Word: donner
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...European Theater; Fort Worth's black-haired, vivacious Mrs. Ruth Googins Roosevelt, 35, in Texas. The Colonel met the then Miss Googins at a livestock show in Fort Worth, married her in 1933, five days after he was divorced by his first wife, Elizabeth, mother of William Donner Roosevelt, 12. Elliott was later dropped from the Social Register. Mrs. Ruth Googins Roosevelt charged "unkind, harsh and tyrannical conduct," asked for the custody of their three children: Ruth Chandler, 9; Elliott Jr. ("Tony"), 7; David Boynton, 2. Colonel Roosevelt was rumored to be currently interested in Winston Churchill...
...Second Relief. Outside one hut, the Second Relief found a dismembered body. There was an entry concerning it in the diary of one of the travelers, Patrick Breen: "Mrs. Murphy said here yesterday that [she] thought she would commence on Milt and eat him." She had. At the Donner family huts, Tamsen Donner had just sent a man to beg Elizabeth, Jacob Donner's wife, for a meal. The man was just returning with a leg of Elizabeth's husband. "At the sight of the rescuers, he tossed the now unneeded leg back on the butchered corpse." Jacob...
...Bestiality. Possibly the most horrible episode was discovered by the Fourth Relief. Lewis Keseberg, a German, had been left by his own request in the camp with Tamsen Donner and her dying husband. The Fourth Relief found a kettle full of pieces of George Donner, but there were legs of oxen which were lying around uneaten. Keseberg avoided the rescuers. He had long been suspected of stealing from the other members of the party. At last the rescuers cornered him "lying down amidst the human bones, and beside him a large pan full of fresh liver and lights...
They could not find Tamsen Donner. Keseberg later denied that he had killed her. But there in the camp he told the rescuers that "he ate her body and found her flesh the best he had ever tasted." They took Keseberg, "now a mere sac of bestiality," over the great divide down into California which had become America while he was developing his taste...
Historian DeVoto justifies his detailed retelling of the Donner story by saying that "it is as the commonplace or typical just distorted that the Donners must be seen." The emigrant train was "the village on wheels," the U.S. in miniature. So, like the reader, Author DeVoto goes on & on in a sick fascination, unable to free himself from the sense that the Donners are simply an extreme case of any society that has lost the will to get its members over one of history's divides...