Eliza Donner, Donner Party

Survived, age 4

    Eliza and Georgia, the two youngest children of George and Tamzene Donner, were very close. 

Although Hiram O. Miller had been appointed their legal guardian, they were taken in by an elderly Swiss couple, Christian and Mary Bruner, living for a few months near Sutter’s Fort, then moving to Sonoma in the fall of 1847. The girls called the Bruners "Grandpa" and "Grandma," learned to speak German, and helped with the dairy work and other chores. They were with the Brunners until 1854, then went to live with their half-sister Elitha, whose husband, Benjamin W. Wilder, became their guardian in place of Miller. Eliza attended St. Catherine’s Academy at Benicia and the public schools of Sacramento.

    Eliza married Sherman Otis Houghton, the widower of her cousin Mary. Sherman, a lawyer, was a prominent citizen of San Jose and served a term in Congress from 1871 to 1875. He, Eliza, and their family lived until in San Jose until 1886, when they moved to Southern California. Eliza belonged to several organizations, including the Red Cross, the Native Daughters of the Golden West, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and was also active in her church.

In 1879 Eliza began a lengthy correspondence with historian C. F. McGlashan. They became close friends. She collaborated with him on his History of the Donner Party (1879), and even wrote some of the text. Her own book, The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate, was published in 1911, sixty-five years after the events it describes. Although she wrote authoritatively, as though she remembered the events she described, most of her account of the Donner Party can be traced to previously published sources, her older sisters’ recollections, and the statement of Jean-Baptiste Trudeau, who visited her in 1884. For more information about her book, see the introduction to the 1997 University of Nebraska reprint. See also the article The Donner Tragedy.
Eliza died on February 19, 1922, exactly 75 years after the arrival of the First Relief. She and her husband are buried in Rosedale Cemetery, Los Angeles.
http://user.xmission.com/~octa/DonnerParty/DonnerG.htm#Eliza%20Poor...

Wrote of her ordeal: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11146/11146-h/11146-h.htm#image-9