This journal was written by Mary Madgalene (Bower) Bellport, who was born in 1849 in Germany. After her family moved to Ohio, Mary met and married Augustine Bellport in 1877, the same year that she began this journal. Augustine had changed his last name, from Brulport to Bellport, when he moved to Kansas in 1865. Most of the entries in the journal deal with her travels through Kansas and Colorado. She also relates valuable information about frontier life in Kansas, including the near-fatal injury suffered by her brother-in-law, Steve, harsh summer heat, and a prairie fire that threatened to destroy their homestead.