The Battalion and the Donner Party

The Battalion and the Donner Party

Lavina Murphy and her husband, Jeremiah, joined the church in 1836 when Wilford Woodruff and Reed Smoot introduced them to the gospel in Tennessee. Their home was somewhat a center of activity and Elder Woodruff mentioned them several times in his missionary accounts. Not long after Jeremiah died in 1839, Lavina moved to Nauvoo with her small family. She was an active participant in church affairs including baptisms for the dead. Her name was recorded several times in the record books of Nauvoo.

 In 1842, Lavina found employment in nearby Warsaw, necessitating that she move her family to the neighboring town. According to her son William, she maintained an avid interest in the scriptures. William also indicated his mother heard of a wonderful land in the West, so the family readied themselves to move on. The Murphy’s joined with the Donner-Reed Party in St. Louis. Her children and son-in-laws became the largest family in the company.

The Donner/Reid vanguard group offered to provide for Lavina and her children if she would cook and do the wash for them. Thinking that California was to be the final destination of the saints, Lavina accepted the position feeling she would be less of a burden and still unite with the saints later.

Lavina’s two oldest daughters and their husbands, William Foster and William Pike with their children joined the Donner Party as well.

While the party was hindered with numerous difficulties, William and William, the brother-in-laws, offered to cross the summit ahead of the group and bring provisions back. As they camped in the Truckee Meadows, William Foster while cleaning his gun, accidently shot his brother-in-law, William Pike. That left Lavina’s daughter, Harriet, a widow with a baby of a few months and a three-year-old daughter, Naomi.

The early ensuing storms impeded their travel westward through the Sierra. As the  accumulating snow engulfed them, the company realized they were too ill equipped to trudge to the summit as a unit. They submitted to the mountains brutal force to hunker down, assembling a ramshackle cabin near Donner Lake.

When rescuers arrived, many were escorted down the mountain but Lavina remained due to blindness. By the fourth and final rescue, she was dead, her body badly mutilated. Of the 80 Donner Party members who camped in the Truckee Meadows in the fall of 1846, 44 survived. Of the thirteen members of the Murphy family, only seven of the thirteen survived.

Lavina Murphy’s daughter Mary, met Sergeant Daniel Tyler of the Mormon Battalion at Johnson’s ranch. She and several others marched out of the mountains to assemble a rescue party. These members are referred to as the “Forlorn Hope” group. In conversing with Mary, Daniel was informed of her family’s circumstances and concluded in his journal, “Alas, the example of Sister Murry [Murphy], although her motives were good, is an illustration of the truism that ‘it is better to suffer affliction with the people of God and trust in Him for deliverance than to mingle with the sinful for a season and be lured by human prospects of a better result’” (Tyler, A Concise History, 312).

When word of the Donner Party’s fate reached  the Thomas Rhoades family, two of his sons, John and Daniel, responded by volunteering as part of a rescue team.  There were to be principal players in rescuing several members  of the stranded group.

The rescuers endured the harsh conditions with treacherous cold and snow. None of them were experienced mountaineers who knew survival techniques. They labored to move forward through mounting exhaustion. Arriving at the camp on February 18, 1847, they were aghast at the conditions. Even so, it was impossible to take all the survivors; they could gather only twenty four.

“Big John Rhoads” carried little three-year-old Naomi Pike on his back for 40 miles. Naomi later wrote that she owed Big John her life for saving her. It is possible that John’s noble spirit had empathy for this beleaguered group since they had traveled from the East together until Fort Bridger. Not only did John make the first rescue attempt, but he volunteered for the fourth and final attempt as well.

 Next on the scene of the disaster was a small detachment of twelve Mormon battalion men. They were to accompany General Stephen Kearney as an armed escort for his return to the states from his post in California. Daniel Tyler wrote in his journal:

“On the 21^st, [the escort] traveled through snow from two to twelve feet deep and over rough mountains [the Sierra Nevadas] before reaching the Truckee River. There, a small lake was found . . . , now called Lake Tahoe. In the vicinity of this lake were several cabins built by . . . [the Donner-Reed Party], which was snowed in the previous fall. Their numbers were estimated at about eighty [82] souls, who all perished except about thirty. The General ordered a halt and detailed five men to bury the dead that were lying upon the ground.” (Tyler, A Concise History, 301–302)

When we contemplate the hardships and tragedies of the early Mormon pioneers in their treks cross country, it would be fitting to remember the Murphy family and their rescuers, much as we remember the members of the Willy, Martin Handcart companies and their ordeal in the winter wilds of Wyoming” (Quoted from Don Watts a local researcher and avid history buff).

The Donner Party tragedy left an indelible mark on all the battalion men who had contact with them either dead or alive. None of veterans had seen or heard of such a gruesome spectacle before. General Kearney commanded the men to gather the remains, dig a pit in one of the houses and burn the house with the remains. However, several other parties came upon the scene and found more evidence of the insanity that took place (Dorius, “Mormons in the Donner Party,”).

Reddick Allred was part of the newly discharged battalion party who traveled northward intent on finding their wives and families. His group came after General Kearney’s company who had already buried some of the dead in the mountains. Reddick records in his personal journal:

Proceeded on our journey on the 5^th [September 1847], and met Sam Brannan with an Epistle from President Young. All who did not intend to go to the Bluffs for their families should stay in California and get work through the winter. This broke up our organization and Andrew Lytle was our Captain.

When we passed the summit of the Sierra-Nevada Mountains, we found Hastings’[Donner Party’s] winter camp. At the base of the mountains we struck the Truckee River, then crossed an arm of the Great American Desert to the sink of the Humboldt River, passing the Hot Boiling Springs. (Family Papers.)