History of the Donner Party by Charles McGlashan

Author:Charles McGlashan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Published: 2009-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII

A Wife’s Devotion • Tamsen Donner’s Early Life • The Early Settlers of Sangamon County • An Incident in School • Teaching and Knitting • School Discipline • Captain George Donner’s Appearance • Parting Scenes at Alder Creek • Starting over the Mountains • A Baby’s Death • A Mason’s Vow • Crossing the Snow Barrier • More Precious than Gold or Diamonds • Elitha Donner’s Kindness

MRS. TAMSEN DONNER WAS WELL AND COMPARATIVELY STRONG, AND could easily have crossed the mountains in safety with this party. Her husband, however, was suffering from a serious swelling on one of his hands. Sometime before reaching the mountains he had accidentally hurt this hand while handling a wagon. After encamping at Alder Creek he was anxious to assist in the arrangements and preparations for winter, and while thus working the old wound reopened. Taking cold in the hand, it became greatly swollen and inflamed, and he was rendered entirely helpless. Mrs. Donner was urged to go with the relief party, but resolutely determined to heed the promptings of wifely devotion and remain by her husband.

No one will ever read the history of the Donner Party without greatly loving and reverencing the character of this faithful wife. The saddest, most tear-stained page of the tragedy, relates to her life and death in the mountains. A better acquaintance with the Donner family, and especially with Mrs. Tamsen Donner, can not fail to be desirable in view of succeeding chapters. Thanks to Mr. Allen Francis, the present United States Consul at Victoria, British Columbia, very complete, authentic, and interesting information upon this subject has been furnished. Mr. Francis was publisher of the Springfield (Illinois) Journal in 1846, and a warm personal friend of the family.

The Donners were among the first settlers of Sangamon County, Ill. They were North Carolinians, immigrants to Kentucky in 1818, subsequently to the State of Indiana, and from thence to what was known as the Sangamon Country, in the year 1828.

George Donner, at the time of leaving Springfield, Ill., was a large, fine-looking man, fully six feet in height, with merry black eyes, and the blackest of hair, lined with an occasional silver thread. He possessed a cheerful disposition, an easy temperament, industrious habits, sound judgment, and much general information. By his associates and neighbors he was called “Uncle George.” To him they went for instructions relating to the management of their farms, and usually they returned feeling they had been properly advised. Twice had death bequeathed him a group of motherless children, and Tamsen was his third wife.

Her parents, William and Tamsen Eustis, were respected and well to do residents of Newburyport, Mass., where she was born in November, 1801. Her love of books made her a student at an early age; almost as soon as the baby-dimples left her cheeks, she sought the schoolroom, which afforded her reat enjoyment. Her mother’s death occurred before she attained her seventh year, and for a time her childish hopes and desires were overshadowed with sadness by this, her first real sorrow.

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