Christmas 1846 at Donner Lake: The Reed Family's Hidden Feast

Stumps of trees cut by the Donner Party in Summit Valley, Placer County — cut at the level of the deep snow. Public domain.

Trapped

Most overland emigrants reached their destinations long before Christmas. A few, stranded or lost, spent their first Western Christmas in winter camps far from any settlement.

The 81 members of the Donner-Reed Party were on a proven route, the 1844 Truckee Route — not lost, but late. Trying to cross the central Sierra Nevada in early November 1846, they were trapped by blizzards near present-day Truckee, California.

• They huddled in scattered camps under shelters of branches, cowhides and old wagon covers as snow piled up.
• The Reed and Breen families shared a tiny, leaky cabin built two years earlier by another stranded emigrant.
• Their food ran out, and fishing, trapping and hunting mostly failed. By December they were living on boiled bones and strips of ox hide from dead cattle dug out of the snow.

Christmas Day

Eight-year-old Patty Reed lived in the crowded cabin with her mother, her 13-year-old sister Virginia, two little brothers — and the nine Breens. Decades later she remembered:

"Christmas morning came, you could not hear that happy sound 'Merry Christmas' ring through the hall…. Our breakfast was ready, a pot of glue…. It was stewed ox hide, but we were pleased to have even that to eat."

Then their mother, Margaret Reed, brought out a surprise she had hidden away: a piece of tripe, a teacup of white beans, half a cup of rice, half a cup of dried apples and a two-inch cube of fatty pork.

"The delight of the little ones knew no bounds," Virginia recalled. The children watched the pot, squealing whenever a bit of pork, a slice of apple or a bean bobbed up. Serving it, their mother said, "Children, eat slowly, for this one day you can have all you wish."

"So bitter was the misery relieved this one bright day," Virginia wrote many years later, "that I have never since sat down to a Christmas dinner without my thoughts going back to Donner Lake."

The others

• In the same cabin, Patrick Breen, his wife Margaret and their seven children had no feast. His diary for the day reads: "Offerd. Our prayers to God this Cherimass morning the prospect is appalling but hope in God amen."
• In a neighboring shelter, 14-year-old Mary Murphy's family — Latter-day Saints bound to join Mormons in California with her widowed mother, Levinah — ate "boild bones and oxtail soup." Levinah fell desperately ill that night.

The Murphy cabin site at Donner Memorial State Park: this boulder formed one side of the shelter where Mary Murphy's family lived. NPS.

Rescue

Rescuers reached the camps in February 1847. All the Reeds and Breens survived. Mary Murphy and her brothers, 10 and 8, were saved, but their mother was too weak to walk; the last rescue party had to leave Levinah to die in camp. The survivors reached the settlements by the end of April 1847.

More Christmases on the emigrant trails

The Park Service's series also tells of Christmas 1843 at Peachtree Valley with Joseph R. Walker's wagon train; 1849 at Bruff's Camp on the Lassen route; and 1849 in Death Valley with the Rev. James W. Brier. Explore the California National Historic Trail and the Park Service's national trails.

Further reading

• Patrick Breen, diary, in Dale Morgan, ed., Overland in 1846 (University of Nebraska Press, 1963)
• C.F. McGlashan, History of the Donner Party (7th ed., 1902; free on the Internet Archive)
• Virginia Reed Murphy, Across the Plains in the Donner Party (Ye Galleon Press, 1998)
• George R. Stewart, The California Trail (McGraw-Hill, 1962)
• Emmy E. Werner, Pioneer Children on the Journey West (Westview Press, 1995)

Sources

Based on "Christmas on the Emigrant Trails: Christmas 1846 at Donner Lake, California," California National Historic Trail, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Quotations are from Patty Reed's and Virginia Reed's recollections and Patrick Breen's diary as given there. A trails map on a commercial basemap and a covered-wagon photo used as a link card are not reproduced. The source lists the author of The California Trail as "George E. Stewart."