Gabrielle Burton

A great adventure. A haunting tragedy. An enduring love. In the spring of 1846, Tamsen Donner, her husband, George, their five daughters, and eighty other pioneers headed to California on the California-Oregon Trail in eager anticipation of new lives out West. Everything that could go wrong did, ...

Tamsen Donner. For most the name conjures the ill-fated Donner party trapped in the snows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846-47. Others might know Tamsen as the stoic pioneer woman who saw her children to safety but stayed with her dying husband at the cost of her own life. For Gabrielle Burton,...

The Donner Party You know how some died. Here's how some lived. " " ""My heart is big with hope and impatient with desire."" --"Tamsen Donner, a letter to her sister" In the spring of 1846, Tamsen Donner, her husband, George, their five daughters, and eighty other pioneers headed west on the Califor...