From the Handwritten Diary of Kate Dunlap, Pioneer.

May 15, 1864

The first emigrants saw hard times on account of bad roads, no grass and the great scarsity of hay. In the afternoon we drove on to Lewis , hoping to get hay but could not get any except we would put up bag and baggage at a hotel. We stopped at the Henderson House . I was relieved from cooking, it being the first time I had eaten at a table for two weeks. Our "Tom" is still worse of, Mr. Dunlap having had him thoroughly examined, it is blieved that he will not be fit for use for a long time. He had improv ed evry day since we started He is a perfect picture. One of Mr Helm 's horses is also lame.

Catherine "Kate" Cruikshank was born on February 14, 1837, in Lee County, Iowa. Her father, Alexander, was a native of Norway, while her mother, Keziah (Perkins) Cruikshank, came from Kentucky. The family included seven children. From a biography of James Cruikshank, Kate's older brother, we know that the Cruikshank children had access to several years of schooling and were raised as Methodists. In 1864, one month before her twenty-seventh birthday, Kate married Samuel Dunlap, an Ohio native. He was thirty-eight and had worked as a teacher at the Indiana Deaf and Dumb Asylum. Three months after their marriage the couple left Iowa for Bannack City, Montana Territory.