Eliza P. Donner Houghton (1843–1922)
Autor de The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate
Sobre El Autor
Créditos de la imagen: Image from The expedition of the Donner party and its tragic fate (1911) by Eliza P. Donner Houghton
Obras de Eliza P. Donner Houghton
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
Miembros
Reseñas
Listas
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 1
- Miembros
- 66
- Popularidad
- #259,059
- Valoración
- 3.9
- Reseñas
- 2
- ISBNs
- 15
Perhaps confirming this supposition, only about a third of the book actually concerns the Donner Party and its rescue; the remainder is Ms. Houghton’s reminiscences of growing up in California as an orphan. Eliza and her sister Georgia were taken in by an elderly Swiss immigrant couple, the Brunners, who had a thriving business selling milk and cheese and running a bar. Eliza portrays herself as an impressionistic and unprejudiced child, commenting without censure on the habits of local Indians and “Spanish”; Ms. Brunner comes across as a termagant, treating Eliza as little better than hired help (at least, in Eliza’s memory). Eliza and Georgia weren’t allowed to have toys, that being frivolous in Ms. Brunner’s opinion; and when she discovered the children made some dolls by dressing old bottles in cloth scraps they were punished and their “bottle babies” were confiscated and put to use as containers. Ms. Brunner also disapproved of school for girls, so their education was scanty. Eliza and Georgia were eventually taken in by their sister and brother-in-law, after a hostile confrontation with Grandma Brunner, who had been lead to believe that the girls were “badmouthing” her and was enraged at their ingratitude. (It seems that the Brunners had accumulated quite an estate by now and a certain Widow Stein attempted to get them to disown the Donner girls and adopt her own son Johnnie as their heir, and thus tried to poison Grandma Brunner against them). Eliza married Sherman Houghton in 1861 and ends her narration then; Mr. Houghton was a prominent lawyer and served several terms in Congress as a California representative.
In the 1870s, stories about the Donner Party – often sensational – appeared in the news again, and Charles McGlashan looked up Eliza Donner Houghton to get her story. Her response appears as an appendix; her main concern seems to be refuting stories that the entire Donner party had turned to flagrant cannibalism and that her mother’s and father’s dismembered and partially consumed bodies had been found scattered around their camp site. She narrates a strange three-way meeting between her, Charles McGlashan, and Louis Keseberg; Keseberg was found alive by the last relief party to reach the Donner campsites and was almost universally believed to have killed and eaten Tamsin Donner, Eliza’s mother (Keseberg sued some of his accusers for slander, and won; he was awarded $1 in damages). At any rate, he got on his knees and convinced Eliza that her mother had died a natural death (although McGlashan remained skeptical).
Not much of an addition to Donner lore, given the likelihood of faulty memory; of some interest for childhood life in early California.… (más)