James Smith (abt. 1821 - 1846)

Born about 1821 in Springfield, Illinois,United States

Died 20 Dec 1846 at about age 25 in in Donner Lake Camp, California, United States

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James Smith was involved in the westward expansion of the USA. Westward Ho! Join: Trails and Wagon Trains Project Discuss: wagon_trains_and_trails

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

Biography

James Smith was a member of the Donner Party. See Donner Party.

James Smith was part of the infamous Donner Party in 1846. They were trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains by snow for 111 days, James Smith was a Teamster for the Reed family.

Sources

• Donner Party Teamsters
• 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
• Find A Grave, database and images (accessed 02 December 2019), memorial page for James Smith (unknown–Dec 1846), Find A Grave: Memorial #58776407, ; Maintained by Cindy Baldogo (contributor 46945191) Body lost or destroyed, James Smith died from starvation at the Alder Creek camp, near Truckee Lake.