Eleanor Priscilla (Roach) Eddy (1820 - 1847)

Died 7 Feb 1847 at about age 27 in Truckee, Nevada County, California, United States

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Eleanor (Roach) Eddy was involved in the westward expansion of the USA. Westward Ho! Join: Trails and Wagon Trains Project Discuss: wagon_trains_and_trails

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

Biography

Eleanor (Roach) Eddy was a member of the Donner Party. See Donner Party.

Eleanor and William Eddy and their two children 3 year old James and 1 year old Margaret were part of the infamous Donner Party in 1846. They were trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains by snow for 111 days; Margaret and her 2 children did not survive.

When Eleanor's husband William left with The Forlorn Hope, Eleanor stayed behind with the children in the Murphy cabin. When William lightened his pack he found about half a pound of bear’s meat, and a note his wife had written signed "Your own dear Eleanor," in which she requested him to save it for the last extremity, and expressed the opinion that it would be the means of saving his life. This was really the case, for without it he would have surely died.

Patrick Breen recorded the Eddy family’s decline in his diary: February 5, 1847, Eddys child died last night, on the 2nd^[1], Mrs Eddy very weak on the 6th, Mrs Eddy died on the night of the 7th, and on February 9, John went down to day to bury Mrs Eddy & child.^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ Online Archive of California The Diary of Patrick Breen; Death of James Eddy, February 1, 1847.
2. ↑ Online Archive of California The Diary of Patrick Breen; Death of Margaret Eddy, February 7, 1847. Burial of Spitzer

See also

• Family Search - Citing this Record Indiana, Marriages, 1811-1959, index and images, FamilySearch , William H Eddy and Ellinor Roach, 24 Aug 1837; citing Huntington County; FHL microfilm 002320965.

• Find a Grave - Eleanor Priscilla Eddy - Burial - Donner Lake Camp, Truckee, Nevada County, California, USA - Find A Grave Memorial# 58735893

• Donner Party - Eddy Family

• 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