Researcher's Guide to Sutter's Fort's Collections of Donner Party ...

Indexing Terms
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection
Personal Names
Breen, Patrick
Breen, Margaret
Donner, Eliza Poor
Donner, George
Donner, Jacob
Eddy, William H.
Hull. K.B.
Kern, E. M.
Keseburg, Lewis
Lewis, Martha J.
McCutchen, William
McGlashan, C.F.
Miller, Hiram
Reed, James Frazier
Reed, Margaret
Reed, Martha J.
Reed, Patty
Reed, Virginia,
Stanton, Charles
Stocton, R.F.
Sutter, John Augustus
Subjects
California--History--1846-1850.
California--Pioneers
Donner Party
Historic sites--California
Collection Contents
Series 1. Correspondence, 1831-1951 and undated. 2 boxes, 137 folders.
The bulk of this series is comprised of correspondence to and from Martha J. Reed Lewis and of
correspondence to and from her father James Frazier Reed that was collected by her. The
remainder of the series is third-party correspondence also collected by her. Material in this
series covers the range 1831 to 1951 but the bulk of the letters date from 1846 to 1923. Material
dated after Martha’s death in 1923 primarily concerns Sutter’s Fort’s involvement with the
Donner material. This series includes a number of handwritten transcriptions of original letters
done by Edwin Sherman, an employee of Sutter’s Fort, that were made at the request of Carroll
Hall, the curator of Sutter’s Fort from 1944 to 1964. Significant correspondents represented in
this series include fellow survivors Patrick Breen and Jacob Donner, R.F. Stockton, Mariano
Vallejo, Thomas O. Larkin, E.M. Kern, J.B. Hull, and John A. Sutter.
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