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William Pike was one of 81 pioneers in the Donner Party wagon train to California that became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in 1846.
William Montgomery Pike was born in 1814 in Dearborn County, Indiana. He was the illegitimate son of James Brown Pike and Mrs. Wolfries; the grandson of Zebulon Pike, a Revolutionary War officer; and the nephew of explorer Zebulon Montgomery Pike, for whom Colorado's Pike's Peak is named.
William was working on a river boat that the Murphy family was traveling on when it was trapped by ice. He and his buddy, William Foster fell in love with two Murphy sisters and were married by the time the ice melted.
William married Harriet F. Murphy on December 29, 1842 in Clark County, Missouri. They had the following children:
William and Harriet set out with her family West to California. They were part of the ill-fated Donner Party which, having taken the Hastings Cut-Off ended up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in a snow storm, trapped. William died October 1846 in Truckee River, Nevada Territory in an unfortunate gun accident before he experienced the horrors that the rest of the party were to face. He was accidentally killed by his best friend, William Foster.
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Categories: Donner Memorial State Park, Truckee, California | Donner Party | Accidental Gun Deaths | Nevada, Pike Name Study | Indiana, Pike Name Study