01Biography
Tamsen Eustis was a schoolteacher from Massachusetts. In North Carolina she lost her first husband and both of their children within three months in 1831. She moved to Illinois to teach, and in 1839 she married George Donner, a well-off farmer near Springfield. They had three daughters, Frances, Georgia and Eliza.
In 1846 the family set out for California with books and school supplies for a school for young women she hoped to open there. From the Platte she wrote that 'if I do not experience something far worse than I have yet done, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started.' When the company turned toward the Hastings Cutoff, a fellow traveler saw that she was the exception, gloomy at the thought of trusting a stranger. Snow trapped the Donners at Alder Creek that winter.
02Why they matter
A teacher who hoped to open a school in California, she wrote letters that describe the first months of the Donner Party's journey.
03How they died
George Donner's injured hand grew badly infected, and Tamsen would not leave him, though rescue parties reached Alder Creek in February and March 1847. She saw her three girls off with the last relief party and went back to his side. George died that month and Tamsen soon after, aged 45, and her body was never found.
04Legacy
All three of her daughters survived, and Eliza Donner Houghton told the family's story in a book in 1911. Seventeen of Tamsen's letters survive, gathered by Gabrielle Burton in Searching for Tamsen Donner (University of Nebraska Press, 2009).