Diary of Lucy Henderson Deady (ca.1850).

Three days after my little sister Lettie drank the laudanum [that mother had brought along as medicine] and died, we stopped for a few hours, and my sister Olivia was born . . . We could not tarry a day . . . we had to press on . . . There was no road . . . It was a very rough ride for my mother and her new born babe.

After a great hardship . . . we finally made our way through . . . to Oregon . . . We had been eight months on the road instead of five, we were out of food, and our cattle were nearly worn out . . . There were five of us children . . . We lived on boiled wheat and boiled peas that winter.