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Subject: [SHOEMAKER] Donner party Shoemaker FYI
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2002 19:33:27 EDT

Samuel Shoemaker

A teamster for the Donners.
Age: [25?]
Perished.

Little is recorded about Samuel Shoemaker, except that he was said to be from
Ohio. In September, near the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake, he
assisted William Eddy in repairing one of James Reed’s wagons.

Shoemaker was one of the first victims of the entrapment. On December 20,
1846, Milt Elliott returned to the Lake Camp from Alder Creek with the news
that four men, including Shoemaker, had died. In a grisly aftermath, Georgia
Donner Babcock remembered her Aunt Elizabeth coming into George Donner’s tent
asking them to guess what she had cooked for breakfast that morning. She
answered her own question: "Shoemaker’s arm."


Nancy Shoemaker

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