On April 14, 1852, Lloyd and Lodisa Frizzell and their four sons, with “five yoke of cattle one pony & sidesaddle” in tow, departed their home, on the Little Wabash River in southeastern Illinois, for California. Seventy-two days into their voyage, Lodisa would write in her journal (later titled Across the Plains to California in 1852): That this journey is tiresome, no one will doubt, that it is perilous, the deaths of many testify, and the heart has a thousand missgivings, & the mind is tortured with anxiety, & often as I passed the fresh made graves, I have glanced...