Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder (February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957) was an American writer, teacher, and journalist. She is best known as the author of the children's book series Little House on the Prairie, published between 1932 and 1943, which was based on her childhood in a settler and pioneer family.
Birth and ancestry
Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born to Charles Phillip and Caroline Lake (née Quiner) Ingalls on February 7, 1867. At the time of her birth, the family lived north of the village of Pepin, Wisconsin, in the Big Woods region of Wisconsin. Ingalls' home in Pepin became the setting for her first book, Little House in the Big Woods (1932). She was the second of five children, following her older sister, Mary Amelia."What Really Caused Mary Ingalls to Go Blind?" . February 4, 2013. American Academy of Pediatrics. Press release announcing Allexan, et al.: • Three more children would follow: Caroline Celestia (Carrie); Charles Frederick, who died in infancy; and Grace Pearl. Ingalls's birth site is commemorated by a replica log cabin at the Little House Wayside in Pepin.
Ingalls was a descendant of the Delano family, the ancestral family of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One paternal ancestor, Edmund Ingalls, from Skirbeck, Lincolnshire, England, emigrated to America, settling in Lynn, Massachusetts. In addition, Laura was the 7th great-granddaughter of the Mayflower passenger Richard Warren, and a third cousin once removed of the U.S. President and Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant.Famous Kin: https://famouskin.com/famous-kin-chart.php?name=9317+richard+warren&kin=12145+laura+ingalls+wilder The Ingalls family lived near the Quiner family; three of the Ingalls married Quiners.
Early life When she was two years old, Laura moved with her family from Wisconsin (in 1869). After stopping in Rothville, Missouri, they settled in the Indian country of Kansas, near modern-day Independence, Kansas. Her younger sister, Carrie, was born in Independence in August 1870, not long before they moved again. According to Wilder, her father Charles Ingalls had been told that the location would be open to white settlers, but when they arrived this was not the case. The Ingalls family had no legal right to occupy their homestead because it was on the Osage Indian reservation. They had just begun to farm when they heard rumors that settlers would be evicted, so they left in the spring of 1871. Despite the fact that Little House on the Prairie and Pioneer Girl portrayed their departure as being prompted by rumors of eviction, she also noted that her parents needed to recover their Wisconsin land because the buyer had not paid the mortgage.
The Ingalls family went back to Wisconsin, where they lived for the next three years. Those experiences formed the basis for Wilder's first two novels, Little House in the Big Woods (1932) and the beginning of Little House on the Prairie (1935).
In the book On the Banks of Plum Creek (published in 1939), the third volume of her fictionalized history which takes place around 1874, the Ingalls family moves from Kansas to an area near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, settling in a dugout on the banks of Plum Creek. They moved there from Wisconsin when Ingalls was about seven years old, after briefly living with the family of her uncle, Peter Ingalls, first in Wisconsin and then on rented land near Lake City, Minnesota. In Walnut Grove, the family first lived in a dugout sod house on a preemption claim; after wintering in it, they moved into a new house built on the same land. Two summers of ruined crops led them to move to Iowa. On the way, they stayed again with Charles Ingalls' brother, Peter Ingalls, this time on his farm near South Troy, Minnesota. Her brother, Charles Frederick Ingalls ("Freddie"), was born there on November 1, 1875, dying nine months later in August 1876. In Burr Oak, Iowa, the family helped run a hotel. The youngest of the Ingalls children, Grace, was born there on May 23, 1877. The family moved from Burr Oak back to Walnut Grove, where Charles Ingalls served as the town butcher and justice of the peace. He accepted a railroad job in the spring of 1879, which took him to eastern Dakota Territory, where they joined him that fall. In writing On the Banks of Plum Creek, Wilder omitted the period between 1876 and 1877 when they lived near Burr Oak, skipping directly to the Dakota Territory, featured in By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939). Over the winter of 1879–1880, Charles Ingalls filed for a formal homestead in De Smet, South Dakota. The family spent that mild winter in the surveyor's house. However, the following winter, known as the Hard Winter of 1880–81, was one of the most severe on record in the Dakotas, an ordeal described by Wilder in her novel The Long Winter (1940). Once the family was settled in De Smet, Laura attended school, worked several part-time jobs, and made friends. Among them was bachelor homesteader Almanzo Wilder. This time in her life is documented in the books Little Town on the Prairie (1941) and These Happy Golden Years (1943). Charles and Caroline Ingalls, along with Mary Ingalls, remained in De Smet for the rest of their lives.
Young teacher On December 10, 1882, two months before her 16th birthday, Ingalls accepted her first teaching position. She taught three terms in one-room schools when she was not attending school in De Smet. Her original "Third Grade" teaching certificate can be seen on page 25 of William Anderson's book Laura's Album (1998). Between 1883 and 1885, she taught three terms of school, worked for the local dressmaker, and attended high school (without graduating).
Early marriage years
Ingalls' teaching career and studies ended when she married Almanzo Wilder on August 25, 1885, in De Smet, South Dakota. From the beginning of their relationship, the pair had nicknames for each other: she called him "Manly" and he called her "Bess", from her middle name Elizabeth, to avoid confusion with his sister, also named Laura. Almanzo had achieved a degree of prosperity on his homestead claim; the newly married couple started their life together in a new home, north of De Smet.
On December 5, 1886, Wilder gave birth to her daughter, Rose. In 1889, she gave birth to a son who died after 12 days. He had not been named and was buried in De Smet.
Their first few years of marriage were difficult. Complications from a life-threatening bout of diphtheria in 1888 left Almanzo partially paralyzed. He needed a cane for the remainder of his life. After their newborn son's death, their home and their barn, along with its hay and grain, were destroyed by a mysterious fire.Miller 1998, p. 80. It was discovered that the fire was accidentally set by Rose.Miller 1998, p. 84. Several years of severe drought left them in debt, physically ill, and unable to earn a living from their 320 acres (129.5 hectares) of prairie land. These trials were documented in Wilder's book The First Four Years. Around 1890, they left De Smet and spent about a year resting at the home of Almanzo's parents on their Spring Valley, Minnesota farm before moving briefly to Westville, Florida, in search of a climate to improve Almanzo's health. They found the weather disagreeable, felt out of place among the locals, and returned to De Smet in 1892. There they purchased a small home.
In November of 1893, Laura Ingalls Wilder petitioned to join the local Order of the Eastern Star Chapter, Bethlehem #13.
Move to Mansfield, Missouri
In 1894, the Wilders moved to Mansfield, Missouri, and used their savings to make the down payment on an undeveloped parcel of land just outside town. They named the place Rocky Ridge Farm and moved into a ramshackle log cabin. At first, they earned income only from wagon loads of firewood they would sell in town for 50 cents. Financial security came slowly. Apple trees they planted did not bear fruit for seven years. Almanzo's parents visited around that time and gave them the deed to the house they had been renting in Mansfield, which was the economic boost Wilder's family needed. They then added to the property outside town, and eventually accrued nearly 200 acres (80.9 hectares). Around 1910, they sold the house in town, moved back to the farm, and completed the farmhouse with the proceeds. What began as about 40 acres (16.2 hectares) of thickly wooded, stone-covered hillside with a windowless log cabin became in 20 years a relatively prosperous poultry, dairy, and fruit farm, and a 10-room farmhouse.
The Wilders had learned from cultivating wheat as their sole crop in De Smet. They diversified Rocky Ridge Farm with poultry, a dairy farm, and a large apple orchard. Wilder became active in various clubs and was an advocate for several regional farm associations. In 1897, she joined Mansfield Chapter #76, Order of the Eastern Star. In 1902, she served as the Worthy Matron of the chapter.
She was recognized as an authority in poultry farming and rural living, which led to invitations to speak to groups around the region.
Writing career An invitation to submit an article to the Missouri Ruralist in 1911 led to Wilder's permanent position as a columnist and editor with that publication, which she held until the mid-1920s. She also took a paid position with the local Farm Loan Association, dispensing small loans to local farmers.
Wilder's column in the Ruralist, "As a Farm Woman Thinks", introduced her to a loyal audience of rural Ozarkians, who enjoyed her regular columns. Her topics ranged from home and family, including her 1915 trip to San Francisco, California to visit her now-married daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, and see the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition; to World War I and other world events; to Lane's fascinating world travels; and to her own thoughts on the increasing options offered to women during this era. While the couple were never wealthy until the "Little House" books began to achieve popularity, the farming operation, Wilder's income from writing and the Farm Loan Association provided them with a stable living.
"[By] 1924", according to the Professor John E. Miller, "[a]fter more than a decade of writing for farm papers, Wilder had become a disciplined writer, able to produce thoughtful, readable prose for a general audience."
Around this time her daughter, Lane, began encouraging Wilder to improve her writing skills with a view toward greater success as a writer than Lane had already achieved.Miller 1998, p. 162. The Wilders, according to Miller, had come to "[depend] on annual income subsidies from their increasingly famous and successful daughter." They both had concluded that the solution for improving their retirement income was for Wilder to become a successful writer herself. As a start, Lane helped Wilder publish two articles describing the interior of the farmhouse, in Country Gentleman magazine.Miller 1998, p. 161. However, the "project never proceeded very far."Miller 2008, p. 24.
In 1928, Lane hired out the construction of an English-style stone cottage for her parents on property adjacent to the farmhouse they had personally built and still inhabited. She remodeled and took it over.Miller 1998, p. 177.
The Stock Market Crash of 1929 wiped the Wilders out; Lane's investments were devastated as well. They still owned the 200-acre (81-hectare) farm, but they had invested most of their savings with Lane's broker.
In 1930, Wilder requested Lane's opinion about an autobiographical manuscript she had written about her pioneering childhood. The Great Depression, coupled with the deaths of Wilder's mother in 1924 and her older sister in 1928, seem to have prompted her to preserve her memories in a life story called Pioneer Girl. She also hoped that her writing would generate some additional income.