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From November 20, 1846 to March 1, 1847, Irish immigrant Patrick Breen, a Donner party member, kept a diary of his ordeal in the mountains.
- American Experience
Bibliography. Breen, Patrick, Manuscript Diary. The only known journal kept by a member of the Donner Party during the winter of entrapment. Transcribed and published in many later works. Available online in original manuscript at the University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library.
Breen gave the manuscript to George McKinstry, who later (circa 1871) gave it to historian and publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft. The diary remained in Bancroft's collection and, as part of that collection, became property of the University of California in 1905.
Mar 1, 2017 · Patrick Breen began recording in his diary on November 20, 1846. “It continueing [SIC] to snow all the time we were here we now have killed most part of our cattle having to stay here untill [SIC] next spring & live on poor beef without bread or salt,” wrote Breen.
The diary of Patrick Breen was recorded between November 20, 1846 and March 1, 1847. At the time of the diary's composition, Breen and his family were part of a group of pioneers--which came to be known as the Donner Party--completing an overland journey from the Great Plains to California.
Breen (Patrick) Diary, Nov. 20, 1846 - Mar. 1, 1847. Institution: UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library
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Breen was naturalized in 1844. In the Spring of 1846, the Breen family joined a party of emigres bound for California. The party's ill-fated journey across the Sierra Nevada Mountains was partially documented in the diary Breen kept while stranded in a mountain camp at Donner (t...
