Word: tamsen
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Dates: during 1943-1943
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...half of these less than six years of age. "They were going to California ... to live out their days in the languorous, winterless country. . . . The younger children would grow up in a softer, more abundant life-and their gentility would not be impaired." George Donner's wife, Tamsen, took along "apparatus for preserving botanical specimens, water colors and oil paints, books and school supplies . . . for use in the young ladies' seminary which she hoped to establish in California...
...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 Donner...
...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...