This journal contains the memoirs of Thankful Mayo (later Thankful Harris), including her transcriptions of several of her earlier journals and transcriptions of correspondence with her first husband, Elisha Frank Mayo, during his 1855 journey to Kansas Territory and his months of homesteading preliminary to her arrival. Frank Mayo describes his journey to the Territory, the Lawrence community upon his arrival in April 1855, and his subsequent challenges in building a home and establishing crops.

On the journal's initial pages are Thankful Mayo's transcriptions of the journal that she kept while traveling from Massachusetts to join him in the fall of 1855. Subsequent entries contain her recollections of their lives as homesteaders later that year and in early 1856--penned by her in reminiscences and transcriptions dating to the 1880s. With her transcriptions of Frank Mayo's letters is his hand-drawn map (at journal leaf 27) of their Douglas County claim and those of surrounding landowners. Included in Thankful Mayo's journal is her transcription of the 1889 journal that she kept on her steamship voyage from Massachusetts to California, as well as recollections and genealogical accounts of her Cobb and Kenrick ancestors of Massachusetts, together with related news clippings, hymns, songs, and poems.

Thankful Mayo's writing and memorabilia appear on 140 of the journal's 270 leaves. The first 55 are numbered. Dates of some of her journal entries are non-sequential, and the content is often retrospective, incorporating quotations from journals kept by her in earlier years. Journal entries on her birthdays are noted by her at ages 55, 60, and 63. On the journal's final leaf is her 1888 transcription of a poem--an ode to her years in Kansas Territory--written by her at Boston on February 21, 1860, shortly after the death of Frank Mayo. Items found laid in the journal and separated from it for safe housing are at RH MS P875.