Walter Herron (abt. 1819 - 1853)

Born about 1819 in Norfolk, Virginia,United States

Died 1853 at about age 34 in Mexico

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Walter Herron was involved in the westward expansion of the USA. Westward Ho! Join: Trails and Wagon Trains Project Discuss: wagon_trains_and_trails

Walter Herron was one of 81 pioneers in the Donner Party wagon train to California that became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in 1846.

Biography

Walter Herron was a member of the Donner Party. See Donner Party.

Walter Herron was part of the infamous Donner Party in 1846. They were trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains by snow for 111 days; he was the teamster for the Reed Family.

Walter Herron left with James F. Reed when Reed was banished for murder in October 1846. James Reed attempted to raise a relief party to take supplies to the Donner Party after arriving at Sutter’s Fort, the Mexican War had broken out and most of the able-bodied men had enlisted. Walter Herron joined Company B of the California Battalion and had no further contact with any of the Donner Party.

Sources

• Donner Party Teamsters
• Dixon, Kelly, Shannon Novak, Gwen Robbins, Julie Schablitsky, Richard Scott , and Guy Tasa (2010), "Men, Women, and Children are Starving: Archaeology of the Donner Family Camp". American Antiquity 75(3):627-656
• McGlashan, Charles (1879). History of the Donner Party: A Tragedy of the Sierra Nevada: 11th edition (1918), A Carlisle & Company, San Francisco
• McNeese, Tim (2009). The Donner Party: A Doomed Journey, Chelsea House Publications. ISBN 978-1-60413-025-6
• Rarick, Ethan (2008). Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-530502-7
• Rehart, Catherine Morison (2000), The Valley's Legends & Legacies III, Word Dancer Press, ISBN 978-1-884995-18-7
• Stewart, George R. (1936). Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party: supplemented edition (1988), Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-61159-8
• Unruh, John (1993). The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–60, University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06360-0