Daniel James Brown

It was.

I mean, it was a really tough life, particularly for people that were trying to farm the land.

But as I say, the real draw was what they were reading about in this almost mythical place called California.

There were there were magazine articles being published in the Midwest and the East.

There had been Americans trickling into California.

for a couple of decades at this point.

Although it was sovereign Mexican territory, many Americans had just sort of slipped in and settled down.

Some of them got permission from the Mexican government, and some just settled where they happened to be.

So there was an American presence in California even before the Donner Party and these large wagon trains began to move.

The Reeds had come from Springfield, Illinois, and the Graves came from a little town called Sparlin, just north of what is now Peoria, Illinois.

And they were both large families.

The Reed family was somewhat different.

Most of the immigrants in the party were farmers intending to find land to farm.

Or they were like the Eddy family.

They were cabinetmakers, tradesmen.

But the Reeds were actually... James Reed was a businessman, a quite successful businessman, and quite a prosperous businessman.

So he and his family traveled in this oversized wagon with a door on the side.

It was almost like a little...

cabin on wheels, whereas all the other families were traveling in these little farm wagons.

And so there was a certain amount of resentment about the Reeds from the very beginning.