By the way...

Those who're interested can purchase Overland Journal 26:1 (Spring 2008), which contains three Donner Party articles, from the Oregon-California Trails Association. Phone (888) 811-6282, toll-free, to make a credit card purchase. $5.00 per copy, plus postage. (Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in sales of the issue.)

Donner, Donner everywhere (updated)

So much has been happening on the Donner Party front this spring that it's hard to know where to start.

Yesterday I was surprised and pleased to hear of another book in the works, this one with a very different approach. In 1973 Gabrielle Burton was bitten by the Tamzene Donner bug. Over the years she's pursued Tamzene, traveling to Newburyport, Mass., Elizabeth City, N.C., Springfield, Ill., and of course, the Donner Lake area, in her search, often with her family in tow. Next year the University of Nebraska Press will publish Searching for Tamsen Donner, which chronicles Gabrielle's quest, tells Tamzene's story, and includes the texts of Tamzene's letters. Sounds great!

Over the years, we've heard so much about the Donners and the Reeds (and more recently the Breens) that other Donner Party members have been slighted. I've tried to remedy this in my own research by concentrating more on the other families and single men, and am therefore pleased to report on projects involving the Murphy and Graves families.

Marysville, Calif., was named for Donner Party survivor Mary Murphy Covillaud; her sisters Sarah and Frances also lived there for several years, and their brother William was a prominent citizen of the town. I've been working with three Marysville ladies, all active in local history circles, who have developed a novel approach to presenting the story of the Murphy family: Sarah Murphy Foster (Kathy Sedler), Harriet Murphy Pike Nye (Sue Cejner-Moyers), and Mary Murphy Covillaud (Karen Compton) each take a turn to speak about part of the family's experience. The Three Murphy Sisters have been very well received and have gotten several requests for future presentations.

I was delighted to learn from Daniel James Brown that he's finished the first draft of his Donner Party book, Seeking Sarah (what is it with these missing Donner Party females?), which focuses on Sarah Graves Fosdick and the Graves family. I very much look forward to seeing it, because, although I try not to play favorites, I have a particular affinity for the Graveses -- five of the six surviving children of the family lived in the area of Northern California where I grew up, and descendants live there to this day. I've gotten to know several of them and they're fine folks. The Graves family's story, filtered through most histories' pro-Reed bias, has yet to be told adequately, and I'm confident that Dan will do them justice.

And then there are the movies. Necrosis, which wrapped in February, is a horror film: six friends, trapped by snow in an isolated cabin in the Sierra Nevada, are haunted by the ghosts of the Donner Party. Not a bad premise, really, but the creators perpetuate the tiresome canard that the Donner Party slaughtered one another a hunger-induced frenzy.

The filming of The Forlorn has just ended -- see previous blog entry called "The movie that couldn't be made." From the title and the dramatis personae, it's obviously about the Forlorn Hope -- the snowshoers who set out from Donner Lake in mid-December 1846 to seek help. More details coming soon!

New Donner Party documents!

The latest issue over Overland Journal, the quarterly of the Oregon-California Trails Association (OCTA), is full of Donner Party material, including some new primary documents.

First are three letters by rescuer Selim E. Woodworth. Two were written while he was on the trail to Oregon in 1846, the third on February 6, 1847, the eve of his departure to the mountains to rescue a party of "unfortunate emigrants" starving in the mountains.

Then there's my article about survivor Sarah Graves Fosdick and the Graves family, followed by another "new" (i.e., previously unknown) letter that Sarah wrote to relatives in Indiana to inform them of the disaster. Sarah wrote on May 23, 1847, a day after her sister Mary wrote to Sarah's father-in-law back in Illinois, and the two letters are very similar (Mary's letter is in Unfortunate Emigrants, p. 129-131).

These new primary documents are pretty minor and certainly don't revolutionize our knowledge of the Donner Party, but they're still very interesting. Woodworth's trail letters help fill a gap in our knowledge of the emigration of 1846; Sarah's is a real gem not so much because of its content but because of the personal angle -- it's her only account of the Donner Party, written soon after the tragedy, and one of the very few documents by her known to exist.

In addition to these articles, this issue of OJ also has a piece by Rush Spedden, "The Donner Trail Across the Salt Lake Valley." In this detailed inquiry, Rush argues that the Donners crossed the Jordan River at 3300 South, over half a mile from the location (2700 South) posited by Dale Morgan and Roderick Korns in West from Fort Bridger. Rush make a pretty good case and it'll be interesting to see how the experts respond.

Another new Donner performance

Ruth Whitman's poem cycle Tamsen Donner: A Woman's Journey has inspired yet another artistic interpretation, described as an "operatorio in one act."

On March 14 and 15 the Seattle EXperimental Opera (SEXO) will present Tom Baker's Hunger: The Journey of Tamsen Donner at 8:00 PM at the Chapel at Good Shepherd Center in Seattle -- see Tom's website or the press release for more information. Anybody who attends, please report back and let us know what you thought of it.

New Light URL change

The URL for New Light on the Donner Party has been changed, for some mysterious reason. It's now http://www.xmission.com/~octa/DonnerParty/. However, the old one still seems to be functioning, too. Very strange.

The movie that couldn't be made (updated)

Over the years there have been several plans to make a feature film about the Donner Party but none has ever been completed. Previous flutters about Donner movie projects have followed a predictable pattern: an initial announcement, sporadic follow-up reports, and then a deafening silence. Why? I can't say for certain, but suspect that these projects' demise can be attributed to the ever-tricky issue of cannibalism, the expense of producing historical epics, and/or the overall decline of the Western genre's popularity. And, as has been pointed out, the difficulty of condensing the story into a 2-3 hour movie.

But hope springs eternal. Just about every year since 1995 I've met, been contacted by, or heard of at least one person who's working on a Donner Party screenplay. Some of these folks have become good friends and long time correspondents, others I never hear from again, one or two have sent me scripts to peruse . But never has any movie resulted.

This might be about to change, according to recent reports on the 'net, but you can't believe everything you read. This is the real deal, according to producer John E. Moore: Anacapa Entertainment has a feature film in active development called The Forlorn. It focuses on "the 1846 tragedy of the Donner Party, a wagon train forced by the worst blizzard in recorded history to survive the winter trapped in Sierra Nevada Mountains." ("Worst blizzard in recorded history"?! Tch! That's Hollywood...) Producers are John E. Moore, Mark Costa, and Ted Meyer, with TJ Martin as the writer/director. Negotiations to cast Crispin Glover are underway but not finalized; shooting is expected to begin in March in the Tahoe area. It will be interesting to see what happens this time around.

New book released

Well, Ethan Rarick's new book on the Donner Party is officially out. Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West (Oxford University Press) has been available at Amazon.com for about a month now, but today's New York Times, the San Jose Mercury News, and other papers have published reviews, generally favorable. At last we have an up-to-date narrative history of the Donner Party that incorporates the latest research (much of it mine), and overall I give the book a thumbs-up. Experienced followers of the Donner saga are unlikely to find any startling new information and Donner fanatics might find much to quibble with, but for more casual readers, it's a worthwhile addition to the literature.

Mortal Decisions

Well, it looks like geography will prevent me from seeing another Donner Party performance -- Stuart Richel informs me that he will be reprising his role as James F. Reed in "Mortal Decisions, a Diary of the Donner Party."

Richel [pronounced rih-SHELL] wrote this one-man show, which premiered in San Jose, California, in 1994, and has presented it at other venues, including the first-night banquet at the Donner Party Sesquicentennial (August 1996) in Reno, Nevada.

He will be presenting it again at the Metropolitan Playhouse in Greenwich Village for four performances between February 8-16, 2008. I can't imagine being anywhere near New York then, but would very much like to attend , as I have only the vaguest recollection of seeing it in Reno.

For more about Mr. Richel and his performance, see the website.

Grrr!

When I first heard about Ron Cunningham's Donner Party ballet performed recently in Sacramento, I was sorry to have missed it. Not anymore! A correspondent wrote to the paper and learned of a "plot twist" -- George Donner didn't die of gangrene, no, no! Instead, the ballet suggests he was beaten to death by disgruntled party members. Tch! As if the memories of Donner Party members haven't been sullied enough, their ordeal misrepresented, their sufferings turned into stupid jokes, and now this. I'm glad I didn't see this "artistic" interpretation of the Donner Party and hope it was a flop.

Here endeth the rant.