada) on November 3, 1846, and snow was falling. It snowed for eight days and the party was irretrievably trapped. They could not get over the Pass. They decided to wait."
"George carried his money on his person, and Tamsen paid some mountain men $500 to carry the children to safety aty Sutter's Fort, inside California with instructions for them to wait there. Thus were Tamsen's children saved from the horrible fate of most of the others."
"This tale of starvation is well known to most Americans, and the resulting cannibelism among the members of the party is one of the most horrifying and tragic in our history. Tamsen kept a sort of diary, and we know from that that George died from an infection of a slight injury that could not heal."
"By the time rescue parties could get to the few that remained, there was no trace of Tamsen. It is believed that she suffered the fate of others in the party and was eaten by them."
"On Page 176 of 'Wheels West' by Homer Croy, there is a description of what that aughor thought might have happened - one of the few living men came to the Conner camp and demanded of Tamsen the money he knew George was carrying. Tamsen told him that her husband was dead and she had sent what money was left with her children weeks before. This man, whom Mr. Croy called Mr. Kesenberg, half-crazed, seized a stick from the fireplace and clubbed her to death. This grusome take ends thus:
'After a time he came back and stood looking down at the body. Then he found the axe used to cut firewood and methodically began to chop up her body. He started the fire going more brightly arranged an iron kettle and put parts of her body in it. Then he sat down to rest, as the exertion and the walk over from the main camp had tired him.'
The author cites several sources for her information.
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