The presence of black emigrants who traveled west before the Civil War was an oddity occasionally noted in emigrants’ diaries. Anna Maria Goodell, for example, commented in 1854, “There is a darkey in the company.” She added that he encountered the same troubles all the other emigrants experienced when, “He got his cattle in a mud hole and had a fine time getting them out.” Another diarist in the train wrote later that, “The darkies had a dance.”
