01Biography
Virginia Reed was 12 when she left Springfield, Illinois, in April 1846 with her mother, Margret, and her stepfather, James Reed, whose name she used. She rode much of the way on her own pony, Billy. At Fort Laramie, she remembered, Lakota men offered her father buffalo robes and ponies in trade for him. Billy was lost later on the road.
Snow trapped the family in the Sierra Nevada that winter. In February 1847 Virginia, her mother and her brother James walked out with the first relief party and met her stepfather coming in with the second. That May she wrote to her cousin Mary Keyes about 'our trubels getting to California.' The letter ends with advice that is still quoted: 'never take no cutofs and hury along as fast as you can.'
02Why they matter
Her letter of 1847 and her memoir of 1891 are among the best-known first-hand accounts of the Donner Party, written by a girl who lived through it.
03How they died
In 1850 she married John M. Murphy in San Jose, and they had nine children. In 1891 she published her memories of the journey, 'Across the Plains in the Donner Party,' in The Century Magazine. She died in 1921, aged about 87.
04Legacy
Virginia Street in downtown San Jose is one of several streets named for the Reed family. Her 1891 memoir has been reprinted several times as a short book.