USA > Illinois > Marshall County > Records of the olden time; or, Fifty years on the prairies. Embracing sketches of the discovery, exploration and settlement of the country, the organization of the counties of Putnam and Marshall, biographies of citizens, portraits and illustrations > Part 51
USA > Illinois > Putnam County > Records of the olden time; or, Fifty years on the prairies. Embracing sketches of the discovery, exploration and settlement of the country, the organization of the counties of Putnam and Marshall, biographies of citizens, portraits and illustrations > Part 51
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In marcaing, the leader provided with snow shoes went ahead and the rest followed, stepping in his tracks. Little James Reed could not take such long steps and had to go partly on his knees, yet he got through with the rest.
Mr. Reed found the inmates in the cabins at the lake and on the creek in a sad condition, but overjoyed at the prospect of relief. Food was dis- tributed sparingly that harm might not come from over eating. At Kese- berg's cabin was Foster's and Reed's little children. They were in bed and crying incessantly for food. For fourteen days they had not risen or been moved from the bed.
The threatening appearance of the weather impelled Mr. Reed to at once return. With him went seventeen persons, among whom were Mrs. Elizabeth Graves, Nancy Graves, Jonathan, Franklin, and her daughter Elizabeth Jr. All were weak and emaciated and it was evident the journey would be slow and painful.
Mrs. Donner's husband was an invalid, and the faithful wife would not leave him even to save her own life. The party scarcely made three miles the first day, and then went into camp. At leaving Mrs. Graves took with her a considerable sum of money, but how much is unknown,
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Geo. Sparr paid her husband $1,500, and it is not probable much of this was used in procuring an outfit. The first night some one of the party jokingly said they would play a game of cards to see who should have her money. The next morning she staid behind and secreted it. All that is known is, that she buried it behind a big rock on the north side of Donner Lake. So far as known it has never been found.
The threatening storm came in all its fury, and the poor immigrants were exposed to its pitiless blasts. They were shelterless, supperless and disheartened, and sank down upon the snow, some never to rise again. Except for the exertions of James Reed this dreadtul night all must have perished. He labored at the fires, he piled snow against the shel- tering boughs, he shook it from the poor sleepers. But there is a limit to human endurance and while saving others he was literally freezing. He labored until sightless, benumbed and half dying he sank down on the snow. Providentially Mrs. Breen awoke. The logs on which the fire rested had given away, the coals dropped on the snow and had gone out and soon all would have been in darkness. The camp was quickly roused and Reed was cared for. All were nearly frozen. Hiram Miller's hands were so cold and frosted that the skin cracked when he strove to split some kindling. The night was the coldest many of them had ever known, and in the darkness and in the storm the weary soul of Mrs. Graves put out on the unknown sea of eternity. She was one of the noblest and self- sacrificing mothers in the party. Her life was devoted to her children, and for them she yielded it up.
Mrs. Farnham, who gathered the particulars from one who was present thus describes the closing seene: "Mrs. Graves lay with her babe and three or four children by the side of the fire. The storm raged violently all night, and she watched through it, taking little snatches of rest, and rousing herself to brush the snow from the sleepers. Toward morning one of the little Grave's girls called her mother's name. The call was repeated impatiently, and Mrs. Breen rebuked the child, telling her to let her mother rest. Presently Mrs. Graves spoke in a quite unnatural voice , and Mrs. Breen asked one of the men to go and see to her. He found the poor sufferer almost gone, and taking the infant, shook the snow from the blanket and covered her as well as he could. Presently Mrs. Breen went and found her cold in death. Her poor starving child moaned
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piteously in the arms of it's young sister, but the mother's heart could no more warm or nourish it."
Meanwhile the snow came pitilessly. down without ceasing. For three days it stormed incessantly, and none can imagine the dread desolation of the scene. It is best told in Bret Harte's story of "Gabriel Conroy."
"Snow everywhere. As far as the eye could reach-fifty miles looking southward from the highest white peak. Filling ravines and gulches and dropping from the walls of canyons in white shroud like drifts fashioning the dividing ridge into the likeness of a monstrous grave, hiding the basis of giant pines and completely covering young trees and larches, rimming with porcelain the bowl-like edges of still, cold lakes, and undulating in motionless, white billows to the distant horizon. Snow lying everywhere on the California Sierras, and still falling. It had been snowing in finely granulated powder, in damp, spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes; snowing from a leaden sky steadily; snowing fiercely; shaken out of black purple clouds in flocculent masses, or dropping in long, level lines like white lances from the broken and tumbled heavens; but always steadily.' The woods were so choked with it, it had so cushioned and muffled the ringing rocks and echoing hills, that all sound was deadened. The strongest gust, the fiercest blast awoke no sigh from the snow-packed rigid piles of frost. There was no cracking of bough, no crackle of underbrush; the overladen branches of fir and pine yielded and gave way without a sound. The silence was vast, measureless, complete."
No description can do justice to that awful night. Even the pen of the romancer fails to reproduce its dreadful horrors.
Mrs. Breen laid her husband and four children together, and while they slept watched by the fire, with only moccasins on her feet and a blanket drawn over her head, within which she shielded her poor, emaci- ated baby. Her milk had dried up, and the babe was so poor and lifeless that each hour she expected it to expire.
The brave men who had periled their lives to save the poor emigrants felt themselves in imminent danger of death. They were powerless to carry the helpless and starving children through the soft, yielding snow, and it was doubtful whether they could ever reach the settle- ments, even if unencumbered. Isaac Donner, one of the sons of Jacob and Elizabeth Donner, died the second night. He was sleeping on a bed
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of pine boughs between his sister Mary and Patty Reed, and died so quietly that neither of them awoke.
In the deep snow, and the weak and starving condition of the fugitives, progress was impossible, and yet to remain was death. The relief party felt that the only hope was to hasten to the settlements and send back relief. Solomon Hook thought himself able to travel, and joined the party. Hiram Miller, an old friend of the Reed family, took Francis Reed in his arms, and Patty Reed, full of courage and hope, refused to be carried, and started on foot.
With what emotions did the poor sufferers in Starved Camp see the party disappear among the pines. There was no food, and death had already claimed two of their number. What a pitiable group it was. Could a situation more desolate and deplorable be imagined. Mr. Breen, as has before been mentioned, was feeble and sickly, and upon his faithful wife devolved the care not only of her helpless family, but of all who remained in camp. John Breen, their eldest son, was the strongest and most vigorous, yet the following incident shows how near he was to death's door: The fire had melted a deep cavity in the snow, down. which the men sometimes descended, and into this pit the boy stumbled and fell, but fortunately. was rescued. It was some time before he was restored to consciousness. Mrs. Breen had saved a small piece of sugar, which she placed between his teeth, and that seemed to revive him. He lived, and is now the head of a large family in San Benito County.
Mrs. Breen's younger children, Patrick, James, Peter, and her habe Isabella, were completely helpless and dependent. So, too, were the orphan children of Mr. and Mrs. Graves. Nancy was only about nine years old, and upon her devolved the task of caring for the little babe Elizabeth, and to her lasting honor be it said, although she was dying of hunger, she faithfully tended, cared for and saved her baby sister. Aside from little bits of sugar, this baby and Mrs. Breen's had nothing for an entire week but snow water. Besides Nancy and Elizabeth there were of the Graves children Jonathan, aged seven, and Franklin, aged five. Franklin soon perished. Starvation and exposure had so reduced his feeble person that he could not endure the continued fasting. Nancy Graves became the wife of R. W. Williamson, an able, eloquent and devout divine of Los Gatos, Santa Clara County.
An accident happened to Mary Donner, an estimable girl. She had
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frozen her feet, and they were insensible to pain. Happening to be too near the fire, they were dreadfully burned, and she suffered excruciating agony, yet evinced remarkable fortitude. She ultimately had to submit to a partial amputation of her foot.
Of the fourteen who staated out three-Mrs. Graves, her boy Frank- lin, and Isaac Donner-lay dead upon the snow, and the eleven waiting relief were the Breen family of seven, Mary Donner and the three Graves children.
Meantime, how fared it with those who went pressing on toward the southwest? At each step they sank above their knees in snow, each following in the footsteps of the leader. Only the strongest could endure the severe hardships of forcing a way through the interminable drifts, and the men alternated in leading as their strength allowed. Patty Reed was too small to take the long steps, and the over-exertion soon told upon her; yet so resolute. and courageous was she that she would not admit she was either cold or fatigued. She was but eight years old, but had a wonderful mind for one of her age. She was too weak to endure her journey, and gradually her system gave way. Her sight grew dim, and the path, the forest, the bleak mountains faded from her eyes, but in their stead came a vision of angels and brilliant stars. It was a picture seldom seen by mortal eyes, full of glory and brightness. Her wan face became illumined with smiles, and she began to talk of the radiant forms that hovered near her, the angels, the stars, and the happiness she felt. Mccutcheon looked on the girl and said to her father: "Why Reed, Patty is dying." It was too true.
At once the party stopped and went into camp, that they might minis- ter to the little girl. At the starved camp Reed had taken the frozen sacks in which food had been carried, and scraping from the seams little crumbs of bread that adhered, placed them in the thumb of his mitten for an emergency like this. Little did he imagine such an emergency would come so soon. Warming and moistening the crumbs between his own lips, the father placed them in the child's mouth. Others wrapped blan- kets round her chilled form, chafed her feet, and gradually she returned to life, her first words being a regret that they had wakened her from that beautiful dream. To this day she cherishes the memory of that enchant- ing vision. After this Patty was carried on the men's backs.
Without further accident they arrived at Bear Valley, where Past
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Midshipman Woodworth, with supplies, had idly waited without an effort to succor those known to be in the mountains. His name deserves to be embalmed in infamy.
Patty Reed is now Mrs. Frank Lewis, of San Jose, California. She has a pleasant home and a beautiful family of grown-up daughters; yet never has she forgotten that dreary, desolate journey in the mountains that so nearly terminated her existence.
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CHAPTER LIV.
A MOTHER AT . STARVED CAMP.
E have told how Mrs. Breen was left with the living and the dead at Starved Camp, and its history cannot better be given than has been done by Mrs. Farnham, whose ac- count we append :
There was no food in Starved Camp. There was 2 nothing to eat save a few seeds, tied in bits of cloth, that had been brought along by some one,-and the precious lump of sugar. There were also a few teaspoonfuls of tea. They sat and lay by the fire most of the day, with what heavy hearts who shall know. They were upon about thirty feet of snow. The dead lay before them, a ghastlier sight in the sunshine that succeeded the storm than when the dark clouds overhung them. They had no words of cheer to speak to each other-no courage or hope to share-but those which pointed to a life where hunger and cold could never come, and their benumbed faculties were scarcely able to seize upon a consolation so remote from the thoughts and wants that absorbed their whole being.
" A situation like this will not awaken in common natures religious trust. Under such protracted suffering, the animal outgrows the spiritnal, in frightful disproportion. Yet the mother's sublime faith, which had brought her thus far through her agonies, with a heart still warm toward those who shared them, did not fail her now.
She spoke gently to
one and another; asked her husband to repeat the Litany, and the children to join her in the responses ; and endeavored to fix their minds upon the time when relief would probably come. Nature, as unerringly as philoso- phy could have done, taught her that the only hope of sustaining those about her was to set before them a termination of their sufferings.
What days and nights were those that went by while they waited. Life waning visibly in those about her; not a morsel of food to offer them; both her own infant and the little one that had been cherished and saved through all by the mother now dead, wasting hourly into the more perfect image of death; her husband worn to a skeleton ;. it needed the fullest
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measure of exalted faith, of womanly tenderness and self-sacrifice, to sus- tain her through such a season. She watched by night as well as by day; she gathered wood to keep them warm; she boiled the handful of tea and dispensed it to them; and when she found one sunken and speechless, she broke with her teeth a morsel of the precious sugar and put it on his lips. She fed her babe freely on snow water, and scanty as was the wardrobe she had, she managed to get fresh clothing to its skin two or three times a week. Where, one asks in wonder and reverence, did she get the strength and courage for all this? She sat all night by her family, her elbows on her knees, brooding over the meek little victims that lay there, watching those who slept, and occasionally dozing, with a fearful con- sciousness of their terrible condition always. upon her. The sense of peril never slumbered. Many times during the night she went to the sleepers to ascertain if they all still breathed. She put her hand under their blan- kets and held it before the mouth. In this way she assured herself that they were yet alive. But once her blood curdled to find, on approaching her hand to the lips of one of her own children, there was no warm breath upon it. She tried to open the mouth, and found the jaws set.
She roused her husband, "Oh! Patrick, man! arise and help me! James is dying !"
"Let him die!" said the miserable father; "he will be better off than any of us."
She was terribly shocked by this reply. In her own expressive lan- guage, her "heart stood still when she heard it." She was bewildered, and knew not where to set her weary hands to work; but she recovered in a few moments and began to chafe the breast and hands of the perish- ing boy. She broke a bit of sugar, and with considerable effort forced it between his teeth with a few drops of snow water. She saw him swallow, then a slight convulsive motion stirred his features, he stretched his limbs feebly, and in a moment more opened his eyes and looked upon her. How fervent were her thanks to the Great Father, whom she forgot not day or night.
Thus she went on. The tea leaves were eaten, the seeds chewed, the sugar all dispensed. The days were bright and, compared with the nights, comfortable. Occasionally, when the ; un shone, their voices were heard, though generally they sat or laid in a kind of stupor from which she often found it alarmingly difficult to arouse them. When the gray evening twi- light drew its deepining curtain over the cold glittering heavens and the
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icy waste, and when the famishing bodies had been covered from the frost that pinched them with but little less keenness than the unrelenting hunger, the solitude seemed to rend her very brain. Her own powers fal- tered. But she said her prayers over many times in the darkness as well as the light, and always with renewed trust in Him who had not yet for- saken her; and thus she sat out her weary watch. After the turning of the night she always sat watching for the morning star, which seemed, every time she saw it rise in the cold eastern sky, to renew the promise, "As thy day is, so shall thy strength be."
Their fire had melted the snow to a considerable depth, and they were lying on the bank above. Thus they had less of its heat than they needed, and found some difficulty in getting the fuel she gathered placed so it would burn.
One morning after she had hailed her messenger of promise, and the light had increased so as to render objects visible in the distance, she looked as usual over the white expanse that lay to the southwest, to see if any dark moving specks were visible upon its surface. Only the tree- tops, which she had scanned so often as to be quite familiar with their ap -. pearance, were to be seen. With a heavy heart she brought herself back from that distant hope to consider what was immediately about her. The fire had sunk so far away that they had felt but little of its warmth the last two nights, and casting her eyes down into the snow-pit, whence it sent forth only a dull glow, she thought she saw the welcome face of be- loved mother Earth. It was such a renewing sight after their long, freez- ing separation from it!
She immediately aroused her eldest son, John, and with a great deal of difficulty and repeated words of cheering and encouragement brought him to understand that she wished him to descend by one of the tree-tops which had fallen in so as to make a sort of ladder, and see if they could reach the naked earth, and if it were possible for them all to go down. She trembled with fear at the vacant silence in which he at first gazed at her, but at length, after she had told him a great many times, he said "Yes, mother," and went.
He reached the bottom safely, and presently spoke to her. There was naked, dry earth under his feet; it was warm and he wished her to come down. She laid her baby beside some of the sleepers, and descended. Immediately she determined upon taking them all down. How good, she thought as she descended the boughs, was the God whom she trusted.
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By perseverance, by entreaty, by encouragement, and with her own aid she got them into this snug shelter.
Relief came not, and as starvation crept closer and closer to himself and those around him, Patrick Breen determined that it was his duty to employ the means of sustaining life which God seemed to have placed before them. The lives of all might be saved by resorting to such food as others in like circumstances had subsisted upon. Mrs. Breen, however, declared that she would die, or see her children die, before her life or theirs should be preserved by such means. If ever the father gave to the dying children, it was without her consent or knowledge. She never tasted, nor knew of her children partaking.
Mrs. Farnham says that when Patrick Breen ascended to obtain the dreadful repast, his wife, frozen with horror, hid her face in her hands and could not look up. She was conscious of his return, and of something going on about the fire, but she could not bring herself to uncover her eyes until all had subsided again into silence. Her husband remarked that perhaps they were wrong in rejecting a means of sustaining life of which others had availed themselves, but she put away the suggestion so posi- tively that it was never renewed nor acted upon by any of her family.
She and her children were now, indeed, reaching the utmost verge of life. A little more battle with the grim enemies that had pursued them so relentlessly-twenty-four, or at most, forty-eight hours of such war- fare, and all would be ended. The infants still breathed, but were so wasted they could only be moved by raising them bodily with the hands. It seemed as if even their light weight would have dragged the limbs from their bodies. Occasionally through the day she ascended the tree to look out. It was an incident now, and seemed to kindle more life than when it only required a turn of the head or a glance of the eye to tell that there was no living thing near them. She could no longer walk on the snow, but she had still strength enough to crawl from tree to tree and gather a few boughs, which she threw along before her to the pit and piled them in to renew the fire.
The eighth day was passed. On the ninth morning she ascended to watch for her star of mercy. Clear and bright it stood over against her beseeching gaze, set in the light liquid blue that overflows the pathway of the opening day. She prayed earnestly as she gazed, for she knew there were but few hours of life in those dearest to her. If human aid came not that day, some eyes that would soon look imploringly into hers would
DONNER LAKE 1879 SCENE OF THE GRAVE'S TRAGEDY.
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be closed in death before that star would rise again. Would she herself, with all her endurance and resisting love, live to see it? Were they at length to perish? Great God! should it be permitted that they who had been preserved through so much, should die at last so miserably?
Her eyes were dim and her sight wavering. She could not distinguish trees from men on the snow, but had they been near she could have heard them, for her ear had grown so sensitive that the slightest unaccustomed noise arrested her attention. She went below with a heavier heart than ever before. She had not a word of hope to answer the languid, inquir- ing countenances that were turned to her face, and she was conscious that it told the story of her despair. Yet she strove with some half insane words to suggest that somebody would surely come to them that day. Another would be too late, and the pity of men's hearts and the mercy of God would surely bring them. The pallor of death seemed already to be stealing over the sunken countenances that surrounded her, and weak as she was, she could remain below but a few minutes together. She felt she could have died had she let go her resolution at any time within the last forty-eight hours. They repeated the Litany. The responses came so feebly that they were scarcely audible, and the protracted utterances seemed wearisome. At last it was over, and they rested in silence.
The sun mounted high and higher in the heavens, and when the day was three or four hours old, she placed her trembling feet again upon the ladder to look out once more. The corpses of the dead lay always before her as she reached the top-the mother and the son, and the little boy, whose remains she could not even glance at since they had been mutilated. The blanket that covered them could not shut out the horror of the sight.
The rays of the sun fell on her with a friendly warmth, but she could not look into the light that flooded the white expanse. Her eyes lacked strength and steadiness, and she rested herself against a tree and endeav- ored to gather her wandering faculties in vain. The enfeebled will could no longer hold rule over them. She had broken perceptions, fragments of visions, contradictory and mixed-former mingled with latter times. Re- collections of plenty and rural peace came up from her clear tranquil childhood, which seemed to have been another state of existence; flashes of her latter life-its comfort and abundance-gleams of maternal pride in her children who had been growing up about her to ease and independ- ence.
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She lived through all the phases which her simple life, had ever worn in the few moments of repose after the dizzy effort of ascending; as the thin blood left her whirling brain and returned to its shrunken channels, she grew more clearly conscious of the terrible present, and remembered the weary quest upon which she came. It was not the memory of thought; it was that of love, the old tugging at the heart that had never relaxed long enough to say : "Now I am done; I can bear no more !" The miserable ones down there-for them her watering life came back; at thought of them she turned her face listlessly the way it had so often gazed. But this time something caused it to flush, as if the blood, cold and thin as it was, would burst its vessels! What was it? Nothing that she saw, for her eyes were quite dimmed by the sudden access of excitement! It was the sound of voices! By a superhuman effort she kept herself from falling. Was it reality or delusion ? She must at least live to know the truth. It came again and again. She grew calmer as she became more assured, and the first distinct words she heard uttered were: "There is Mrs. Breen alive yet, anyhow !" Three men were advancing toward her. She knew that now there would be no more starving. Death was repelled for this time from the precious little flock he had so long threatened, and she might offer up thanksgiving unchecked by the dreads and fears that had so long frozen her.
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