The Diary of Patrick Breen

In November 1846, Irish immigrant Patrick Breen, his wife Margaret, and their seven children were snowed in at Truckee Lake in the Sierra Nevada — part of the emigrant company history remembers as the Donner Party. Breen kept a diary: one of the only journals written inside the camps that winter. This is it, in his own words, the weather, the hunger, and the things he only heard about, set down day by day in the same flat hand. Read from the diary of Patrick Breen, November 20, 1846 – March 1, 1847. Primary Sources: ordinary documents, read with reverence. Context that frames without inflating. More from Recycled Respawn: https://recycledrespawn.com Games, culture, and the spaces between. Sources: — Diary of Patrick Breen, read from the manuscript-faithful edition of F. J. Teggart (1910). Diary page images: Patrick Breen Diary, BANC MSS C-E 176, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. — Portraits and views: C. F. McGlashan, History of the Donner Party (1902), via the Internet Archive. — Maps and photographs: Library of Congress. Music: "it Maintains, Eyes Change" by Puddle of Infinity — YouTube Audio Library