Levinah W. Jackson A widow from Tennessee traveling
with her extended family.
Age: 36
Perished.
Parents: Frederick
Jackson (b. 11 Jun 1776, Union Co., SC; d. 6 Aug 1836,
Union Co., SC) and Charlotte Vinson (b. 8 Oct 1770, d. 8
Nov 1844 Union Co., SC)
b. 15 Dec 1809 Union Co.,
SC
m. 19 Dec 1825 Union Co.,
SC to Jeremiah Burns Murphy (b. 3 Mar 1805, Union Co.,
SC; d. 5 Oct 1839, Weakley Co., TN)
Ch: Sarah Ann
Charlotte, Harriet
Frances, John Landrum, Meriam Marjory, Lemuel B., William Green, Simon Peter
d. March 1847 at the Donner Lake
Camp, Nevada Co., CA
Based on a late memoir by
a grandson who had never met her, Mrs. Murphys name has sometimes been rendered
"Lavinia," but this form is clearly incorrect.
Documents dating from her lifetime give the name as
"Levina" or "Levinah" (pronounced
luh-VINE-uh). Her son William spelled the name
"Levinah"; Wilford Woodruffs 1836 daybook gives the name as
"Levinah W. Murphy," as does a transcription of
a family Bible.
She is often called "old Mrs. Murphy" in the literature of the Donner
Party, but Levinah Jackson Murphy was only 36 when she
set out for California. She had been born to a prosperous
family living in Union District (now County), South
Carolina. Her father was a responsible landowner who sat
on juries, administered estates, maintained public roads,
and was active in the local Baptist church. Levinah is
said to have acted as his private secretary.
Four days after her
sixteenth birthday she married Jeremiah Burns Murphy, son
of a neighboring family and her first cousin once removed.
The bride and groom were both descended from one Richard
Murphy, who, according to family tradition, had been
kidnapped from Ireland as a boy and sold as an indentured
servant in Virginia. Jeremiah and Levinah had four
children in South Carolina before they and several of
their siblings moved to Weakley County, Tennessee, about
1833. The Murphys settled on a farm about 2 1/2 miles
north of Dresden, the county seat. Three more children were
born in Tennessee.
In the summer of 1836
Jeremiah and Levinah frequently entertained Wilford
Woodruff and Abraham O. Smoot, elders of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon church. On
August 6, Woodruff recorded that he had baptized
"Brother and Sister Murphy" into the LDS
church. These were almost certainly Jeremiah and Levinah;
however, Jeremiahs brother Emanuel Masters Murphy
and his wife also became Mormons about the same time, so
the notation may possibly refer to them.
Jeremiah died October 5,
1839, leaving his 29-year-old widow with seven children
to support, the youngest a toddler of 19 months. Jeremiah
left a fair amount of property, and Levinah also put her
skills as a tailor and weaver to good use. She was still
living in Weakley County when the census-taker passed by
in 1840, but by 1841 she and her children had moved to
the seat of the Mormon church in Nauvoo, Illinois. There
Levinah and Sarah were among the first to perform a new
LDS ordinance and were baptized in the Mississippi River
as proxies for the dead. The four boys attended a school
taught by Henry I. Young (no relation to Brigham) from
August 25 to October 28, 1842, in the home of Benjamin L.
Clapp, a fellow convert from Tennessee. Late that fall
the family left Nauvoo. They boarded a steamship for St.
Louis at Warsaw, Illinois, but didnt get very far: the ship became
icebound on the opposite shore of the river. On December
29 the two eldest daughters, Sarah and
Harriet, were
married on board the ship to William M. Foster and
William M. Pike by a justice of the peace.
After the ship was freed
it continued on to St. Louis, where the Pikes and Fosters
took up residence. Levinah and her younger children
continued on to Tennessee; the Pikes joined them there
after about a year. Two years after that the family had
decided to emigrate to California. The Murphys and Pikes
left Tennessee in March 1846 and picked up the Fosters in
St. Louis, making a total of 13 people: Levinah, her five
younger children, two married daughters, two sons-in-law,
and three grandchildren. They traveled to Independence,
where they heard that a large caravan had recently left,
and caught up with the Russell train at the Big Blue
River between May 26-29 while the larger group was
waiting for the swollen waters to subside.
Little emerges from the
historical record about Levinah Murphys personality. Whether she left
the Mormon faith when she left Nauvoo is unclear, but she
was a devout woman. Her son William wrote, "She was
noted for her extensive erudition in scripture, and the
facility with which she handled the subjects then
agitating the religious community, and the skill with
which she rightly divided the truth."
In August 1847 the Mormon
Battalion's services were no longer needed in California.
As the veterans traveled east to Utah they stopped at
Johnsons Ranch
before crossing the Sierra. Young Mrs. Johnson, the
former Mary Murphy, reportedly told them that her mother
- being a widow, with
several children dependent upon her for support,
while residing in Nauvoo, heard of a chance of
obtaining employment at Warsaw, an anti-Mormon
town, thirty miles lower down the Mississippi.
Thinking to better her condition, she,
accordingly, removed to Warsaw, and spent the
winter of 1845-46 there. In the spring of the
latter year, a party about emigrating to Oregon
or California, offered to furnish passage for
herself and children on the condition that she
would cook and do the washing for the party.
Understanding California to be the final
destination of the Saints, and thinking this a
good opportunity to emigrate without being a
burden to the Church, she accepted the
proposition, but, alas! the example of Sister
Murray [Murphy], although her motives were good,
is an illustration of the truism, that "it
is better to suffer affliction with the people of
God" and trust in Him for deliverance, than
to mingle with the sinful "for a
season," and be lured by human prospects of
a better result!
This story, as reported,
cannot be corroborated. The Murphys took a boat from
Warsaw in late 1842 and returned to Tennessee, according
to William G. Murphy, and Weakley County sources place
the family there during the winter preceding their
departure for California. There is no indication that the
Murphys were closely associated with another family for
whom Levinah might have cooked and washed. However, it
was widely known that the Mormons were leaving Illinois,
and California was rumored to be their destination.
The Murphys very likely did emigrate in order to rejoin the
Saints in their new home. According to her daughter Mary,
Levinah was very unhappy in Tennessee. Mary also
described her mother as "persecuted" and
"long suffering," but the precise reasons for
Levinahs
unhappiness are a mystery.
Little is known about the Murphys' experiences crossing
the plains. When they finally arrived at Donner Lake, Levinah's
remaining son-in-law William Foster and
William Eddy built a cabin alongside a boulder, using its almost
vertical eastern side as one wall. Located about 200 yards from the
existing cabin which the Breens occupied, the Murphy cabin site was
excavated archaeologically in the 1980s by Donald L. Hardesty of the
University of Nevada-Reno. (See his article "Donner Party Archaeology"
in Overland Journal 10: 3 (1992), p. 19-26
for more information.) Here
the Murphy clan and the Eddys spent the winter. (For photographs of the
boulder, click
here.)
Christmas 1846 was bleak
for the Donner Party. That night the Murphys had eaten
their supper of boiled bones and Levinah's son
William was reading her
favorite psalm to her when she became seriously ill. She
was blind for a time during the winter, and the Second
Relief found that she had become "so reduced by
famine, that she was helpless," alternately laughing
and weeping. When the Third Relief arrived she was too weak to travel.
Georgia Donner Babcock
wrote to C. F. McGlashan,
- Mrs. Murphy was so
kind to the little children that we remember her
affectionately. It was always my impression that
the last [third] relief party took from the cabin
Frances, Georgia and Eliza Donner, and Simon
Murphy. As we were ready to start, Mrs. Murphy
walked to her bed, laid down turned her face
toward the wall. One of the men gave her a
handful of dried meat.--She seemed to realize
that we were leaving her, that her work was
finished.
When the Fourth Relief returned a month later, they
found her mutilated body.
Sarah Ann Charlotte Murphy
Daughter of Jeremiah
Burns Murphy and Levinah W.
Jackson; wife of William
McFadden Foster.
Age: 19
Survived
b. 04 Nov 1826 Union
County, SC
m. 29 Dec 1842 Clark Co.,
MO, to William
McFadden Foster
Ch: Jeremiah
George, Alice E.,
Georgiana C., William Budd, Minnesota "Minnie,"
Harriet "Hattie," Frances S.
d. 20 Dec 1906 San
Francisco (?), CA
Sarah Murphy Foster was
one of the five young women who joined the Forlorn Hope
snowshoe party, leaving her son behind. She and her husband never saw
him again.
Peter H. Burnett met Sarah two years later
in Marysville and listened to her talk about the Donner
Party:
- Mrs. Foster was then
about twenty-three years old. She had a fair
education, and possessed the finest narrative
powers. I never met with any one, not even
excepting Robert Newell of Oregon, who could
narrate events as well as she. She was not [only?] more
accurate and full in her narrative, but a better
talker, than Newell. For hour after hour, I would
listen in silence to her sad narrative. Her
husband was then in good circumstances, and they
had no worldly matter to give them pain but their
recollections of the past.
After her husbands
death in 1874 Sarah stayed for a time with her brother
William in Marysville but later moved to Mendocino
County, where she lived for many years. She died in San
Francisco and was buried at Fort Bragg. For a photo of her tombstone,
click here.
William McFadden Foster
Husband of Sarah Ann
Charlotte Murphy;
son-in-law of Levinah W.
Jackson;
Age: 30
Survived
Parents: David Foster (b.
1782; d. 11 Sep 1840, Crawford Co., PA) and Rebecca
McFadden (b. 1786; d. 8 Mar 1861, Crawford Co., PA)
b. 25 Oct 1815 Meadville,
Crawford Co., PA
m. 29 Dec 1842 Clark Co.,
MO to Sarah
Ann Charlotte Murphy
Ch: Jeremiah
George, Alice E.,
Georgiana C., William Budd, Minnesota "Minnie,"
Harriet "Hattie," Frances S.
d. 25 Feb 1874 San
Francisco, CA
Nothing is known about
William Fosters
youth. According to William G.
Murphy, Foster was the mate on the boat the Murphy family
took from Nauvoo in December 1842. The ship became
icebound and two romances sprang up between the crew and
the passengers. Foster and his shipmate William Pike were
married to Sarah and Harriet Murphy respectively on
December 29 by a justice of the peace in Clark County,
Missouri, across the river from Nauvoo.
Foster left the ship and
appears to have followed the carpenters trade in St. Louis. He and Sarah
were living there when their first child,
George, was born.
In the annals of the
Donner Party William Foster is best remembered as the man
who killed Sutters vaqueros, Luis
and Salvador, for food. He does not
seem to have been much blamed for this act; William Eddys account, related to J. Quinn
Thornton, emphasizes that Foster was deranged at the
time.
Regarding his later
personality, Peter H. Burnett wrote:
- Foster was a man of
excellent common sense, and his intelligence had
not been affected, like those of many others. His
statement was clear, consistent, and
intelligible.
After the disaster Foster
worked as a carpenter in San Francisco, but later joined
his brothers-in-law, Michael C. Nye and Charles
Covillaud, in a ranching venture. During the gold rush he
and Nye prospected for gold; Fosters Bar on the Yuba was named for
him.
Foster was a founder and prominent
early settler of Marysville, but in the mid-1850s he and
his growing family moved to Carver County, Minnesota. An
attempt to found a community called San Francisco failed,
and they returned to California about 1860.
William Foster died of
cancer in 1874 in San Francisco. A convert to
Catholicism, he was buried in the cemetery of the old
Mission Dolores.
Jeremiah George Foster
Son of William
McFadden Foster and
Sarah
Ann Charlotte Murphy
Age: 1
Perished
b. 25 August 1844 St.
Louis, MO
d. March 1847 at the Murphy
Cabin, Donner Lake Camp, CA
This child is referred to
as George Foster in Donner Party sources, but Murphy
family records indicate that this was actually his middle
name.
There has been some
confusion about his age; McGlashan lists him among the
nursing infants in the Donner Party, but his age
elsewhere is given as four. He was in fact only one when
the family set out from Missouri, but had turned two by
the time the emigrants reached the lake.
Sarah and William Foster
left George behind with his grandmother when they
departed with the Forlorn Hope in mid-December. Levinah
did the best she could for him during the dreary winter,
but was herself unwell. In February the Second Relief
found George and little James Eddy lying in bed, filthy
and crying from hunger. They washed the boys and did as
much as they could for them, but the outlook was bleak.
One night in March
Louis
Keseberg took George to bed with him, and in the morning
the boy was dead; grief-stricken, Levinah accused
Keseberg of killing him. The little body was cannibalized
by the cabins inhabitants.
Harriet Frances Murphy
Daughter of Jeremiah
Burns Murphy and Levinah W.
Jackson; wife of William M. Pike.
Age: 18
Survived.
b. 08 May 1828 Union Co.,
SC
m1. 29 Dec 1842 Clark
Co., MO to William
M. Pike
Ch: Naomi Levina, Catherine
m2. 24 Jun 1847 Sutters Fort, Sacramento Co., CA to
Michael C. Nye (04 Apr 1821-1905)
Ch: Harry, d. 21 Oct 1854, age 1 yr 10 mos.; possibly
others
d. 1 Sept 1870 at The
Dalles, Wasco Co., OR
Levinah Jackson Murphys second daughter was only 14 when
she married William Pike in 1842. They lived for about a
year in St. Louis, then made their home in Tennessee with
Levinah until the spring of 1846, when the families left
to emigrate to California. Harriet lost her husband in a
shooting accident along the Truckee River at the end of
October 1846. On December 15 she, her brother Lemuel,
sister Sarah, and brother-in-law William Foster set out
with the Forlorn Hope, leaving her daughters Naomi and
Catherine with their grandmother Levinah at the Murphy
cabin. The First Relief rescued Naomi, but Catherine died
the day after the relief arrived at the camp.
On May 25, 1847, the
Murphy girls wrote to their relatives back in Tennessee.
Harriets brief
note reads in part, "theare is know one that knows
how to simpathise with mee left a widow in a strange
cuntry with one por orpant childe to take care of I have
not the hart nor minde to word all my suffering since I
saw you..." A month later, Harriet had found someone
to sympathize with her. On June 24, she married Michael
C. Nye, who had come to California with the
Bidwell-Bartleson Party of 1841 and was now working at
Neu Mecklenburg as Theodor Corduas majordomo.
Harriets marriage to the handsome young
Nye seems to have been quite happy. In 1849 Mary Murphy
wrote, "Harriet is married to Mr. Nye he is a very
nice man... he loves Harriet very much." Nye
prospected for gold with Foster during the gold rush, but
his main interest was stockraising and dealing. He also
established a livery stable in Marysville.
The Nyes and Fosters were
living in Marysville when they got to know Peter H.
Burnett in 1849: "Mrs. Nye did not talk much, not
being a talkative woman, and being younger than Mrs.
Foster, her sister."
Late in 1849 the Nyes and
Fosters returned east for a visit via the Isthmus of
Panama. There Harriet ran into an acquaintance, Heinrich
Lienhard, who was escorting John Sutters wife and children from
Switzerland to California. Lienhard happened to overhear
"an attractive American woman" speaking of him
and discovered that it was Mrs. Nye.
The Nyes lived in
Marysville for several years, but moved to Oregon in the
1860s. Harriet died at the relatively young age of 46 and
was buried in Marysville, but her widower remained in
Oregon until his death in 1905.
William
Montgomery Pike
Husband of Harriet
Frances Murphy; son-in-law of Levinah W.
Jackson
Age: [32]
Perished.
Parents: James Brown Pike (b. 01 May 1784, New York,
d. 19 Apr 1855 Kirkville, Wapello Co., Iowa) and Mrs.
Wolfries.
b. abt 1814 in Dearborn Co., Indiana
m1. 29 Dec 1842 Clark
Co., MO to Harriet
Frances Murphy
Ch: Naomi Levina, Catherine
d. Late Oct 1846 along the Truckee River in Nevada
William M. Pike, the illegitimate son of James Brown
Pike and a Mrs. Wolfries, was a grandson of a
Revolutionary War officer, Zebulon Pike, and a nephew of
the explorer
Zebulon
Montgomery Pike, after whom Pikes
Peak in Colorado is named.
In late 1842 Pike was the engineer aboard a riverboat
which became icebound on the western shore of the
Mississippi. One of the passengers was fourteen-year-old
Harriet Murphy. The couple was married on board the ship
on December 29, the same day that William Foster married
Harriets sister Sarah. The Pikes spent about a year
in St. Louis, then went to live with Harriets
family in Weakley County, Tennessee.
There Pike helped clear a 200-acre tract belonging to
the family. His unfamiliarity with woodcutting amused the
Murphy boys, who nevertheless thought him "the
greatest man they ever met." According to William G.
Murphy, Pike was "an extraordinary man, a real
genius, a full fledged mechanic" and a
"powerful ally" to Levinah Murphy.
On the trail, Pike is recorded as going ahead with
James F. Reed and
Charles Stanton to overtake Hastings
and get his advice about the route through the Wasatch
Mountains. In 1871, however, Reed wrote that his
companions were Stanton and William McCutchen. It has
been suggested that Reed confused the mission to consult
Hastings with the sending of Stanton and McCutchen ahead
to Sutters Fort for supplies. Whatever the case,
the earliest sources--an article which appeared in the California
Star on February 13, 1847 and J. Quinn
Thorntons Oregon and California in 1848--report
that it was Pike; survivors told McGlashan it was Pike;
even Virginia Reed Murphy said it was Pike, contradicting
her father.
In October, while the company was traveling along the
Humboldt, Pike returned from a hunting trip with William
Eddy to discover that Mr. Hardcoop had been put out of
Kesebergs wagon and was now missing. When Hardcoop had not arrived at
the camp the next morning, Pike, Eddy, and
Milt Elliott
volunteered to go on foot after him, but the company
would not wait and they were forced to leave Hardcoop to
his fate.
William Pike met his own fate not long thereafter. As
C. F. McGlashan told it
- After the arrival of Stanton, it was still deemed
necessary to take further steps for the relief of
the train. The generosity of Captain Sutter, as
shown to Stanton, warranted them in believing
that he would send still further supplies to the
needy emigrants. Accordingly, two
brothers-in-law, William Foster and William Pike,
both brave and daring spirits, volunteered to go
on ahead, cross the summits, and return with
provisions as Stanton had done. Both men had
families, and both were highly esteemed in the
company. At the encampment near Reno, Nevada,
while they were busily preparing to start, the
two men were, cleaning or loading a pistol. It
was an old-fashioned "pepper-box." It
happened, while they were examining it, that wood
was called for to replenish the fire. One of the
men offered to procure it, and in order to do so,
handed the pistol to the other. Everybody knows
that the "pepper-box" is a very
uncertain weapon. Somehow, in the transfer, the
pistol was discharged. William Pike was fatally
wounded, and died in about twenty minutes. Mrs.
Pike was left a widow, with two small children.
The youngest, Catherine, was a babe of only a few
months old, and Naomi was only three years of
age. The sadness and distress occasioned by this
mournful accident, cast a gloom over the entire
company, and seemed an omen of the terrible fate
which overshadowed the Donner Party.
Naomi Levina Pike
Daughter of William M. Pike and Harriet
Frances Murphy
Age: 2
Survived.
b. 13 Nov 1843 in St. Louis, MO
m1. 8 Sep 1864 in Marysville, Yuba Co., CA to Benjamin W.
Mitchell
m2. abt 1877 to John L. Schenck
d. 3 Apr 1934 in The Dalles, Wasco Co., OR
John Rhoads of the First Relief met Harriet Pike at
Johnsons Ranch, and, moved by her plight,
determined to rescue her children. He may have been
influenced by the fact that he, like Harriet, was or had
been a Mormon. Catherine died the day after the relief
arrived, but Naomi was still alive. Rhoads carried her
slung on his back in a blanket to her mother. Decades
later, Naomi wrote of him with gratitude.
Harriets marriage to Michael C. Nye gave Naomi a
kind stepfather. Mary Murphy wrote, "he loves Naomi
as well as if she war his own child." She was often
called "Naomi Nye."
Naomi married Benjamin Mitchell, a physician, in
Marysville and moved to Oregon; the Nyes later moved there as well.
After Mitchell’s death she married John L. Schenck, an agent for a
steamship company who later went into banking. When he died in 1913 he
left Naomi a wealthy widow, but she was impoverished by the stock market
crash of 1929. She had no children by either of her husbands.
When Naomi died in 1934, the passing of the next to
the last survivor of the Donner Party was widely reported
in the press.
Catherine Pike
Daughter of William M. Pike and Harriet
Frances Murphy
Age: [1]
Perished.
Catherine Pike was evidently named after her
fathers sister, who had died in 1843 at the age of
22. Catherines exact age is unknown; her sister
Naomi Pike Schenck wrote Kansas historian John
Ellenbecker that Catherine was only "nine months
old," but was that Catherines age when she
died or when the family left Missouri for California?
In mid-December Harriet Pike left her two small
daughters behind in a desperate attempt to seek
assistance:
- Dear Mrs. Murphy had the most sacred and pitiful
charge. It was the wee nursing babe, Catherine
Pike, whose mother had gone with the
"Forlorn Hope," to try, if possible, to
procure relief. All there was to give the tiny
sufferer, was a little gruel made from snow
water, containing a slight sprinkling of coarse
flour. This flour was simply ground wheat,
unbolted. Day after day the sweet little darling
would lie helplessly upon its grandmothers
lap, and seem with its large, sad eyes to be
pleading for nourishment. Mrs. Murphy carefully
kept the little handful of flour concealed--there
was only a handful at the very beginning--lest
some of the starving children might get
possession of the treasure. Each day she gave
Catherine a few teaspoonfuls of the gruel.
Strangely enough, this poor little martyr did not
often cry with hunger, but with tremulous,
quivering mouth, and a low, subdued sob or moan,
would appear to be begging for something to eat.
The poor, dumb lips, if gifted with speech, could
not have uttered a prayer half so eloquent, so
touching. Could the mother, Mrs. Pike, have been
present, it would have broken her heart to see
her patient babe dying slowly, little by little.
Starvation had dried the maternal breasts long
before Mrs. Pike went away, so that no one can
censure her for leaving her baby. She could only
have done as Mrs. Murphy did, give it the plain,
coarse gruel, and watch it die, day by day, upon
her lap.
On February 22, 1847, Patrick Breen recorded, "I
burried pikes child this moring in the snow it died 2
days ago."
John Landrum Murphy
Son of Jeremiah Burns
Murphy and Levinah
W. Jackson
Age: 16
Perished
b. 16 Nov 1829 Union Co.,
SC
d. 31 Jan 1847 at the Murphy
cabin, Donner Lake Camp, Nevada Co., CA
When Foster and Eddy left
with the Forlorn Hope in mid-December, Landrum became the
oldest male living at the Murphy cabin. On him no doubt
fell the brunt of cutting firewood and shoveling snow,
chores which became increasingly arduous as he weakened
from starvation.
Patrick Breens diary records his decline: on
January 17, "Lanthrom crazy last night";
January 19: "Lanthrom very low in danger if relief
dont come soon"; January 27: "Lanthrom lying in
bed the whole of his time"; January 31:
"Lantron Murphy died last night about one
Oclock."
As C.F. McGlashan
described it,
- Landrum Murphy was a large and somewhat overgrown
young man. The hides and burnt bones did not
contain sufficient nourishment to keep him alive.
For some hours before he died, he lay in a
semi-delirious state, breathing heavily and
seemingly in little or no pain. Mrs. Murphy went
to the Breen camp, and asked Mrs. Breen for a
piece of meat to save her starving boy. Mrs.
Breen gave her the meat, but it was too late,
Landrum could not eat. Finally he sank into a
gentle slumber. His breathing grew less and less
distinct, and ere they were fairly aware of it
life was extinct.
Meriam Marjory Murphy
Daughter of Jeremiah
Burns Murphy and Levinah W.
Jackson
Age: 14
Survived
b. 15 Nov 1831 Union Co.,
SC
m1. 24 Jun 1847 Sutters Fort, Sacramento Co., CA to
William Johnson; divorced
m2. 25 Dec 1848
Sutters
Fort, Sacramento Co., CA to Charles Julian
Covillaud (b. 21 Nov 1816 in Cognac, France; d.
05 Feb 1867 Marysville, Yuba Co., CA)
Ch: Mary Ellen, Charles
Julian, William Pierre, Francis Theodore, Naomi Sabine
d. 27 Sep 1867
Marysville, Yuba Co., CA
- Although she is usually
known as Mary, church and family records give her name as Meriam, a form that occurs several times in the Jackson
and Murphy families. The middle name Marjory is from a
transcription of a family Bible.
Mary was rescued from the
Donner Lake camp by the First Relief in February 1847.
She was haunted by the tragedy. In May 1847 she wrote,
"i hope i shall not live long for i am tired of this
troublesome world and i want to go to my mother." A
brief and troubled marriage to William Johnson, the
proprietor of Johnsons Ranch, was followed by a much
happier union with Charles Covillaud. Yet in 1849,
despite her greatly improved circumstances, Mary was
still sad: "I shall always wish that it had been
gods will for me to die with my Mother."
During the gold rush a
thriving town sprang up on the Yuba river at what had
been known as Nyes Ranch. The town was named
Marysville after the wife of a prominent citizen, Mrs.
Charles Covillaud--the former Mary Murphy.
As a surviving photograph
shows, Mary was a lovely young woman; Heinrich Lienhard
remembered the first time that he saw "the beautiful
Mary." Bostonian Franklin A. Buck met Mary Covillaud
and her sister Sarah Foster in 1850. He acknowledged her
looks but was otherwise unimpressed:
- Mrs. C. and Mrs. F. are two
of the party who came over the mountains in 1846
and came so near starving. You recollect the
horrid sufferings they endured, even to eating
each other. They are the elite of the place,
of course. Mrs. Covilland is quite young and
pretty but there is not the least refinement or
taste about them. The fact is that there is no
woman who can come to this country at present and
have any refinement. Their finer feelings, if
they have any, will soon get blunted with the
life they must live here.
Although she did not meet
Bucks standard
of refinement, Mary was remembered as a kind and generous
woman who enjoyed flowers. She seems to have lived
happily in the town that bore her name. Charles Covillaud
died in February 1867 and his widow followed him only
seven months later, dying at the age of 35. She is buried
in the Catholic cemetery at Marysville.
Lemuel B. Murphy
Son of Jeremiah Burns
Murphy and Levinah
W. Jackson
Age: 12
Perished
b. 17 Oct 1833 Weakley Co., TN.
d. 27 Dec 1846 at Camp of
Death, Nevada Co., CA.
The birthplace of Lemuel Murphy,
Levinah's second son, is uncertain but was it probably Tennessee.
Lemuel set out with the Forlorn Hope in
mid-December:
- A boy about thirteen years old, Lemuel was dearly
loved by his sisters, and, full of courage, had
endeavored to accompany them on the fearful
journey. He was feeble when he started from the
cabins, and the overwhelming sufferings of the
fatal trip had destroyed his remaining
strength.... (C. F. McGlashan)
At Camp of Death Sarah Foster sat holding Lemuel and
trying to comfort him in his delirium. The sun set, the
moon rose, and about two oclock in the morning
Lemuel died. Ever afterwards, Sarah told McGlashan, she
could never "behold a bright moonlight without
recurring with a shudder to this night on the
Sierra."
- Mrs. Foster spoke of this
young hero with the greatest feeling. His
patience and resignation were of the martyr type.
When they were reduced to half a biscuit each, he
insisted that she should eat his portion as well
as her own; but this she refused. (Peter H.
Burnett)
William Green Murphy
Son of Jeremiah Burns
Murphy and Levinah
W. Jackson
Age: 10
Survived
b. 15 Jan 1836 Weakley
Co., TN
m. 03 Dec 1861
Weakley Co., TN to Damaris Kathleen Cochran
Ch: Tullulah
"Lulie" T., Kate Nye, William Green, Jr.,
Charles Mitchell, Ernest H., Harriet F., Leander B.
d. 04 Feb 1904
Marysville, Yuba Co., CA
Young William set out with the Forlorn Hope with other
members of his family, but had no snowshoes and had to
turn back. Had he not done so, he almost certainly would
have met the same fate as his brother Lemuel. Two months
later, on his way out of the mountains with the First
Relief, Williams feet became so badly frostbitten
that he couldnt continue, but it came to a choice
of walk or die. He walked.
After their rescue and recuperation, the two surviving
Murphy boys flourished in California. In 1849 their
sister Mary Covillaud wrote, "William
and Simon are large helthy boys and as like the other
boyes was William can ride wild horses like a spaniard
they can talk spanish and indian to[o]." William
acted as an Indian interpreter at Bidwells Bar in
1848-49.
In December 1849 William and Simon Murphy accompanied
their sister Harriet and brother-in-law Michael Nye east
via the Isthmus of Panama. At Gorgona they met John
Sutters family, who were on their way to Sacramento
escorted by Heinrich Lienhard. After arriving at New
Orleans, William and his companions traveled on to
Dresden, Tennessee, where the family still owned
property.
The Nyes returned to California but the boys stayed
on, living with a local family. Evidently William, as the
eldest surviving son, was expected to continue his
education. His schooling had been scanty, however, so he
had to be tutored until he was ready to enter the
University of Missouri at Columbia for the school year
1852-53. In 1854 he returned to California, helping to
drive a large herd of cattle back to Marysville, but
after a few years went back to Missouri and completed his
education, graduating in 1861.
William returned to Marysville, where he was admitted
to the bar in January 1863. In August of that year he was
admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of Nevada and
practiced law in Virginia City for three years, but in
1866 went back to Marysville for good. His law practice
was very successful. He served as court commissioner for
twenty-seven years and also as district attorney of Yuba
County.
Murphy stood more than six feet tall, loved children,
was a noted orator, a staunch prohibitionist, and a
founder of Marysvilles Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ). His
passing in 1904 was sincerely mourned by his fellow
citizens.
Simon Peter Murphy
Son of Jeremiah Burns
Murphy and Levinah
W. Jackson
Age: 8
Survived
b. 14 Mar 1838 Weakley
Co., TN
m. 21 Sep 1859 Weakley
Co., TN to M. C. Foster
Ch: John Robert, Naomi, Geneva, Emanuel Byrd
d. 31 Mar 1873 Weakley
Co., TN
Simon was rescued with the three little Donner girls
by the Third Relief. Georgia Donner Babcock referred to him
as "Simon Murphy, whom I remember so kindly."
Simon and William Murphy returned to Weakley County,
Tennessee in 1849. Simon remained there, but William
returned West after graduating from college.
When the Civil War broke out, Simon served as a
private in Company L, Sixth Cavalry, USA, also called the
West Tennessee Cavalry Regiment. His unit was described
on May 6, 1864 as "a raw, undisciplined
detachment" and for many months was reported as
"dismounted and unassigned."
Simon stayed in contact with his family in
California -- his death was reported in a Sacramento newspaper -- but
little known about his
children. At least some of them had children of their
own: In January 1952, when the passenger train
City
of San Francisco was trapped by snow for three days
in the Sierra, the analogy to the Donner Party did not
escape the notice of the media. A Tennessee newspaper
article reporting the incident published information
given by a descendant of Simon P. Murphy.
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