“I tried to be brave for the sake of my husband and child, and at three o’clock there came to us a dear little daughter, with no one near to help, comfort or relieve. It is useless to say how I got along. I simply endured without complaint. I was so sure that both the baby and I would die that all fear was gone.”

“We named the little girl Sierra Nevada, in honor of her birth place.”

In this description, Virginia Wilcox Ivins relates only one of many desperate circumstances pioneer women faced during emigration from Iowa to California.