Place and Time

Once John Balbach became settled in San Jose he married a woman named Minna Berner, also a native of Germany. According to my grandmother, Minna Berner was in fact a member of the infamous “Donner” party, who were trapped in the icy Sierra-Nevada Mountains for months on their way to California. According to numerous sources, the Donners and their entourage were forced to resort to cannibalism for survival. However, despite all my efforts I have not been able to locate Minna’s name in the official list of Donner party survivors.

According to C. F. McGlashan’s History of The Donner Party, the group of 87 travelers that is commonly referred to as the “Donner Party” was actually originally only a fraction of a much larger group of settlers. The smaller group of 87 broke away in Missouri and took a shortcut which, as we know, proved disastrous, while the larger group traveled the beaten path to California without great incident. Since Minna Berner is not mentioned in the list of 87, it might be surmised that my grandmother’s sources did not make the same distinction between the smaller and larger groups. Therefore, although Minna Berner was likely to have been a part of the original caravan, she was not one of the eighty-seven men and women whose tragedy in the high Sierras has become legend.

(Minna Berner)