Luke Halloranby
Kristin Johnson
"in the evening a Gentleman by the name of Luke Halloran, died of
Consumption having been brough[t] from Bridgers Fort by George Donner a distance of 151
miles we made him a Coffin and Burried him at the up[p]er wells at the forks of the road
in a beautiful place." |
In July
1846 Luke Halloran attached himself to the Donner Party, traveled with the company for
some weeks, and succumbed to consumption in the Tooele Valley. Because so little is known
about him, he is a mysterious figure; there is something romantic in the story of a young
stranger dying far from home and laid to rest in a lonely grave, and irony in the fact
that his quest for health led him to such a death. Many writers have been moved to pity,
describing Halloran as a "waif," with all its connotations of youth and
homelessness.(1) In addition, his death has been seen as an
omen of what would later come to pass, presaging the company's tribulations along the
Humboldt and the horrific events in the Sierra Nevada. This is,
to a large extent, sheer fantasy: we are free to read into Halloran's death any meaning we
choose, and since we have so little hard information, we are equally free to indulge our
romantic imaginations. One wonders what Halloran himself would have thought of all this.
After all, this "waif" was reportedly possessed of $1,500 when he died, and
while there are plenty of reasons to see him as pathetic, the fact that he got as far as
he did suggests a certain amount of determination--he could as easily be portrayed as one
whose will was stronger than his failing body as a forlorn, pitiful waif.
Halloran first appears in Donner Party sources on August 25, 1846, when
James F. Reed noted in his diary
in the evening a Gentleman by the name of Luke Halloran, died of
Consumption having been brough[t] from Bridgers Fort by George Donner a distance of 151
miles we made him a Coffin and Burried him at the up[p]er wells at the forks of the road
in a beautiful place.
The following day's entry reads in part:
this day Buried Mr Luke Halloran hauling him in his coffin this
distan[ce] 2 which we only mad[e] and Buried heem as above Stated at the forks of the
[road] One Turning directly South to Camp the other West or onward.(2)
The next references to Halloran occur in J. Quinn Thornton's Oregon
and California in 1848 (1849):
on the evening of September 3 [August 24], the emigrants encamped on the
southeast side of the Great Salt Lake. On the morning of the next day they resumed their
journey... About 4 o'clock, p.m., Mr. Hallerin, from St. Joseph, died of consumption, in
Mr. George Donner's wagon. About 8 o'clock, this wagon (which had stopped) came up, with
the dead body of their fellow-traveler. He died in the exercise of a humble trust and
confidence in the ability and willingness of the blessed Redeemer to save his soul. The
melancholy event filled all hearts with sadness, and with feelings of solemnity, they
committed his body to its silent and lonely grave in the wilderness. Nor did they seek to
disguise the tears that silently coursed down many a care-worn face, as they took their
last adieu of the lost fellow-traveler. The day of the 5th [26th] was spent, with the
exception of a change of camp, in committing the body of their friend to the dust. They
buried him at the side of an emigrant [John Hargrave] who had died in the advance company.
The deceased gave his property, some $1500, to Mr. George Donner.(3)
Although he takes the opportunity to interject some pious sentiment,
Thornton does provides some additional information: he tells us that Halloran was from St.
Joseph, that he was buried next to another emigrant, and that he left a large sum of money
to George Donner.
In 1856 Eliza W. Farnham also described Halloran's death:
There had been no death in the party until they reached Salt Lake
Valley. They had a consumptive invalid, who had been steadily declining through all their
rough experience, and one afternoon, the wagon in which he was carried was observed to
fall behind the others. Inquiry was made. He was not much worse, it was said, but after
the party had encamped at evening the wagon came up bringing his corpse. He had neither
wife, nor child, nor near friend. He had set out an invalid in search of health, and
happily had expired before the terrible days came that were now drawing fast on. Next
morning a rude coffin was constructed of boards taken from one of the wagons, and the body
committed to the earth according to the rites and ceremonies of that mysterious, and
world-wide brotherhood to which he belonged.(4)
Romantic elements have begun to creep in: Farnham implies the irony of
Halloran's death while seeking health and refers to his "happy" death before the
"terrible days" set in. Hers is the earliest source referring to Halloran's
Masonic funeral.
James Reed referred to Halloran's death in his 1871 memoir. West of
Black Rock, he says, the Donner Party
lost a few days on the score of humanity. One of our company, a Mr.
Halloron being in a dying condition from consumption. We could not make regular drives
owing to his situation. He was under the care of Mr. Geo. Donner, and made himself known
to me as a Master Mason. In a few days he died.(5)
Reed confirms that Halloran had been a Mason, but does not mention the
funeral service.
Drawing on published sources and the statements of survivors, C. F.
McGlashan described Halloran's death:
Near the southern shore of great Salt Lake the Donner Party encamped on
the third or fourth of September, 1846... While encamped here, the party buried the second
victim claimed by death. This time it was a poor consumptive named Luke Halloran. Without
friend or kinsman, Halloran had joined the train, and was traveling to California in hopes
that a change of climate might effect a cure. Alas! for the poor Irishman, when the leaves
began to fall from the trees his spirit winged its flight to the better land. He died in
the wagon of Captain George Donner, his head resting in Mrs. Tamsen Donner's lap. It was
at sundown. The wagons had just halted for the night. The train had driven up slowly, out
of respect to the dying emigrant. Looking up into Mrs. Donner's face he said: "I die
happy." Almost while speaking, he died. In return for the many kindnesses he had
received during the journey, he left Mr. Donner such property as he possessed, including
about fifteen hundred dollars in coin. Hon. Jas. F. Breen, of South San Juan, writes:
"Halloran's body was buried in a bed of almost pure salt, beside the grave of one who
had perished in the preceding train. It was said at the time that bodies thus deposited
would not decompose, on account of the preservative properties of the salt. Soon after his
burial, his trunk was opened, and Masonic papers and regalia bore witness to the fact that
Mr. Halloran was a member of the Masonic Order. James F. Reed, Milton Elliott, and perhaps
one o two others in the train, also belonged to the mystic tie."(6)
The story has gained more romantic details: Halloran dying with his head
on Tamsen Donner's lap; his last words; the trunk opened after his death, with its
surprising contents.
The latest and fullest, though not necessarily most accurate,
description of the Halloran episode did not appear until 1911, when Eliza Donner Houghton
published The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate. Houghton had
been only three years old in 1846; her account is drawn chiefly from previously published
sources, eked out by her older sisters' recollections. The Donner Party proper formed at
the Little Sandy, she tells us, and
[w]hile we were preparing to break camp, the last named [Halloran] had
begged my father for a place in our wagon. He was a stranger to our family, afflicted with
consumption, too ill to make the journey on horseback, and the family with whom he had
travelled thus far could no longer accommodate him. His forlorn condition appealed to my
parents and they granted his request.(7)
After reaching the Salt Lake Valley, however,
The tedious delays and high altitude wrought distressing changes in Mr.
Halloran's condition, and my father and mother watched over him with increasing
solicitude. But despite my mother's unwearying ministrations, death came on the fourth of
September.
Suitable timber for a coffin could not be obtained, so his body was
wrapped in sheets and carefully enclosed in a buffalo robe, then reverently laid to rest
in a grave on the shore of Great Salt Lake, near that of a stranger who had been buried by
the Hastings party a few weeks earlier.
Mr. Halloran had appreciated the tender care bestowed on him by my
parents, and had told members of our company that in the event of his death on the way,
his trunk and its contents should belong to Captain Donner. When the trunk was opened, it
was found to contain clothing, keepsakes, a Masonic emblem, and fifteen hundred dollars in
coin.(8)
How accurate is this statement? The reference to using a buffalo robe
instead of a coffin is undoubtedly an error, for James Reed's contemporary diary mentions
the coffin and Farnham explains where the boards for it came from. The burial on the shore
of the lake is evidently from McGlashan. Houghton says that Halloran joined the Donner
Party at the Little Sandy, and this makes sense, because that was where the emigrant
companies split up. Reed's contemporary report that George Donner conveyed Halloran from
Fort Bridger need not be taken to mean that Donner did not carry Halloran up to
Fort Bridger as well; then again, it is possible that Houghton or her informants were
mistaken and that Halloran joined the company at Bridger, as did Baptiste and the
McCutchen family. Houghton says nothing about the Masonic funeral, but mentions the trunk
and its contents.
A little more about the mysterious Mr. Halloran can be discovered
outside the literature of the Donner Party. Despite the interest and good will of the
various branches consulted, Masonic sources have proven disappointing so far. Sources from
Buchanan County, Missouri, where St. Joseph is located, have yielded a variety of data.
The most helpful source has been the back pages of The Gazette,
a St. Joseph weekly, which contains a series of advertisements attesting Halloran's
presence in the town. The earliest appeared on November 21, 1845, touting an ague remedy
"For Sale at the New brick Store of Luke Halleran." On February 5, 1846, there
appeared a message from a number of merchants who deplored the practice of doing business
on the Sabbath and pledged not to participate in the practice themselves; among the names
appended to the notice were John Corby and L. Halloran.
C. F. Emery, a "house and sign painter, paper hanger, gilder and
glazier," ran a notice advertising his business, located "one door west of L.
Halloran's store, on the corner of Main and Jule streets." The ad first appeared on
February 20, 1846, and ran for many months.
On April 24, however, Halloran's health was deteriorating and he
advertised his store for sale. He was apparently unsuccessful, for on May 8 he notified
the townspeople that John Corby would be handling his affairs (see accompanying article).
The same issue of The Gazette contained an article about the hordes emigrants
descending upon the town, ending "A large number of our citizens are about leaving
for their rendezvous across the river, on their way to Oregon. We are about parting from
many old friends--may peace and prosperity go with them."(9)
It is tempting to speculate that Luke Halloran was among the citizens referred to.
Whatever the case, he left St. Joseph and in July joined the Donner Party somewhere in
present-day Wyoming.
The story of the Donner Party's dreadful fate first appeared in The
Gazette on July 30, 1847, with the publication of a letter by Peter Quivvey.(10) A list of the casualties appeared on August 20, but
Halloran's name did not appear; after all, he had not been among those trapped in the
Sierra Nevada. Nevertheless, on November 8, 1847, Halloran's agent John Corby deposed
some six months since Luke Halloran died somewhere near Fort Bridger in
the Nebraska Territory... That said Halloran to the best of your affiant's knowledge and
belief died leaving no heirs in this country, but said heirs live in Ireland in the United
Kingdom of Great Britain, but your affiant has no knowledge of the names of any but Martin
Hallorens, who lives in Monivea[,] Co. Galway, Ireland.(11)
This poses an intriguing question: how did Corby learn that Halloran was
dead? Since it did not appear in the published accounts, news of his demise must have been
conveyed privately. But by whom? An obvious candidate is James F. Reed, who appears to
have taken Freemasonry seriously and might well have done one last service for a brother
Mason; but we will likely never know the truth.
In any case, on November 12, 1847, the clerk of the Buchanan County
Court issued letters authorizing Corby to administer the estate of Luke Halloran,
deceased.(12) Corby had Halloran's property inventoried
and appraised. Valued at $1,046.54, the estate included in the total were the merchandise
from his store,(13) several unpaid accounts, cash, a gold
watch, and six town lots.(14) The stock from the store was
sold on January 22, 1848. When all the accounts had been settled and vouchers paid,
Halloran's estate amounted to $99.23.(15)
One of Corby's tasks was to locate Halloran's heirs. He must have
written to Ireland, for on September 30, 1848, Martin Halloran, Luke's father, appeared
before the consistorial court of the Diocese of Tuam and granted power of attorney to the
Reverend Thomas Scanlan of St. Joseph, Missouri, to act on his behalf in settling Luke's
estate.(16) This document was duly notarized and sent to
St. Joseph, where it was recorded on November 22, 1848. One of the items deducted from
Luke's estate had been a voucher for $100 paid to his father, and presumably the remaining
$99.23 was also sent to Martin Halloran.
But what was Luke doing before November 1845, when his advertisement
first appeared in the pages of the St. Joseph Gazette?
We are in the dark as far as his early history is concerned. Although
later Donner Party sources refer to him as a young man and estimate his age at 25, this is
by no means certain. We know that his father's name was Martin, and that in 1848 Martin
Halloran was living at Abbert in Galway, which county was probably but not necessarily
Luke's birthplace. Neither do we know when Luke emigrated, apparently alone, to the United
States, or when he became a Mason.
There is one hint of what he was doing shortly before he arrived in St.
Joseph. In 1946 a descendant of the Reed family donated a number of items to Sutter's Fort
Museum, among them the Miller-Reed diary. In a pocket in the back of the diary were notes
by such members of the Donner Party, as James Reed, Milt Elliott, Charles Stanton, William
Foster, John Trudeau, and the Donner brothers. One, a note by George Donner dated November
28, 1846, authorized Milt Elliott to purchase supplies on his behalf. On the back of this
note was a document entitled "Statement of Breen & Halloran," dated June 25,
1845.(17) From the look of it, Breen and Halloran were
business partners figuring out how much of the company each owned. But who were Breen and
Halloran? There were individuals of both names in the Donner Party.
On the face of it, the reference to "Stock of Merch." sounds
much more like shopkeeper Luke Halloran than farmer Patrick Breen. It is also difficult to
see how one of Patrick Breen's papers could have wound up in the possession of first
George Donner and later James Reed. On the other hand, we know how one of Halloran's
documents could have come into George Donner's possession: Luke willed his belongings to
his benefactor. How the paper came to be among Reed's can also be explained.
In November 1846 Reed's teamster Milt Elliott visited the Donners' camp
at Alder Creek, no doubt to inform them an attempt to cross the summit was in the offing.
George and Jacob Donner both wrote notes authorizing Elliott to buy supplies for them;
perhaps in searching for a piece of paper to write on, Donner looked among Halloran's
things, found the statement, and used the blank back of it. Elliott died, but the Reed
family salvaged it along with the other authorizations that Elliott had collected and the
Miller-Reed diary.
A brief notice announcing the dissolution of the partnership of Breen
& Halloran appeared in the St. Louis Missouri Republican on July 30 and 31,
1845 (see accompanying article). While the identification of this firm with the
"Statement of Breen & Halloran" found in the Reed papers cannot be proven
conclusively, it seems more than likely; after all, there can hardly have been many firms
of that name in the United States in 1845. If this assumption is correct, it rules out
Patrick Breen of the Donner Party as a partner in the firm, since the "Breen"
partner was named George; a George Breen is listed in the 1847 St. Louis directory as a
partner in the firm of Bailey & Breen, merchants. A search of the Missouri
Republican revealed no advertisements for the firm of Breen & Halloran, but the
business might have been based in another town.
That Breen and Halloran were preparing to terminate their business
association explains why they drew up the statement, whose date, June 25, 1845, ties in
with the formal dissolution of the business on July 1. Some months later Luke opened his
store in St. Joseph.
The trail backwards stops here, in 1845, at least temporarily. One
informant living in Oregon reports his family's tradition that Luke Halloran was a great
uncle two or three times removed, but efforts to document the relationship have so far
proven unsuccessful. This and other avenues of research remain to be fully explored,
however, and perhaps someday we will gain a clearer view of the "waif of the western
trail." Until then an aura of mystery will linger around the figure of Luke Halloran.
1. W. H. Hutchinson was so taken with the story that
he wrote two pieces about Halloran, "Forgotten Hitchhiker," in Westways
43:8:Pt.1 (August 1951), 14-15; and "Waif of the Western Trail." in The
Westerners New York Posse Brand Book. 8:4 (1961), 79-80.
2. J. Roderick Korns and Dale L. Morgan, eds. West
from Fort Bridger (Logan, UT: Utah State Univesity Press, 1994): 221.
3. J. Quinn Thornton, "Oregon and California in
1848." In "Unfortunate Emigrants": Narratives of the Donner Party (Logan,
UT: Utah State University Press, 1996): 29-30.
4. Eliza W. Farnham, "Narrative of the
Emigration of the Donner party to California, in 1846." In "Unfortunate
Emigrants": Narratives of the Donner Party, 143-144. This is the earliest
reference to Halloran's Masonic funeral.
5. James F. Reed, The Snow-Bound, Starved Emigrants
of 1846." In "Unfortunate Emigrants," 188.
6. C. F. McGlashan. History of the Donner Party:
A Tragedy of the Sierra. With foreword, notes, and a bibliography by George H. Hinkle
and Bliss McGlashan Hinkle. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1947), 34-35.
7. Eliza P. Donner Houghton, The Expedition of
the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate. (Chicago: McClurg, 1911), 33.
8. Ibid., 35-36.
9. "The Emigrants." The Gazette
(St. Joseph, MO), May 8, 1847. In Dale L. Morgan, ed., Overland in 1847 (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 713-14.
10. Reprinted in Overland in 1847, 713-14.
11. John Corby, Deposition. November 8, 1847. Luke
Halloran Probate Records, Buchanan County, Missouri, Administration A-203. Corby, a native
of County Limerick, Ireland, came to St. Joseph in 1843. He was a prominent merchant who
served as mayor in 1856. The Daily News History of Buchanan County and St. Joseph, Mo.
(St. Joseph: St. Joseph Publishing Co., 1899), 400.
12. Buchanan County Probate Book A, 350 (Family
History Library, Salt Lake City, microfilm number 988,972); John Corby,
"Administration Notice." The Gazette (St. Joseph, MO), November 22,
1847.
13. This included a bewildering variety of items,
some rather mysterious. What, for instance, were Norfolk latches? Luke had 5 dozen of
them. And what kind of "cordial" did he carry? He also stocked more familiar
things--many sets of knives and forks, snuffers, scissors, "chissels," awls,
trowels, pincers, hats, caps, slates, padlocks, tea, ginger, mustard, wine, olive oil, hip
boots, and indigo.
14. Luke had bought the lots from Joseph and
Angelique Roubidoux for $100 each, but they were assessed at only $360 total. It is not
clear when the transaction actually occurred, for Halloran had been dead for three months
when the sale was recorded on December 23, 1846.
15. The probate records appear to be incomplete, for
the town lots are not listed on the final statement.
16. Scanlan came to St. Joseph as a newly ordained
priest in 1845 and organized the first Roman Catholic parish of the town; he lodged for a
time with John Corby. Dorothy Brandt Marra, This Far by Faith: A Popular History of
the Catholic People of West and Northwest Missouri. (Marceline, MO: Walsworth, 1992),
25.
17. This document is printed in Carroll D. Hall,
ed., Donner Miscellany: 41 Diaries and Documents (San Francisco: Book Club of
California, 1947), 28. |
