Patricia Heiskell Hillman is a fourth-generation Californian and native Tularean. Her paternal great-grandmother, Leanna Charity Donner App, was a daughter of George Donner, Captain of the ill-fated Donner Party. Along with her four sisters, Leanna survived the tragic winter of 1846-47 in the Sierras. Leanna married John App at the age of seventeen in 1852 and they homesteaded land in Jamestown, California. Of this union came four children, the youngest of whom was Lucy Eva App. In 1887, Lucy married grain merchant Jefferson Davis Heiskell in Modesto. Their middle child John Tyler, was born in Tulare in 1890 and married Margaret Thompson in 1923. Their two daughters, Eleanor and Patricia, were both born in Tulare. In 1953, Patricia married another Tulare Native, Dale Hillman. Dale passed away in 2012. She has four grown children, ten grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.