Donner Party

There was a girl named Mary Donner in the Donner Party, and a woman named Margaret Reed.

Its a matter of opinion. There are many people who believe that it was Hastings fault, and others believe that it was the Donner Party's fault. There is also many evidence that suppourts both sides.

After Hastings took his own shortcut, he basically led a normal life. He went on to fight in the Mexican- American war and the Civil War, where he made some pretty good accomplishments. He later lived in Brazil and died in 1870 while leading rebels in the Virgin Islands.

So, he pretty much lived an ordinary life, including getting married!

There was only one major mountain range that the Donner Party had to cross through. The Rocky Mountain. The Rockys caused a lot of trouble for the people going out to west. The Donner Party took off late from Independence, MO, so the Donner Party got stuck in the Rockys. That's what caused the Donner Party to become so famous and the number of people going to the west decreased dramatically. Then the Gold Rush started and the numbers went way up.

The Donner party wanted to make a big fortune in California which was prosperous back then; it also encouraged by a route that was 350-400 mile shorter, but this route was not tested.

16 wagons were on the donner party And 87 people that were with the donner party.

It is not a religion, though certainly Cannibalism has theological overtones. I do not know how the padres ruled in this respect. Thanks largely to supermarkets, it could not happen today with some exceptions for such things as the Andes plane crash survivors, the subject of the book (Alive)

Here a several (from Amazon.com):

# The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party by Marian Calabro (Hardcover - Mar 29, 1999) # Ordeal by Hunger by George R. Stewart (Paperback - Jan 30, 1992) # The Donner Party Chronicles: A Day-by-Day Account of a Doomed Wagon Train, 1846-47 by Frank Mullen (Paperback - Sep 1997) # Patty Reed's Doll: The Story of the Donner Party by Rachel K. Laurgaard and Elizabeth Sykes Michaels (Paperback - Aug 1989) # The Archaeology Of The Donner Party (Wilbur S. Shepperson Series in History and Humanities) by Donald L Hardesty (Paperback - Oct 18, 2005) # Snowbound: The Tragic Story of the Donner Party by David Lavender (Hardcover - April 1996) # The Donner Party (Disasters in History) by Welvaert, Scott R., Barnett III, and Charles (Paperback - Sep 1, 2006) # The Journal of Douglas Allen Deeds : The Donner Party Expedition, 1846 (My Name Is America) by Rodman Philbrick (Hardcover - Nov 1, 2001) # 28 Used & new from $2.49 # The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press) by Eliza Poor Donner Houghton (Paperback - April 25, 2008) # The Donner Party: Weathering the Storm by Mark McLaughlin (Perfect Paperback - Jan 10, 2007) # Deceived: The Story of the Donner Party by Peter R. Limburg (Hardcover - Oct 1998)

There are a number of photographs of Donner Party members. Eleanor Eddy's and Sarah Keyes' photos were taken before they left for California. There is also a painting of Charles Stanton.

There are also many photos of Donner Party members taken at different times after the disaster, some as early as the 1850s and some as late as the 1930s.

You can find many of them by searching on "Donner party" at Google Images.

They didn't leave Springfield, Missouri, they left Springfield, Illinois. They wanted to better their lives by moving to an area where there was less sickness, a climate with no cold winters, and good farming land.

There were some deaths along the way that had nothing to do with the weather, but if my research is accurate, none of these ended up on the table. This was an arduous trip and there most certainly were confrontations. One resulted in the death of James Snyder in an argument with one of the organizers of the group, James Reed.

At first the group wanted to hang Reed, but he was just banished, leaving behind a wife and several children. When they finanlly realized they were stuck on the mountain and were in a very bad situation, a party was sent to find a town. Along the way the 17 people that were sent to find help lost 1 of their group and he was eaten. The two Indian guides then left for fear they would be eaten next. They were hunted down and killed for their desertion.

When help finally arrived there were 45 of the original 89 settlers. There were body parts lying in the snow, some human some belonging to oxen. But their main rescuer was James Reed, the man they almost hung.

There has never been any definitive proof that any of those who participated in the assassination of Joseph Smith found their way into the doomed Donner Party. The men who participated in the prophet's martyrdom called themselves the Carthage Grays. It may never be known who actually fired the shots that killed Joseph and his brother, Hyrum; the shots were fired both from the stairway immediately outside the room where they were staying, and from the grounds below the window of that room.

There have been stories over the years that some members of the Grays made their way west, but no documentation exists that any of the Donner Party were members of that mob.

The Donner Party did not settle in Utah. They passed through Utah in August and September 1846.