57 pages • 1 hour read
Daniel James BrownThe Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4, Chapter 14-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “In the Reproof of Chance”
Part 4, Chapter 14 Summary: “Shattered Souls”
On April 13, the fourth relief expedition, more a salvage operation than a rescue, departed from Johnson’s Ranch. When the fourth relief party arrived at the lake on April 17, they were shocked to find only Louis Keseberg alive amidst a heap of human remains. Keseberg claimed ignorance regarding cannibalism and stated that Tamzene Donner had accidentally fallen into a creek and died. Suspicious and disgusted, the men initially believed Keseberg had murdered Tamzene Donner for food and possibly her money. They nearly executed him, but he bargained for his life by offering to reveal the location of the hidden money. Returning to Johnson’s Ranch with salvaged goods from the camp, the saga of the Donner Party concluded with 87 survivors out of the 134 of the original group and 47 dead, mostly men.
In the aftermath, Edward Pyle Jr. proposed to Virginia Reed, who rejected him, so he then swiftly married Mary Ann. Mary Ann’s quick marriage relieved Sarah of one financial burden; however, the Graves family owed a debt to Sutter, so Sarah, possessing no assets other than two oxen given to Margaret Reed, began negotiations with James Reed, who had acquired a large piece of land in Santa Clara Valley, now San Jose.
Part 4, Chapter 15 Summary: “Golden Hills, Black Oaks”
By the end of summer in 1847, the youngest Graves child, also named Elizabeth, and Jonathan Graves had not recovered from the traumatic events of the previous winter and passed away. The Graves had received $40 from James Reed’s debt but had to primarily rely on charity for survival. Sarah and Eleanor left Lovina and Nancy with a family in San Jose and moved to Sonoma. There, Reason Tucker persuaded Sarah and Eleanor to relocate to Napa Valley, where a small, burgeoning community was forming. Tucker recruited Sarah to be a schoolteacher in the town.
In other developments, William Dill Ritchie, Colonel Matthew Ritchie’s son, and Sarah married in October 1848. Sarah had two sons with William Ritchie, but tragedy struck her life again when he was caught stealing mules and was hanged, leaving Sarah a widow once more. In May 1857, Mary Ann’s husband, Edward Pyle, went missing in San Jose and was later found to have been murdered.
Part 4, Chapter 16 Summary: “Peace”
Sarah married for a third time to Samuel Spires, an older melon farmer with whom she had four children. They moved to Visalia, California, where Mary Ann lived, now remarried to a man named James Clarke after Pyle’s death. Sarah and Samuel relocating to Corralitos, a valley southeast of Santa Cruz. Sarah’s life there was short, as she passed away at the age of 46 in March of 1871.
Part 4, Chapter 17 Summary: “In the Years Beyond”
Billy Graves returned to Donner Lake in 1849, guiding a party of Gold Rush prospectors. He settled in Calistoga, where he initially married an Indigenous Pomo woman before abandoning her to marry Martha Cyphers in 1873, whom he later divorced. He died in Santa Rosa in 1907.
Mary Ann and James Clarke lived on their ranch in Visalia, where they had seven children; Mary Ann remained emotionally scarred for the rest of her life and died in 1891.
Eleanor Graves married and lived with her husband on a ranch in Knights Valley, north of Calistoga. She bore 10 children, four of whom died young; she herself passed away in 1894. Lovina Graves married a man named John Cyrus, had six children, and lived in Upper Napa Valley; she died in 1906.
Nancy Graves married a Methodist minister, and they moved frequently while spreading the Methodist faith and raising nine children, eventually settling in Sebastopol, California, where Nancy died in 1907.
In 1891, a man named Edward Reynolds was digging around Donner Lake and discovered a bunch of silver coins. Reynolds kept half of these coins and gave the other half to the Graves family.
Peggy and Patrick Breen moved to San Juan Bautista in September of 1847. Their eldest son, John, ventured to the gold fields and returned with $12,000, which they used to purchase extensive tracts of land in what is now San Benito County. In 1878, James Breen, who was five at the time of the disaster, walked into the offices of the Truckee Republican and subscribed to the paper. He offered insights for the first-ever book on the subject, The History of the Donner Party. Isabel Breen, the last survivor of the Donner Party, died in March 1935 in Hollister at the age of 89.
James Reed’s family prospered as a result of real estate success and mining, acquiring wealth and prominence in San Jose and presiding over large tracts of land, including the area where San Jose State University is located today. His daughter Virginia Reed converted to Catholicism, married, and had nine children, passing away in 1921. His other daughter, Patty Reed, became one of the public faces of the Donner Party and died in Santa Cruz in 1923.
All three of Tamzene and George Donner’s daughters married, lived full lives, and had children. The three children of Jacob and Elizabeth Donner survived as orphans. William Eddy, having lost his entire family, moved to San Jose, remarried, and had three children. Amanda and William McCutchen moved to Gilroy, where William served as sheriff. In 1857, Amanda died in childbirth.
Mary Murphy, who was 15 and an orphan when she was brought to Johnson’s Ranch, married the ranch proprietor, William Johnson, in June of the same year but later divorced him due to his abusive behavior. She remarried Charles Covillaud, and the couple prospered during the Gold Rush, producing five children. The town that developed around where they settled was named Marysville in her honor.
Lansford Hastings, after practicing law in San Francisco, abandoned his practice to search for gold. He then moved to Sacramento to go into business with John Sutter. Later, he was appointed judge of the Northern District of California and represented Sacramento at the state’s constitutional convention in 1849. He then served as a major in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Following the war, Hastings attempted to establish a Confederate colony in Brazil and authored The Emigrant’s Guide to Brazil. He died on a ship returning to Brazil sometime thereafter.
Part 4 Analysis
The fourth relief expedition underscored the bleakness and finality of the Donner Party’s ordeal. The discovery of Louis Keseberg as the sole survivor amidst human remains at the lake served as the end of the tragedy. Keseberg’s claims of ignorance regarding cannibalism and the accidental death of Tamzene Donner introduced further layers of mystery and distrust, with many suspecting that he murdered her for food during their final days at the lake. Though Brown leaves his own perspective on Keseberg’s actions ambiguous, his choice to include the fourth relief expedition in a separate section from the earlier expeditions sets Keseberg’s rescue apart. This decision implicitly contrasts the party’s final survivor with the other survivors, who opposed the murder of healthy individuals for sustenance.
In the aftermath of the Donner Party tragedy, the personal relationships and financial struggles of the survivors, particularly Sarah Graves, reveal that The Challenges of Pioneer Life continued in California. The suffering persisted, as evidenced by the deaths of Elizabeth and Jonathan Graves by the end of the summer of 1847. These losses reflect the enduring impact of their ordeal. Sarah faced significant financial challenges, dealing with debts owed to Sutter and limited assets. Edward Pyle Jr.’s swift proposal to Virginia Reed, followed by an immediate marriage to Mary Ann after Virginia’s rejection, reflects the urgent reshaping of social bonds and responsibilities among the survivors. This urgency and Pyle’s desperation for a wife due to the scarcity of women in California at the time inadvertently provided some financial relief for Sarah. However, she still relied mostly on charity, emphasizing the overarching theme of Love and Sacrifice. Sarah navigated her new life and responsibilities in California with the help of the community; Reason Tucker was able to get her a job as a schoolteacher in Napa Valley. Nonetheless, Sarah’s personal life continued to be marked by both tragedy and resilience. Her marriage to William Dill Ritchie followed by his untimely death due to a criminal act, and her subsequent third marriage to Samuel Spires, with whom she moved to Visalia, illustrate her continuous efforts to rebuild and sustain her family despite the persistent challenges that plagued her existence. Sarah’s relocation to Corralitos and her death at 46 encapsulate a life defined by persistent adversity, resilience, and the continual search for a place to call home. Her story, like those of many others in the Donner Party, exemplifies survival, community formation, and the human capacity to endure.
The end of the book also reveals the involvement of many Donner Party survivors in the Gold Rush, highlighting nature as a site of both prosperity and destruction.
Like his sister, Billy Graves, who returned to Donner Lake as a guide for Gold Rush prospectors, embodies a narrative of resilience and redemption. By returning to the site of his past trauma, he transformed it into a place of new beginnings and economic opportunity. Like Billy Graves, the Breen family had success in the gold fields and subsequent land acquisitions, their achievements illustrate how Donner Party survivors leveraged California’s economic opportunities to secure a prosperous future. James Breen’s involvement in documenting the Donner Party’s history contributed to the historical understanding of the event. These contributions helped to preserve the memory of the ordeal and provide insights into the enduring impact of the survivors on California’s history. Like the Breen family’s success in California, James Reed’s family found prosperity following the Donner Party tragedy, excelling in real estate and mining. They leveraged their frontier experiences into substantial economic growth and emerged as community leaders in what is now modern-day San Jose. Similarly, Mary Murphy of the Murphy family achieved prosperity and recognition during the Gold Rush, with her legacy cemented by the founding of Marysville, named in her honor.
Many survivors, like Mary Ann, Eleanor, and Nancy Graves, focused on building families and integrating into budding communities across California. These stories of marriage, childbirth, and settlement emphasize the human capacity to rebuild and forge new connections even after immense trauma. Their stories highlight the significant role the Donner Party played as some of the first settlers in California; their contributions had a foundational impact on the state’s development.
Lansford Hastings, known for his infamous guide that misled the Donner Party, represents a narrative of continued ambition and controversy. From his legal career to his involvement in the Civil War and attempts to establish a colony in Brazil, Hastings’s life encapsulates a series of ambitious ventures that impacted various historical and geographical landscapes. By sharing his outcome alongside the stories of the survivors, the narrative suggests that Hastings’s life and decisions are inextricable from the fate of the Donner Party members—those who survived the ordeal as well as the 47 who perished in the mountains.
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