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From: <>
Subject: [CASOLANO-L] Family member in convent at Benicia
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 00:01:56 EST

I've been working off a family narrative history and trying to straighten the
loose ends. What a hooraw's nest! My gggrandmother, Eliza Smith b. 1840,
came to CA with family in 1846, and lost her mother. Father put her in
convent when he went gold digging in 1848. My mother's narrative had her in
Dominican Convent in Benicia. I'd been assuming that is the same Dominican
Convent now in San Rafael. Oops. The Donner girl of about the same age was
interviewed and I found a little bit out about her today. She had a very
parallel history to Eliza Smith although orphaned a little earlier. This lead
to St. Catherine's Convent may be helpful to someone else with an orphan
ancestor. Earle

Document abstract follows:

Eliza Houghton (b. 1843) was the youngest child of George Donner, one of
two Springfield, Illinois, brothers who organized the ill-fated California-
bound emigrant party that bore their name. Eliza and her older sisters were
rescued by relief parties that made their way to the stranded travellers at
Donner Lake, but their parents perished, and the girls were left to make their
way alone in the West. The expedition of the Donner party and its tragic fate
(1911) begins with Mrs. Houghton's account of her childhood and the family's
tragic overland journey, and rescue. She continues with her life as an orphan,
first at Fort Sutter, and
then with a family in Sonoma and with her older half-sister in Sacramento.
She describes the impact of the gold rush and new immigration on the area,
farm work and domestic work, and her own education in public schools and St.
Catherine's Convent in Benicia. She writes at length of the emotional scars
caused by contemporary rumors of cannibalism among the Donner Party
and offers full accounts of Donner family history as well as the background
of her husband, Samuel Houghton. An appendix contains several documentary
sources for the history of the Donner Party.

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