ST. GEORGE — The town of Independence, Missouri, was abuzz with activity on the afternoon of May 11, 1846. In the village – a major jumping-off point for westward migration — there were preparations to be finished for the last wagon train of the season.
Cows, crows and children stirred as dawn broke the next morning.
For a moment, Tamsen Donner hesitates. She knows that her family are not paupers, and they don’t have to make the dangerous journey west. But Donner had a change of heart. “I am willing to go and have no doubt it will be an advantage to our children and to us,” she said in her diary. Willing, not enthusiastic, Tamsen knew her husband – George Donner – was all in on making the journey.
During the thick of western migration, 87 people (the exact number varies depending on the source) – 29 men, 15 women and 43 children left in a column of 23 ox-drawn wagons heading west. The Donner Party was formed no earlier than July 19 when they decided to follow Lansford Hastings over his cutoff. It was not complete until around Aug. 10 when the Graves family caught up to the others near Weber Canyon.
The Murphy family, one of the larger among the Donner Party and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, consisted of Levinah Murphy; four sons and three daughters – Mary, Harriet and Sarah Ann. Harriet was married to William Pike and had two infant daughters, Naomi and Catherine.
To make it over the Sierra Nevada Mountains before they became impassable, travelers had to leave Independence as soon as the ground was dry enough to carry the covered wagons and there was enough forage for the oxen and other livestock. The people who became the Donner Party left with the other emigrants.
Hastings Cutoff
Moving along at about 2 miles per hour, with eight hours of driving a day, the journey should have taken between 4-6 months, but the Donner Party was slowed after electing to follow a new route called the Hastings Cutoff, which bypassed established trails and instead crossed the Wasatch Range and the Great Salt Lake Desert.
Sept. 26, 1846 – Two months after embarking on Hastings Cutoff, the party rejoined the traditional trail along a stream that became known as the Humboldt River. The shortcut had probably delayed them by a month. The stark and rugged terrain, and the difficulties encountered while traveling along the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada, resulted in the loss of many cattle and wagons, and divisions soon formed within the group.
Despite hardships and costly delays along the way, dissension was rife when the California-bound Donner Party arrived in Truckee Meadows, near the present Nevada-California border, on Oct. 20, 1846.
The mountains ahead were already white with the season’s first snowfall.
That year, a super El Niño caused heavy rains, flooding, an abnormally warm winter, massive famines in China, extreme fires in Australia, and incredible amounts of snow falling regionally. As a result, massive floods also occurred in California during the 1846-47 winter, In the Sierra Nevada Mountains, more than 20 feet of snow was recorded throughout portions of the range.
About this time, as recorded by nearly every historian familiar with the Donner Party, two Murphy brothers-in-law, William Pike (husband of Harriet) and William Foster (husband of Sarah), volunteered to make a breakout and head for provisions at Sutter’s Fort. Pike and Foster began making preparations. Pike was cleaning a pepper box pistol and handed it to Foster, but in the exchange the pistol discharged, and Pike was fatally wounded. Pike died within 20 minutes. He was 25.
Snow traps the Donner Party
After this tragic event, the company pushed on but found themselves caught in a heavy snowstorm. As the snow began to fall, some in the Donner Party made a failed attempt to cross the summit.
As it was, the Donner Party could do nothing but wait for the weather to clear, but it never did.
There was a total of 10 major storms during the winter of 1846-47. As a result, the Sierras were blanketed in several feet of snow from mid-October until early April the next year.
Nov. 3, 13 and 20 – There were more attempts to escape the coming winter as people tried to get over the Truckee Pass, but they all failed.
According to Daniel M. Rosen, author of the Donner Party Diary, “The snow kept falling for weeks, burying the cabins. The frigid weather was unrelenting, and the emigrants had exhausted nearly everything edibl — oxen and their hides, pet dogs, field mice, even leather shoelaces. The families that still had animals kept themselves alive by slaughtering each, one-by-one. To a family each refuse to give anything to those who were less fortunate. Hunger struck as early as November.”
By mid-December 24-year-old Baylis Williams – listed as a hired hand of the Reed family – was reported as having died in the Graves/Reed cabin, most likely from malnutrition as provisions had not yet run out.
Williams was the first to die at Lake Camp. Others died at Alder Creek around this time, including Jacob Donner, Samuel Shoemaker, James Smith and Joseph Reinhardt.
Forlorn Hope
Dec. 16, 1846 – When it became clear that the weather wasn’t going to break, 15 of the strongest and healthiest men and women strapped on rudimentary snowshoes and set out to cross the summit and find help. The youngest in the group was 12 years old and the oldest 57, although most were in their teens and early 20s.
The next day, the Forlorn Hope reached the top of Truckee Pass. The snow was 12 feet deep. Coffee and a few strips of bacon were all they had after their exhausting day’s march.
The group had gotten through Summit Valley along Juba Creek.
William Eddy said in his journal that they were only able to go six miles despite the urgency. Snow flurries and high winds plagued the Forlorn Hope, but at least it wasn’t snowing – yet. Still, the travelers must have been miserable, with no hope of respite at the end of the day.
About 11 p.m. on the night of the 19th, it began snowing. The wind was blowing cold and furiously. Three days out from the lake the storm continued and “feet commenced freezing,” Eddy said.
On the fifth day out from Truckee Lake, the Forlorn Hope again awoke covered in snow. As the group readied to move on, Charles Stanton sat back against a tree and lit his pipe. It was Dec. 21. He was so worn out and snow-blind that he needed a moment of rest. According to Forlorn Hope member diaries, Stanton was reported to have said that he could be along shortly.
Stanton died somewhere along the Yuba River.
Dec. 21, 1846 – The party realized they’d made a wrong turn and debated what to do next. Then another storm hit, but the worst was yet to come. By the next day, the storm’s fury had gathered so much steam that wind gusts and snow drifts quickly extinguished all of the camp’s fires.
As the storm raged around them, the Forlorn Hope sat in a circle covered by blankets. Their body heat made the cold less unbearable. The group sat that way for 36 hours while the storm raged. Once the storm had abated, one member of the party found some cotton stuffing in her cape that was still “miraculously dry.” It served as tinder to start a much-needed and welcomed fire.
A few days later, Patrick Dolan is the first to suggest eating human flesh. The others felt “seriously burdened” but did not reject the idea. However, it was decided not to commit murder so the others could eat; instead, they would wait until one died on his own. That happened that same night, and ironically, it was Patrick Dolan.
Dec.26 – The Forlorn Hope cut the flesh from Dolan’s body, “roasted it by the fire and (eating) it, averting their faces from each other and weeping.” Two Native Americans in the group – Luis and Salvador – refused to eat. The same night, according to his gravestone, Lemuel Murphy, age 12, died.
One by one, members of the Forlorn Hope died from exposure, and their starving comrades became the first of the Donner Party to break the taboo of eating the dead. The life-sustaining flesh gave them the strength to push on, but that act also inspired a far worse crime. Although there is no definitive proof, it is believed that William McFadden Foster shot and killed Luis and Salvador – Miwok tribesmen – who were accompanying the Forlorn Hope as guides, and the survivors ate them as if they were any other animal.
This act was the first recorded event of cannibalism within the Donner Party.
Of the original 17 members of the Forlorn Hope, William Murphy and Karl “Dutch Charley” Burger resigned and returned to the Donner Lake cabins during Day 1. The remaining 15 crossed Donner Pass on Day 2. Seven of the 15 survived.
In camp, on the other side of the pass, the situation had become desperate.
James Reed’s wife Margaret and their four children were still alive. When they ran out of food, they had to kill and eat their beloved dog, a terrier named Cash. Even the skin and paws of the faithful pet were consumed.
Patrick Breen, the only member of the Donner Party to leave a diary of events, chronicled Lavinia Murphy’s grief. In the absence of her daughter Harriet – a member of the Forlorn Hope – Lavinia was left in charge of two infant grandchildren – Naomi and Catherine.
“Dear Mrs. Murphy (Lavinia) had the most sacred and pitiful charge,” Breen said in his diary. “It was the wee nursing babe (Catherine) … All there was to give the tiny sufferer, was a little gruel made from snow water, containing a slight sprinkling of coarse flour. This flour was simply ground wheat, unbolted.” Day after day the “sweet little darling” would “lie helplessly” upon grandmother’s lap, and “seem with its large, sad eyes to be pleading for nourishment,” Breen added.
Each day Lavinia gave Catherine a few teaspoonfuls of the gruel made from the flour.
“Strangely enough, this poor little martyr did not often cry with hunger, but with tremulous, quivering mouth, and a low, subdued sob or moan, would appear to be begging for something to eat,” Breen said. “The poor, dumb lips, if gifted with speech, could not have uttered a prayer half so eloquent, so touching. Could the mother, Mrs. Pike, have been present, it would have broken her heart to see her patient babe dying slowly, little by little.”
Feb. 22, 1847 – Patrick Breen wrote, “I burried pikes child this moring in the snow it died 2 days ago.”
The fight for survival
Those who have ever attempted to walk with snowshoes will understand the difficulty they party experienced. At first, the snow being so light and loose, even with their snowshoes, each sank 12-inches at every step; however, one-by-one the Forlorn Hope succeeded in traveling about four miles per day.
Dec. 17, 1846 – On this date, they crossed the Continental Divide, with considerable difficulty and fatigue. The following day they resumed their painful and distressing journey. After ascending 1,200 feet of deep snow, they camped at the end of a valley, a distance of three miles.
Bring up the rear, Mary Graves, 20, had a chance to observe the company ahead, trudging along with packs on their backs. In about 1880, Mary Graves wrote a letter to C.F. McGlashan describing this day.
“It reminded me of some Norwegian fur company among the icebergs,” Graves said. “My shoes were ox-bows, split in two, and rawhide strings woven in, something in form of the old-fashioned, split-bottom chairs. Our clothes were of the bloomer costume, and generally were made of flannel. Well do I remember a remark of one of the company made here, that we were about as near heaven as we could get.”
Jan. 1, 1847 – The Forlorn Hope, feet bloody and frostbitten, turned into the American River drainage and away from the wagon road. There were only 10 members left. Each carried dried human flesh in their pockets hoping they would not become yet another to die. By mid-January seven from the original Forlorn Hope were dead. A rescue party was mustered immediately from settlers near Johnson’s Ranch who retraced Eddy’s bloody footprints to find the other seven survivors lying in the mud. It had taken 33 days for the Forlorn Hope to travel from Truckee Lake over the summit and down to Johnson’s Ranch.
Jan. 31 – News of the stranded Donner Party traveled fast. Soon a rescue party from Sutter’s Fort set out to find survivors.
Arriving at the Lake Camp, approximately 18 days later, the rescuers found the camp completely snowbound and the surviving emigrants, delirious with joy began popping their heads out from their snow-covered shelters. The rescuers were shocked as memories of the Donner Party’s ordeal began being told.
As their supplies dwindled, the Donner emigrants stranded at Truckee Lake had resorted to eating increasingly grotesque meals. They slaughtered their pack animals, cooked their dogs, gnawed on leftover bones and boiled the animal hide roofs of their cabins into a foul paste. Although they ate sad imitations of wholesome food roughly half of the Donner Party survivors allegedly resorted to eating human flesh.
Relief parties
Feb. 18, 1847 – Members of the first relief came across the ghostly figures of half-eaten bodies lying in the snow at Lake Camp. When they arrived, the relief party found 12 dead and 48 survivors, barely clinging to life. Although one rescuer described half-eaten bodies, there were no other accounts of cannibalism at the Lake cabins before the arrival of the first relief. The two rescuers who went to Alder Creek may have seen half-eaten bodies, but they did not say so.
Two of the seven men who risked their lives to rescue the emigrants were Mormons, Daniel and John Rhoads.
The Rhoads family came to California in 1846 under the orders of Brigham Young. It was there that Thomas acquired a large tract of land on the Cosumnes River in the Sacramento Valley, where he befriended and worked for Johann Augustus Sutter.
It is unclear how much gold Rhoads had when he finally left California in 1849, but Brigham Young mentioned him in a speech on Sept. 6, 1850, as “the wealthiest man who came from the mines … Rhoads, with $17,000.”
Oct. 9, 1849 – According to church records, Thomas Rhoads deposited $10,826 in the Utah Territorial mint, equal to $428,000 in 2024.
The Rhoads family lived more comfortably than many other pioneers. Thomas built “the finest home in the valley” a block south of Temple Square, and he also provided elegant homes for each of his four wives and their families – almost three dozen children in total – his first wife had three pairs of twins.
Rhoads, whose surname had various spellings such as Rhoades, Rhods, Rhodz and Roads, was a native of Kentucky and a veteran of the War of 1812. He relocated to Illinois and became a member of the newly founded Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1835. He endured the early persecutions that the church faced.
Prior to 1849, Daniel and his brother John were living in the vicinity of Johnson’s Ranch when the surviving members of the Forlorn Hope – including Harriett Pike – arrived with news of the Donner Party’s dire situation. Moved by her plight, John was determined to rescue the children. He may have been influenced by the fact that he, like Harriet, was or had been a Mormon.
Catherine Pike died the day after the first relief arrived, but Naomi – her sister – was still alive.
John Pierce Rhoads, 28, was captain of the first and member of the fourth relief parties. Among his heroic actions was one event that saved the life of Naomi L. Pike. Carrying the toddler upon his shoulders, carefully wrapped up in a blanket, Rhoads trekked through agonizingly massive snowdrifts for more than 40 miles to safety.
Daniel Rhoads, 25, was a rancher in central California; however, he abandoned his Mormon roots and would later become a member of the Methodist Church. There is no evidence that John Rhoads ever left the Mormon religion.
When the first relief arrived at the Donner Party camps, they had little food left to distribute to the desperate families, but they offered to lead the strongest back down the mountain to safety. Sadly, some of those individuals didn’t survive the journey. The only people rescued by the first relief were teamster John Denton, 3-year-old Ada Keseberg, and 12-year-old William Hook (Elizabith Donner’s son) who died of over-eating after reaching Bear Valley.
The ordeal wasn’t over.
Following the first relief, two local newspapers reported that members of the Donner Party had resorted to cannibalism, which helped to foster sympathy for those who were still trapped. Residents of Yerba Buena, many of them recent migrants, raised $1,300 (approximately $50,000 in 2024) to help fund additional relief efforts.
Perhaps the most famous of the Donner Party’s saviors was John Stark, a burly California settler who took part in the third relief party.
Early March 1847 – Stark stumbled upon a group of emigrants, mostly children, who had been left in the mountains by an earlier relief group. Two other rescuers each grabbed a single child and started back down the slope, but Stark was unwilling to leave anyone behind. Instead, he rallied the weary adults, gathered the rest of the children and began guiding the group single-handedly.
Most of the children were too weak to walk, so Stark took to carrying two of them at a time for a few yards, then setting them down in the snow and going back for others. He continued the grueling process all the way down the mountain, and eventually led all nine of his charges to safety.
Another relief party was mustered to evacuate any adults who might still be alive. It turned back before getting to Bear Valley, and no further rescue attempts were made.
April 10, 1847 – It had been almost one month since the third relief had left Truckee Lake, the magistrate near Sutter’s Fort organized a salvage party (some historians refer to this as the fourth relief) to recover what they could of the party’s belongings with part of the proceeds used to support the orphaned children.
The salvage party found the Alder Creek tents empty except for the body of George Donner, who had died days earlier.
Lewis Keseberg
When they returned to the lake cabins, the rescuers found one survivor – Lewis Keseberg – among the gruesome remains of half-consumed corpses, severed limbs, and a pot of what appeared to be fresh human liver and lungs. The rescuers believed that Keseberg stole the Donners’ money, but Keseberg claimed that Tamsen had told him to take the money to her children and that he planned to do so, having no reason to trust these men.
At one point, one of the rescuers wrapped a noose around his neck in an attempt to make him confess as to where he had hidden the Donner’s fortune. Keseberg confessed that he had taken $273 of the Donners’ money, but did so at Tamsen’s suggestion, so that it could be saved and one day benefit her children. William Fallon, a rescuer, also alleged that Keseberg had stated that Donner’s flesh was “the best he had ever tasted, which Keseberg would fervently deny. Nonetheless, Keseberg was allowed to leave with the rescuers.
On his way to Sutter’s Fort, Keseberg discovered the body of his daughter Ada. Keseberg arrived at Sutter’s Fort on April 29, 1847. He was the last survivor of the party to be rescued.
The salvage party were suspicious of Keseberg’s story and found a pot full of human flesh in the cabin along with George Donner’s pistols, jewelry and $250 in gold. The men who had brought Keseberg out had a low impression of him and told untrue stories of how he had murdered Tamsen Donner to eat even though there was other food available.
After the rescuers and Keseberg arrived at Sutter’s Fort, Keseberg pressed charges against the men for their persistent “slander,” he sued for defamation of character and the court found in his favor seeing as there was no concrete evidence to suggest he had murdered Tamsen Donner. Still, the court awarded him $1 but made him pay the costs suffered by both sides in bringing the suit to court, which highlights what little regard other had for Keseberg.
Only 45, of the original 81, (89) members of the Donner Party survived, 32 of them children. Most were physically scarred from frostbite and malnutrition and psychologically disturbed by the horrors of what they experienced and what they had to do to survive.
The last survivors of the Donner Party didn’t reach safety until April 29, 1847.
The burials
It’s unclear if U.S. Brig. Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny knew about the Donner Party, but the “compassionate” general would play a part during the final act of the saga, which played out high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Kearny arrived at Johnson’s ranch, about 40 miles north of Sutter’s Fort. There, they met Mary Murphy Johnson, one of the Donner Party survivors, and learned about the harrowing fight for survival.
Johnson’s story was poignant.
Spring 1846 – As a widow with several children to support, Johnson accepted an offer from a party emigrating to Oregon or California. They provided passage for her and her children in exchange for cooking and washing services. Little did Johnson know of the tragedy that awaited her.
Leaving Johnson’s Ranch, Kerney proceeded on, arriving at Bear Creek, in Bear Valley, where they found three wagons and a blacksmith’s forge abandoned by the Donner Party who were snowed in the previous winter.
June 22, 1847 – some put the date of June 21 – Gen. Kearny and his men including Mormon Battalion member and author Daniel Tyler traveled through snow from two to 12-feet-deep before reaching Truckee Lake
“At night reached the place where the rear wagons of the unfortunate Hastings company were blocked by the snow, and were horrified at the sight which met our view – a skull covered with hair lying here, a mangled arm or leg yonder, with the bones broken as one would break a beef shank to obtain the marrow from it; a whole body in another place, covered with a blanket, and portions of other bodies scattered around in different directions,” Tyler chronicled in his book, “A concise history of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War, 1846-1847.”
Kerney ordered a halt and detailed five men to bury the dead.
“One of the men was said to have lived four months on human flesh and brains,” Tyler added. “Their bodies were mangled in a horrible manner. This place is known as Cannibal Camp. After they … buried the bones of the dead, which were sawed and broken to pieces for the purpose of obtaining the marrow.”
From that point, the party traveled seven miles farther and encamped within one mile of another cabin, where more dead bodies were found. However, Kerney did not order them buried.
“It had not only been the scene of intense human suffering, but also of some of the most fiendish acts that mankind desperate by hunger could conceive,” Tyler said. “It seemed that on reaching that point on their journey, the unfortunate emigrants were divided into several different parties. Provisions were soon exhausted, and they began to subsist upon the bodies of their dead relatives. Those who had no deceased relatives borrowed flesh from those who had, to be refunded when they or some of their relatives should die.”
In some cases, children are said to have eaten their dead parents, and parents their dead children.
“When relief came, one man had a trunk packed full of human flesh and two buckets full of human blood, stored carefully away,” Tyler said. “When questioned about the blood, he professed to have extracted it from the veins of two women after they were dead, but the seemingly well-founded opinion was that there had been foul play.”
As a matter of choice, some were caught in the act of eating human flesh for lunch even after they were rescued.
“When their pockets were examined, they were found to contain chunks of human flesh, which were taken from them and thrown away,” Tyler said. “One man had even acquired such a mania for that kind of food, that after he had been in Sacramento Valley some months, where food was plentiful, he admitted to having a longing for another such a meal, and expressed to a stout, comely lady a desire for a roast from her body.”
Edwin Bryant, a former newspaper editor and magistrate of San Francisco, was with Gen. Kerney when they entered the Donner Party’s camp.
“Near the principal cabins I saw two bodies entire, with the exception that the abdomens had been cut open and the entrails extracted,” Bryant said. “Their flesh had been either wasted by famine or evaporated by exposure to the dry atmosphere, and they presented the appearance of mummies.”
Strewn around the cabins were dislocated and broken skulls (in some instances sawed asunder with care, for the purpose of extracting the brains), human skeletons, in short, in every variety of mutilation.
“A more revolting and appalling spectacle I never witnessed. The remains were, by an order of General Kerney, collected and buried under the superintendence of Major Swords,” Bryant said. “They were interred in a pit which had been dug in the center of one of the cabins for a cache. These melancholy duties to the dead being performed, the cabins, by order of Major Swords, were (set ablaze), and with everything surrounding them connected with this horrid and melancholy tragedy were consumed.”
The body of George Donner was found at his camp wrapped in a blanket. He was promptly buried.
“To carefully lay out her husband’s body, and tenderly enfold it in a winding-sheet, was the last act of devotion to her husband which was performed by Tamsen Donner (his wife),” Bryant said.
The Murphy Family
Of the 13 members of the Murphy family, only seven survived. They were Sarah and her husband William Foster, Harriet and Naomi, Mary and William (who hiked out with the first rescue party), and Simon, who was rescued by his brother-in-law, George Foster.
Levinah W. Jackson Murphy
- A widow from Tennessee traveling with her extended family
- Age: 36, perished at the snowbound Donner Camp
- Born: Dec. 15, 1809 Union Co., S.C.
- Married: Dec. 19, 1825 to Jeremiah Burns Murphy
Died: March 1847
According to Kristin Johnson’s website New Light Levinah was often called “old Mrs. Murphy” in the literature of the Donner Party, but Levinah Jackson Murphy was only 36 when she set out for California. She had been born to a prosperous family living in Union District, South Carolina.
“Her father was a responsible landowner who sat on juries, administered estates, maintained public roads, and was active in the local Baptist church. Levinah is said to have acted as his private secretary,” Johnson said. “Four days after her sixteenth birthday she married Jeremiah Burns Murphy, son of a neighboring family and her first cousin once removed. The bride and groom were both descended from Richard Murphy, who, according to family tradition, had been kidnapped from Ireland as a boy and sold as an indentured servant in Virginia.”
Jeremiah died October 5, 1839, leaving his 29-year-old widow with seven children to support, the youngest a toddler of 19 months.
Little emerges from the historical record about Levinah Murphy’s personality. Whether she eventually left the Mormon faith is unclear, but she was a devout woman.
“She was noted for her extensive erudition in scripture, and the facility with which she handled the subjects then agitating the religious community, and the skill with which she rightly divided the truth,” said her son William.
As the members of the Mormon Battalion began to filter back to where they called home – August 1847 – many of the veterans of the Mexican-American War traveled east toward Utah. Along the way they stopped at Johnson’s Ranch before crossing the Sierra. It was there that Mary Murphy reportedly told them that her mother being a widow, with several children dependent upon her for support, while residing in Nauvoo, heard of a chance of obtaining employment at Warsaw, an anti-Mormon town, thirty miles lower down the Mississippi.
Thinking to better her condition, she, accordingly, removed to Warsaw, and spent the winter of 1845-46 there. In the spring of the latter year, a party about emigrating to Oregon or California, offered to furnish passage for herself and children on the condition that she would cook and do the washing for the party.
Understanding California to be the final destination of the Saints and thinking this a good opportunity to emigrate without being a burden to the Church, she accepted the proposition. This story, as reported, cannot be corroborated. The Murphys took a boat from Warsaw in late 1842, and returned to Tennessee, according to William G. Murphy, and other sources place the family there during the winter preceding their departure for California.
There is no indication that the Murphys were closely associated with another family for whom Levinah might have cooked and washed. However, it was widely known that the Mormons were leaving Illinois, and California was rumored to be their destination.
Little is known about the Murphys’ experiences crossing the plains. When they finally arrived at Truckee Lake, Levinah’s remaining son-in-law William Foster and William Eddy built a cabin alongside a boulder, using its almost vertical eastern side as one wall. Located about 200 yards from the existing cabin which the Breens occupied, the Murphy cabin site was excavated archaeologically in the 1980s by Donald L. Hardesty of the University of Nevada-Reno. Here the Murphy clan and the Eddys spent the winter.
Christmas 1846 was bleak for the Donner Party. That night the Murphys had eaten their supper of boiled bones and Levinah’s son William was reading her favorite psalm to her when she became seriously ill.
Levinah was blind for a time during the winter, and the second relief found that she had become “so reduced by famine, that she was helpless,” alternately laughing and weeping. When the third relief arrived, she was too weak to travel.
“Mrs. Murphy was so kind to the little children that we remember her affectionately,” said Georgia Donner Babcock, daughter of George and Tamsen Donner, in a later diary entry. “It was always my impression that the last (third) relief party took from the cabin Frances, Georgia and Eliza Donner, and Simon Murphy. As we were ready to start, Mrs. Murphy walked to her bed, laid down turned her face toward the wall. One of the men gave her a handful of dried meat. She seemed to realize that we were leaving her, that her work was finished.”
When the salvage team returned a month later, they found her mutilated body.
Meriam (Mary) Marjory Murphy Johnson Covillaud
- Daughter of Jeremiah Burns Murphy and Levinah W. Jackson
- Age: 14, survived
- Born: Nov 15, 1831 Union Co., S.S.
- Married (1) June 24, 1847 to William Johnson; divorced
- Married (2) Dec. 25, 1848 to Charles Julian Covillaud
- Died: Sept. 27, 1867, age 35
At 13-years-old, Mary Murphy became an orphan after her parents perished at the Lake Camp.
February 1847 – Mary was rescued by the first relief party. Three months later, she wrote, “I hope I shall not live long for I am tired of this troublesome world and I want to go to my mother.”
Approximately, four months after her rescue, Murphy married William Jonhson, the proprietor of Johnson’s Ranch. The marriage was not a happy one. Within six months of their June 1847 wedding, Mary left Johnson, citing abuse, compounded by his refusal to give up his two Indian wives after marrying Mary, and his alleged heavy drinking. Mary obtained California’s first divorce and subsequently married Charles Covillaud, a merchant who founded the town of Marysville and named it in her honor.
Yet in 1849, despite her greatly improved circumstances, Mary was still sad: “I shall always wish that it had been Gods will for me to die with my Mother,” she said in a later diary entry.
Mary was remembered as a kind and generous woman who enjoyed flowers. She seems to have lived happily in the town that bore her name, Marysville, Calif. Charles Covillaud died in February 1867 and his widow followed him only seven months later, dying at the age of 35.
Born in Missouri to Mormon converts, there is no specific record indicating whether Mary remained a practicing Mormon throughout her life despite being buried in the Catholic cemetery at Marysville.
William Montgomery Pike
- Husband of Harriet Frances Murphy; son-in-law of Levinah W. Jackson
- Age: 32, perished along the Truckee River, Nevada
- Born: About 1814 in Dearborn Co., Ind.
- Married: Dec. 29, 1842 to Harriet Frances Murphy
- Died: Late Oct 1846
William M. Pike, the illegitimate son of James Brown Pike and a Mrs. Wolfries, was a grandson of a Revolutionary War officer, Zebulon Pike, and a nephew of the explorer Zebulon Montgomery Pike, after Pike’s Peak in Colorado is named. October 1846 – While the Donner Party was traveling along the Humboldt, William Pike met his fate from an accidental shooting. Pike was fatally wounded and died in about twenty minutes. Mrs. Pike was left a widow, with two small children.
The youngest, Catherine, was a babe of only a few months old, and Naomi was only three years of age.
Harriet Frances Murphy Pike Nye
- Daughter of Jeremiah Burns Murphy and Levinah W. Jackson; wife of William M. Pike
- Age: 18, survived
- Born: May 8, 1828 Union Co., S.C.
- Married (1): Dec. 29, 1842 to William M. Pike
- Married (2): June 24, 1847 to Michael C. Nye
- Died: Sept. 1, 1870 at The Dalles, Wasco Co., Ore., age 46
Levinah Jackson Murphy’s second daughter – Harriet – was 14 when she married William Pike in 1842. They lived for about a year in St. Louis, then made their home in Tennessee, In the spring of 1846, they left to emigrate to California.
Harriet lost her husband in a shooting accident along the Truckee River at the end of October 1846.
Dec. 16, 1846 – Harriet, her brother Lemuel, sister Sarah, and brother-in-law William Foster set out with the Forlorn Hope, leaving her daughters Naomi and Catherine with their grandmother Levinah at the Murphy cabin. The first relief rescued Naomi, but Catherine died the day after the relief arrived at the camp.
May 25, 1847 – The Murphy girls wrote to their relatives back in Tennessee.
Harriet’s brief note reads in part, “theare is know one that knows how to simpathise with mee left a widow in a strange cuntry with one por orpant childe to take care of I have not the hart nor minde to word all my suffering since I saw you…”
A month later, Harriet had found someone to sympathize with her. On June 24, she married Michael C. Nye.
Naomi Levina Pike Mitchell Schenck
- Daughter of Harriet Frances Murphy and William Montgomery Pike
- Age: 2, survived
- Born: Nov. 13, 1843 in St. Louis, Mo.
- Married (1): Sept. 8, 1864 to Benjamin W. Mitchell
- Married (2): About 1877 to John L. Schenck
Died: April 3, 1934 in The Dalles, Wasco Co., Ore., age 90
Naomi was two years old when her parents joined the Donner Party in Kansas bound for California. They were part of an extended Murphy family of 13. Of the 91 people who embarked for California, only 49 survived the winter of 1846-47.
The group was trapped in the snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for four months. Of the 13 in the Murphy’s cabin, six would perish.
At the snow-bound camp, Naomi lost her grandmother Levinah Murphy, her baby sister Catherine Pike, her uncles John and Lemuel Murphy and cousin Jeremiah Foster. She had already lost her father in a shooting accident on route to California with the Donner Party.
March 1847 – Naomi and her mother Harriet were rescued and brought to Sutter’s Fort at Sacramento.
With Naomi’s death in 1934, only one survivor of the Donner Party remained alive, Isabella Breen McMahon, passed away in 1935, marking the end of an era.
Catherine Pike
- Daughter of William M. Pike and Harriet Frances Murphy
- Age: 1, perished at the Murphy cabin
- Born: 1846
- Died: Feb. 20, 1847
In mid-December 1846, Harriet Pike left her two small daughters behind at Donner Lake as part of the Forlorn Hope in a desperate attempt to find help. While their mother struggled to cross Truckee Pass, Harriet’s daughter Naomi would live, while Catherine would die. The Murphy’s and the remaining survivors of the Donner Party’s five-month ordeal is one of the most infamous in American history, haunted by the fact that roughly half of the 45 survivors resorted to cannibalism when all other food sources, including boiled bark and leather, were depleted.
In a letter to her cousin in Illinois, Virginia Reed would later recount that “I have not wrote you half of the truble, but I hav Wrote you anuf to let you now what truble is,” before concluding, “Dont let this letter dishaten anybody. Never take no cutofs and hury along as fast as you can.”
This is the final of a three-part series. Read the first two stories below:
Mormon Battalion Part 2: From Sutter’s Mill to St. George
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