I recently learned a little bit of California’s Pioneer history was to be found in an old house that I had driven by many times in the Twin Lakes area of Santa Cruz.

After sketching some small shacks I wanted to sketch this large historic house with its iconic cupola.

This is a historic building for a couple of reasons, it was one of the first houses up on the hill overlooking Schwan Lake and the Pacific Ocean. But it also was historic because of someone who lived and died here.

The resident I was most interested in was Martha Jane Reed Lewis. If her name does not ring a bell, her place in California history is well known. She is known to world as Patty Reed and her doll is an iconic piece of California’s pioneer history.

Her family, the Reeds, might be better known if her father, James Reed, had not been banished from the Pioneer party for killing a teamster. Before his banishment, the group elected a new leader and the group is now known to history as the Donner Party, named after its leader George Donner.

The group set off from Springfield, Illinois on April 16, 1846 and Patty was eight at the time. She travelled with seven members of her family in a very extravagant two story wagon. Their destination was the verdant valleys of California.

Things went to plan until they took what they thought would be a short cut that would save them time and miles, the Hastings Cutoff. Patty’s father advocated taking the shortcut which proved to be the Donner Party’s downfall. The Reed’s palatial two story wagon was abandoned on the Great Salt Lake Desert along with many of the family’s possessions.

They wasted precious time on the shortcut and arrived at the shores of Truckee Lake and it began to snow.

It snowed so much that they were not able to breech the pass and descend down the western side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains towards Sutter’s Fort. They turned back and were forced to make a winter camp on the eastern shore of the lake.

Over the hallowing winter of 1846-47, many members of the Donner Party perished. Some providing sustenance so others could survive. All of the members of the Reed family survived the ordeal.

There were three relief parties that set out from the Sacramento Valley to rescue the members of the party that had survived. On March 1, the second relief party took Patty Reed out of the snowy Hell of Truckee Lake (now named Donner Lake). Her father was with the relief party and saw his daughter for the first time in five months.

Of the 87 people that set out for California, only 48 survived. The Reed and Breen families were the only family not to have lost any members.

While the Reed family had lost all of their possessions along the way, young Patty had concealed a small doll, sewn up in the hem of her dress.

The Reeds settled in San Jose and Patty eventually married James Frazier and moved to Santa Cruz.

The house on the hill was owned by their son Frank Lewis and Patty Reed spent the remaining years of her life on the hill and she died in the cupola house.

In the house was Patty Reed’s doll which was later donated to Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento, where it remains on display today.