Virginia reed 1846

Their own deep freeze?

[Laughs.] Yup, they went to the deep freeze. Over the years, people would ask me, 'What are you working on now?' The short answer was 'A book about the Donner Party.' The long answer was, 'A book about the folly and arrogance of Manifest Destiny, as told through the eyes of its foot soldiers.' But if I’d just say the Donner Party, they’d invariably say, 'Aren’t those the pioneers who got trapped in the mountains and ate each other?' I’d say, 'Yes.' But then I had to explain that that’s only a slice of the Donner pie, albeit an important one.

In the book, you say, “The Gothic tale of cannibalism draws a real parallel between the individuals consuming flesh and the desire of a country to consume the continent.” That’s a pretty harsh judgment, isn't it?

There are so many metaphors and elements of history that crossroad at this particular point from to The term Manifest Destiny was first coined in , by John L.

O’Sullivan of the New York Post, in an editorial.

Virginia reed donner party biography of albert einstein She was the half-sister to Martha J. Reed Lewis, James F. Reed Jr, Thomas K. Reed, Charles C. Reed and Willianoski Y.

Many people, including politicians of course, and others interested in the commercial interests of the U.S., came to the conclusion that God Almighty had mandated the Anglo-Americans as the Chosen People and it was their destiny, their manifest destiny, to take over the entire continent. (Read how a 2,mile trail helped define the American mindset.)

Timing couldn’t have been better.

We had a bellicose, expansionist president, James Polk, who schemed up a convenient war with Mexico, which owned much of the land we were to take in the West. The story line was, 'There are no people out there, anyway, so let’s take this land!' Of course, there were a lot of people out there, like the Mexicans, and tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of Indians.

What we did was gobble up nations.

The most infamous member of the party was a German emigrant named Lewis Keseberg.

Virginia reed donner party biography of albert In early , he was about 60 years old. His year-old wife Tamzene and their three daughters, Frances, 6, Georgia, 4, and Eliza, 3, and George's daughters from a previous marriage, Elitha, 14, and Leanna, 12, went with him. George's younger brother, year-old Jacob, also joined the party, with his wife Elizabeth, 45, two teenage stepsons: Solomon Hook, 14, and William Hook, 12, and five children: George, 9; Mary, 7; Isaac, 6, Lewis, 4; and Samuel, 1. Also traveling with the Donner brothers were teamsters Hiram O. The Donner family suffered more than most families.

Give us a bit of background—and describe his heinous deeds.

For me, there are no shining heroes or demons in this story. Keseberg was made into the master villain of this whole tragedy, and he didn’t help his own cause. He and his wife, Philippine, came from Germany.

Virginia reed Virginia Elizabeth Reed letter collection [manuscript materials], Murphy, Virginia Reed, ? Contact Information View in Google Maps. This collection includes letters written by Virginia Elizabeth Reed, a member of the Donner Party, at age 12, as well as manuscripts written about her by George Wharton James and Frances Watkins. This collection also includes magazine articles and newspaper clippings from regarding Reed and other Donner Party survivors, and photocopies of two postcards Reed sent to her grandchildren around This collection also includes magazine articles and newspaper clippings from regarding Reed and other Donner Party survivors, and photocopies from about of two postcards Reed sent to her grandchildren around

He was a son of a Lutheran clergyman, and they decided to join this vanguard moving west. He was a sharp-tempered fellow, who was sometimes abusive to his young, pregnant wife. He was also accused of plundering Indian burial sites.

When the fourth rescue party reached him in April , he was the only survivor. He was reportedly found with a cauldron of cooked flesh and discarded bones.

There were even rumors from some of the surviving children that he had taken one lad to bed with him to comfort him and the next morning the boy was dead, hung up on the wall of the cabin, like a slab of meat, and later eaten.