Covered Wagon Women, Volume 1 by Kenneth L Holmes , edited & compiled by - September 28, 1995: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1840-1849

The women who traveled in covered wagons during the 1840's speak through these letters and diaries. Here are the voices of Tamsen Donner and young Virginia Reed, members of the ill-fated Donner party; Patty Sessions, the Mormon mid-wife who delivered five babies on the trail between Omaha and Sal Lake City; Rachel Fisher, who baried her husband and her little girl before reaching Oregon. Still others make themselves heard, starting out from different places and recording details along the way, from the mundane to the soul-shattering and spirit-lifting.