Covered Wagon Women, Volume 9: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1864-1868

In their simplicity is their poignancy. On August 7, 1865, Mary Louisa Black noted in her journal that they were “nooning on a nice stream in a valey in the mountains.” A day later she observed that one of the men in the overland expedition had “buried an infant here yesterday—still born.” One can only imagine her emotional turmoil—she had buried her own daughter three months earlier, just as she and her husband set out for Oregon.
 
While each diarist and letter-writer had her personal…