Gideon Lee Knapp (d. 1875) married Augusta Murray Spring (1822-1885) in 1842 in New York City. In January 1849, Knapp sailed for California, while his wife remained behind with their children. Knapp returned east in October and made New York his home for the rest of his life. Gideon Lee Knapp and Augusta Murray Spring (1909) contains Gideon Knapp's shipboard letters from his voyage round the Horn to California, but most of the pages are filled with letters to and from his wife and children, and his wife's journal entries during his absence in 1849, and later by family letters and journal entries through 1874.