Anyone who has studied San Jose history knows that we hide the warts in our past — the lynching in St. James Park in 1933, the tar-and-feathering of a suspected German sympathizer in World War I, the anti-Asian racism of our leaders a century ago.

On the outside wall of a new six-story apartment building at Fourth and St. John streets, just a block north of City Hall, we are finally acknowledging one of those warts — gently, tentatively, but openly.

Most Californians with a sense of the past know about the Donner Party, the disastrous 1846 immigrant expedition that ended in the snow near Truckee. Of the 87 members of the party, only 48 lived through the winter, a number having eaten the dead to survive.

A cluster of those survivors wound up in San Jose. Among them were Eliza Poor Donner, Mary Donner, James and Margaret Reed, the Reed children and a man named William McCutchen. (James Reed was separated from the party after he killed another pioneer in what was seen as self-defense.)

Most of this is well known. The expedition’s essential mistake was to take an untested cutoff that lengthened the journey. But how did the city come to acknowledge the Donner expedition publicly on the side of an apartment building? It’s a complicated story.

Eliza Poor Donner, who survived the expedition as a child, was raised in Sacramento with another family after her parents died in the crossing. As a young woman, she married an ambitious man named Sherman Otis Houghton, who became a civic leader in San Jose.

A big house

With eight children, one of whom died in infancy, Eliza and Sherman needed a large house. So they commissioned local architect, John T. Burkett, to build a mansion near Third and Julian streets. It had porches, rounded balconies and bay windows.

After the Houghton family left San Jose, the mansion was moved twice — not as strange then as it is now –finally ending up at the corner of Fourth and St. John streets as a boardinghouse called “the Majestic, a family hotel.” Its fortunes declined.

Although the Donner-Houghton home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, it was heavily damaged in a 2007 fire. And it was ultimately torn down to make way for the 101-unit Donner Lofts, an affordable housing project now nearing completion.

As part of a historic preservation permit from the city, the developers put up a plaque that described the history of the Donner-Houghton property. It includes a large photo of the Houghton family and this description about the Donner Party:

“Trapped and with dwindling provisions, only 48 pioneers survived the harsh winter through various survival techniques, including boiling their own shoe leather for food and some cannibalism, though that aspect of survival was greatly exaggerated by the press.”

Hullabaloo

I don’t quibble with the word “exaggerated.” The press greeted the story with great hullabaloo. But “some” cannibalism is, well, cannibalism. The rescuers of the Donner Party said they discovered the mutilated remains of human bodies scattered around the campsite.

The Reed family always insisted that it did not partake of human flesh. What’s important here, however, isn’t the precise details of the Donner tragedy. It’s that the city, through its historic permit process, is ready to face history directly. It might be a precedent that will allow us to acknowledge the uglier story of the lynching of two white men in St. James Park in 1933.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” wrote George Santayana in 1905. Here’s praise for the history-minded San Joseans willing to take him at his word.

Contact Scott Herhold at 408-275-0917 or sherhold@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/scottherhold.