William Hook (1834 - 1847)

Born 1834 in Sangamon County, Illinois, United States

Ancestors

Died Mar 1847 at about age 13 in Bear Valley, California Territory

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William Hook was one of 81 pioneers in the Donner Party wagon train to California that became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in 1846.

Biography

William Hook was a member of the Donner Party. See Donner Party.

William was rescued in the first relief, but rose during one night and gorged himself to death

William Hook was born in 1834 in Sangamon County, Illinois, United States, the son of James Hook and Elizabeth (Blue) Donner. His father abandoned them and his mother married Jacob Donner. He was the brother of Solomon E. Hook, and the half-brother of George Donner, Mary M. (Donner) Houghton, Mary Martha Donner, Isaac Donner and Samuel Donner.

Wlliam's family was part of the Donner Party, trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He was 12 at the time. William was taken out by the First Relief and reached camp in Bear Valley safely. Overcome by hunger, he gorged on the provision and became extremely ill. In the morning he was left behind with William G. Murphy, whose feet were badly frostbitten, and another person. Murphy later told C. F. McGlashan,

William Hook went out on the snow and rested on his knees and elbows. The camp-keeper called to him to come in. He then told me to make him come into camp. I went and put my hand on him, speaking his name, and he fell over, being already dead. He did not die in great agony, as is usually alleged. No groan, nor signs of dying, were manifested to us. The camp-keeper and myself took the biscuits and jerked beef from his pockets, and buried him just barely under the ground, near a tree which had been fired, and from around which the snow had melted.

William is buried in what is now Bear Valley, Mariposa County, California, United States.

Sources

See also:

• History of the early settlers of Sangamon County, Illinois Authors: Power, John Carroll, 1819-1894; Power, S. A. (Sarah A.), b. 1824. Publisher: Edwin A. Wilson & Co, Springfield, Illinois. Page 260.

• Dixon, Kelly, Shannon Novak, Gwen Robbins, Julie Schablitsky, Richard Scott , and Guy Tasa (2010), "Men, Women, and Children are Starving: Archaeology of the Donner Family Camp". American Antiquity 75(3):627-656

• McGlashan, Charles (1879). History of the Donner Party: A Tragedy of the Sierra Nevada: 11th edition (1918), A Carlisle & Company, San Francisco

• McNeese, Tim (2009). The Donner Party: A Doomed Journey, Chelsea House Publications. ISBN 978-1-60413-025-6

• Rarick, Ethan (2008). Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-530502-7

• Rehart, Catherine Morison (2000), The Valley's Legends & Legacies III, Word Dancer Press, ISBN 978-1-884995-18-7

• Stewart, George R. (1936). Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party: supplemented edition (1988), Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-61159-8

• Unruh, John (1993). The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–60, University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06360-0