Harriet Frances Murphy Pike Nye (1828-1870) was one of the earliest European-American settlers in Marysville and an older sister of Mary Murphy Covillaud, for whom Marysville was named.

Harriet was born in South Carolina to Jeremiah Burns Murphy and Levinah W. Jackson Murphy. Sarah was born in South Carolina, the oldest child of Jeremiah Burns Murphy and Levinah W. Jackson Murphy. When Harriet was about five years old, the Murphys moved to Weakley County, Tennessee. In 1836, her parents converted to the Mormon church. After Jeremiah died, Levinah took the children to the Mormon capital at Nauvoo, Illinois, for about two years, but returned with them to Tennessee in late 1842 on a steamship. On the way, the ship became icebound, which gave the girls and the crew ample time to get acquainted. Harriet, 14, and her oldest sister Sarah, 16, were married to two of the crew mates in a double wedding on board the ship. Harriet's husband was William M. Pike, the illegitimate son of a married woman and a single man who married a different woman soon thereafter. William Pike was about 28 years old when he married Harriet. Sarah's husband was William McFadden Foster, age 27.

Harriet and her new husband lived for about a year in St. Louis, Missouri, then moved in with Harriet's widowed mother in Tennessee until the spring of 1846. Harriet's husband William helped clear a 200-acre tract of land that the Murphy family owned, and evidently greatly impressed Harriet's brothers with his mechanical skills. Harriet's younger brother William, who was not quite seven years old when Harriet married, later remembered William Pike as having been "an extraordinary man, a real genius, a full fledged mechanic" and a "powerful ally" to Harriet's mother.

They had two daughters, 2-year-old Naomi Levina Pike and nine-month-old-old Catherine Pike, when they departed for California as part of the Donner Party, along with all six of Harriet's siblings and her mother. On October 28, 1846, it began snowing, and the party realized they were likely to be trapped in the mountains all winter without adequate food. Harriet's husband, William M. Pike, was killed in a shooting accident along the Truckee River on October 30: a notoriously unreliable, old-fashioned pepper-box pistol accidentally fired at him while he and his brother-in-law William McFadden Foster attempted to pass it between them. Pike was dead within 20 minutes.

Soon thereafter, the party began to run out of food. Harriet's breast milk dried up due to her starvation, so she had to feed tiny Catherine only bits of flour mixed with melted snow. On December 16, 1846, Harriet set out on snowshoes with her sister Sarah, Sarah's husband William Foster, their brothers Lemuel and William (aged 13 and 10, respectively), and twelve other survivors, looking for help. She left her daughters Naomi and Catherine with her mother and some of her younger siblings. Harriet's brother William had no snowshoes. He and an adult man who also had no snowshoes turned back to Donner Lake the next day, unable to keep up with the other members of the snowshoe party. Her brother Lemuel, who was already feeble from starvation when the snowshoe party departed, died of starvation only a week or two later, on or about December 27, 1846.

Harriet's 17-year-old brother Landrum was the oldest male in the Murphy family who remained behind after the Forlorn Hope snowshoe party departed. Because of this, he took over most of the wood-chopping and snow-shoveling duties at that point. He died of starvation January 31, 1847. The First Relief rescue team arrived in February and rescued Harriet's daughter Naomi, but Catherine died of starvation the day after the team arrived. Harriet's mother was too weak to travel, and died of starvation in March 1847.

That May, Harriet wrote to her relatives in Tennessee, "theare is know one that knows how to simpathise with mee left a widow in a strange cuntry with one por orpant childe to take care of I have not the hart nor minde to word all my suffering since I saw you..." A month later, she married Michael C. Nye, who had come to California with the Bidwell-Bartleson Party of 1841 and was now working as the majordomo on Theodor Cordua's ranch. She bore him at least one child, Harry, but Harry died in 1854 at one year old. Naomi was the only one of Harriet's children who lived to adulthood. The Nyes lived in Marysville until Naomi married and moved to Oregon; they then moved to Oregon also, in the 1860s. Harriet died in 1870 and was buried in the Marysville City Cemetery.

Links

New Light on the Donner Party: The Murphy Family by Kristin Johnson History of Yuba County, California (Chapter 6) by Thompson & West, 1879 Donner Party Donner Party timeline