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Lewis Humphreys is said to have been born on 12 January 1835 in Penybanc, near Bronwydd Arms, Carmarthenshire, and emigrated to the United States in 1855. After landing in Philadelphia he moved to Youngstown, Ohio, and from there to Kentucky. In the spring of 1859 he went to Wabaunsee County where he filed a land warrant. On 2 May 1859 he joined an expedition to Pikes Peak which, according to a newspaper report, was organised by a Welsh company, in search of gold, and he describes the trials and tribulations of this journey, in Welsh, at the beginning of one of the two diaries. Driving a team of oxen across the plains, he mentions some of the places the company passed through; they endured having to sleep in wet clothes because they got soaked by the rain; he describes a thunderstorm, and a particularly heavy storm of hailstones that they suffered; meeting other wagon trains rushing to be the first to stake their claim; the lack of water and timber in some places, cooking their food using dried Buffalo manure where there was no wood available, and hunting and killing Buffaloes.
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