Notes for William EDDY

James Eaddy Family JAMES EADDY FAMILY

AND COLLATERAL FAMILIES OF SOUTH CAROLINA

CONTACT US FOR ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS
VERIFY THAT YOUR FAMILY HISTORY IS CORRECTLY RECORDED
See our Recommended Collateral Family Links
Personal Notes and Dates Removed for Living Individuals

Notes for William EDDY

WILLIAM EDDY -- Of the Donner Party? Additional research is needed to
establish or disprove the hypothesis presented in the following article.

WILLIAM H. EDDY OF THE DONNER PARTY
by
Vanik S. Eaddy, Ph. D.

William H. Eddy* was identified by George R. Stewart in his book, Ordeal
by Hunger, as a carriage maker from Illinois. According to Stewart,
William H. Eddy was about 28 years of age in 1846 when he joined a wagon
train from Springfield, Illinois bound for the Sacramento valley in
California. With him were his wife, Eleanor about 25 years of age, James
P. Eddy who was five, and Margaret who was one year old. This wagon
train was named "The Donner Party" after George Donner who was elected
their leader. The wagon train failed in its objective to cross the
Sierra Nevada Mountains before the Winter and made history by taking the
wrong route and becoming snowbound near Truckee Lake in California. The
lake was renamed "Donner Lake" in honor of the Donner Party. This
tragedy was caused by a series of bad decisions, poor advice, and
negative circumstances. They were starved into cannibalism before they
could be rescued the following Spring. Approximately half of them
starved or were killed by cold in a stormy winter which covered makeshift
cabins with over thirteen feet of snow and was probably a record cold for
this area known for its extremely fierce weather. The documentary of
this event has produced a human saga of the ultimate in suffering,
despair, and courage exceeding the extraordinary.

William Eddy was chronicled as a hero who demonstrated honesty in dealing
with others, unselfishness in the face of inhuman callousness, courage
beyond limit, and endurance greater than any man should ever be expected
to demonstrate. Stewart wrote, "He was... rough-and-ready, no man to be
trifled with in a quarrel and for the same reason a man to be counted on
in a pinch. He was enterprising, straightforward, and much liked in the
company. Among them all he seems to have been the best hunter and the
most skilled in the arts of the frontiersmen." William Eddy lost his
wife, children, and all of his personal property in this tragedy.
Margaret Eddy died in the snowbound camp at Donner Lake on February 5 or
6, 1847, Eleanor Eddy on February 7, 1847, and James P. Eddy during
March, 1847. This remarkable man survived to restore his fortune,
remarry, and produce another family in California where he died in 1859
while still a young man of 43-45 years of age. He was probably the first
Eaddy to reach and settle in California in the westward expansion of the
United States of America. The story of his life appears similar to
another man who should be well known to those who bear the name of
Eaddy. James Eddy, I. of South Carolina was probably one of the first
Eaddy's to settle in America. He was known as a man of distinguished
courage and also persevered against all obstacles to restore his family
and wealth which were lost because of a shipwreck in a hurricane on the
shores of Charleston, South Carolina during arrival in America.

Are we, with the name of Eaddy, related to William H. Eddy of the Donner
Party?

Perhaps! At this writing, the conclusion is a mere conjecture, but there
are enough clues to establish the following hypothesis:

William H. Eddy of the Donner Party was born June 29, 1814 near the
Lynches River in South Carolina, the first of 7 sons and 4 daughters of
Edward Drake Eaddy and Mary Bartell Eaddy.

The following statements support this hypothesis:

1. William Eddy, the eldest son of Edward Drake and Mary Bartell Eaddy,
was born on June 29, 1814 near the Lynches River in South Carolina. He
was never mentioned again in marriage, death, nor his father's will. He
simply dropped out of the family history. It may be advanced that he
either rebelled or left home at a young age to seek adventure and fortune
in the Great American West. If this be true, then at the age of 28-32 he
had become established as a carriage maker in Belleville, Illinois and
was ready to begin his move further westward. William H. Eddy named his
son James P. Eddy, perhaps in honor of James Eddy, I., II., or III., who
would have been his great grandfather, father, and uncle, respectively.
It is possible that the decision to establish the family name as Eaddy
was made after William had left home.**

3. Mary Bartell Eaddy, the Mother of William Eddy was the daughter of
Mary Stone (English) and Jacob Bartell (German). He was a Hessian
soldier in the Revolutionary War, was captured by the men of General
Francis Marion, and chose to remain in America after the war ended.
Could this relationship explain why Eddy established friendship with
wealthy Germans in Springfield, Illinois by the family names of Donner,
Keseberg, Wolfinger, Spitzer, and Reinholt? He was also well acquainted
with a wealthy and aristocratic polish family named Reed, short for
Reedowsky or Reednowsky. He could have possibly spoken the German
language and understood some of their customs which had been taught to
him by his mother and other German relatives in South Carolina.

4. William Eddy possessed a moral code with deep seated values of
honesty and fair play which closely paralleled those long cherished by
the Eaddy Family in South Carolina. This became evident in his
willingness to share whatever he possessed, in spite of occasional harsh
and inhumane treatment from his traveling companions. The toil of
climbing mountains, crossing deserts, and attacks by Indians depleted the
team oxen and horses to the point where Eddy was left with only one
oxen. Eddy's wagon was loaned to one family and the remnants of his team
were hitched to another wagon. So great were the needs to spare the
half-starved oxen and cows pulling the remaining wagons, they cached or
destroyed nearly all their personal goods and men and women had to walk.
Eddy left behind his rifle which had been broken, but carried some
bullets and powder in the event a rifle could be borrowed. No one would
take his children into a wagon, so he set out with five year old James on
his back and his wife carried baby Margaret across the desert. His
children were dying of thirst, but no one would allow them to drink, even
though some of the wagons had casks of water on board. It was necessary
for Eddy to threaten to kill one of the wagon owners if he interfered
with taking sufficient water for his children.

Using a borrowed rifle, Eddy killed small game, mountain sheep, deer,
ducks, geese, and a bear to share with the others after half was given to
the owner of the rifle. On one of these hunting outings, he observed the
tracks of a large grizzly bear. Ignoring caution of mountain men who
scarcely dared to attack a grown bear with a black powder rifle, he began
to track the beast and sighted him digging roots about ninety yards
distant. He concealed himself next to a large fir tree and placed his
last bullet in his mouth. The bear reared when struck by the first
bullet and charged the puff of smoke. With the bear charging furiously,
Eddy poured the powder and rammed home the next bullet as the bear came
around the tree. The bear could not turn quickly because of the injury
inflicted by the first shot. Eddy dodged around the tree, came upon the
bear from behind, and shot him in the shoulder. Having no more bullets,
the bear was dispatched by clubbing it over the head with the rifle until
dead. The bear was estimated to weigh over 800 pounds. Eddy's exploits
in this and other efforts to rescue the starving and freezing emigrants
is an exemplar study in courage of the highest order.

5. William Eddy was an experienced hunter and woodsman, although he was
not a "mountain man". In spite of using a borrowed rifle, frequently
being shot at by Indians, and braving unfamiliar mountain territory
covered by snow, he succeeded in providing wild game to supplement the
diet of his starving companions until the unusually harsh Winter drove
all the game to lower elevations. He demonstrated superior marksmanship,
knowledge of the outdoor life, and survival skills. Feats of endurance
to travel over 50 miles through the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the dead
of winter with little or no food are legendary. Most of this journey was
made with his shoes and clothes torn to pieces. He was in such an
exhausted condition that the last 17 to 30 miles were made by being
assisted or carried by friendly Indians. He left blood in his tracks
from frostbitten, frozen, and ruptured feet for the last six miles before
reaching the safety of the Ritter house at Johnson's Ranch in the
Sacramento Valley. This trail of blood in the snow was used by rescue
parties to retrace his journey. They brought help and food for one other
man and five women who had fallen exhausted by the wayside. The
"Snow-Shoers" had begun 33 days earlier as a party of 17 in their epic
struggle to attempt to walk out of the mountains for help. Eight men had
died, two returned to camp, and the surviving five women and two men were
brought to Johnson's Ranch starving, bleeding from frozen hands and feet,
and nearly naked.

6. William Eddy was not a very religious man, according to Stewart, but
during the snow shoe adventure he demonstrated a belief that God answers
prayers. This belief has consistently been a tenet of the faith shared
by the Eaddy Family in South Carolina. The snow-shoers had depleted
their supplies of food and were on the verge of starvation. Eddy and one
of the female survivors, Mary Graves, had left the stragglers behind and
were pressing onward. He suggested they pray for help, something that
neither was accustomed to doing regularly. Upon arising from the snow,
they came upon a place where a deer had rested the previous night and
followed the tracks until coming upon the animal. Eaddy attempted to
place his rifle sights on the deer, but was too weak to hold the heavy
weapon on target. He swung the rifle up over the back of the buck,
lowered the barrel in an arc until the sights were on target, and fired.
The wounded deer attempted to run away, but Eddy ran him down in the
snow, caught him by the antlers, and killed the animal with his pocket
knife. This provision spared the two men and five women and allowed them
to reach safety at Johnson's Ranch.

7. In just two and one half weeks, Eddy was out of bed and on his way
back into the mountains with an organized relief party attempting to
rescue his wife and children along with the other unfortunate settlers.
It must have been a bitter defeat upon arriving at the campsite to learn
that his baby daughter had died of starvation, followed by his wife, and
next his son who was neglected with no one left to care for him. Even
more devastating must have been the confession of one of the camp
survivors, named Lewis Keseberg, that he had eaten the body of James P.
Eddy. Considerable evidence existed from hearsay that he might have
killed the child first. Other survivors accused him of killing and
eating another child of the same age named Georgie Foster. Georgie was
the son of George Foster who survived in the snow-shoe escape with
William Eddy and was one of four relief members who valiantly returned to
rescue some of the trapped emigrants. These "two fathers" were heroes in
a lost cause, especially where it concerned their immediate family
members. They served their traveling companions with all they had, but
received a most inhumanly callous reward in return.

Eddy threatened Keseberg to kill him if they should ever reach the safety
of Sacramento, California. He was preparing to make good his threat and
would have done so had not James Reed and another friend convinced him to
abandon his plans. Ironically, when Reed had killed another man in self
defense, it was Keseberg who had offered his wagon tongue to hang Reed
and was instrumental in banishing him from the wagon train.

8. William Eddy demonstrated the will to live beyond ordinary measure,
endurance exceeding his peers, and unlimited courage. It is quite
possible that he first learned and practiced these survival skills in the
Lynches River Swamp in South Carolina under the mentorship of some hardy
pioneer stock who were named Eddy or Eaddy. Whether or not this
assumption is true, the story of the Donner Party is worth reading
because of its study of human behavior under the most demanding and
extreme circumstances.

9. In a book, "Eddy Family in America" a legend indicated that William
Eddy came from a family of seven brothers. Edward Drake Eaddy (Eddy) of
South Carolina was the father of seven boys and four girls. The boys, in
order were: William, Taylor, Martin, Robert James, Sr., Gregory, Clark,
and Oliver.

* The middle initial H. was used in association with William Eddy once
in the Stewart text. A local newspaper in Petaluma, California reported
his death with the following notice in December, 1859. "Died: In this
city, 24th ult. HENRY EDDY, late of Mass., a pioneer of 1846, and well
known as the rescuer of the 'Donner Party', aged 43. (San Francisco, St.
Louis, and Mass. papers please copy.)" (Elsewhere in that article, the
location of his birth was stated as "probably" MA or RI.)

William Eddy of South Carolina appears not to have been given a middle
name or perhaps the family Bible records might have omitted this detail.
He would have had a prominent uncle named Henry for whom the name could
have been given.

** This variant spelling of the family name was used to identify the
birth and marriages of James Eddy, I., James Eddy, II., and Edward Drake
Eddy along with his brothers and sisters, as shown in a Bible owned by
Dewey P. Eaddy, Indiantown Community, Williamsburg County, South
Carolina. The use of the Eaddy variant was begun and may have been
decreed by James Eddy, II. It was completed, with some exceptions, with
the generation of his sons who were named Henry Eaddy, Edward Drake
Eaddy, James Eaddy, III., and John Eaddy. The change was evidenced in
the later records of birth, marriage, death, and wills, etc. This
appears to indicate that the family must have generally agreed upon this
form of the name about the time of the death of James Eddy, II. in 1819
and Edward Drake Eddy in 1848; because, both were christened with the
family name of Eddy and their wills were produced with the Eaddy
spelling. The records reveal other variant spelling either in error or
where the descendants may have preferred another form.

Sources:

Morris, Melda. (1991). Family Bible Records. Hemingway, SC: Three Rivers
Historical Society.

Stewart, George R. (1960). Ordeal by Hunger: The story of the Donner
party (2nd. ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

The Educational Television Network. (1992). "The American Experience" The
Donner Party.

| HOME | EMAIL | SURNAMES |
footer

CONTACT US FOR ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS
VERIFY THAT YOUR FAMILY HISTORY IS CORRECTLY RECORDED
This page is dedicated to the men and women who braved great danger to establish and defend the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. To all of them we are deeply indebted and especially those who died for this cause.