Keturah Belknap

Keturah Belknap used an ingenious method of keeping her diary. Beginning with her marriage on October 3, 1839, in Allen County, Ohio, she kept what she called "memorandum" in which she periodically recorded what had happened to her since her last written entry. Her "memorandum" are filled with vivid descriptions that give her story a lively, daily immediacy. In 1847, she and her husband, George, decided to follow others of the Belknap family out to Oregon. They would leave in the spring of 1848 and George's parents, Jesse and Jane Belknap, were to go with them.

Belknap threw herself into the preparations for the trip. For months she worked day and night spinning thread, weaving cloth on a loom, and then hand sewing the thick linen wagon covers and clothing for the trip. She is a marvel of planning and...