The family encountered hard times in Minnesota. Their crops were wiped out two years in a row by plagues of locusts that swarmed over the land and ate nearly every plant in sight.
To make ends meet, the family moved to Burr Oak, Iowa, and ran a hotel before moving back to Walnut Grove. In order to make flour, they had to take turns grinding wheat in a coffee grinder. They also wound together tufts of hay very tightly, so they could burn it for heat. Charles had to string a clothesline between the house and the barn so he would not get lost in the snow. Caroline was a former school teacher, and she made sure there was always something around the house for the girls to read, especially the Bible.
Laura attended high school in DeSmet and stood out from her classmates as the best scholar. Although she never graduated from high school—both because DeSmet did not have a full twelve-year education program and because she committed herself to fulltime teaching—Laura came away from school with a lifelong love of learning.
In Laura got her first teaching job in a community near DeSmet. Almanzo Wilder gave her rides in a buggy to and from the school every week, and the two struck up a friendship. Their relationship soon turned romantic and they were married on August 25, Aside from the birth of their daughter, Rose, in , the young couple was plagued by a series of disasters in their first four years of marriage.
First, hail destroyed their wheat crop and then their barn burned, along with the grain and hay they stored in it. Next, both Laura and Almanzo contracted diphtheria, which left Almanzo partially paralyzed. He walked with a cane and struggled with poor health for the rest of his life. Then they lost two wheat crops to drought, which was followed by the death of their two-week-old son. Two weeks later, their house burned, along with most of their possessions. After short stints living in Minnesota and Florida, Laura and Almanzo moved back to DeSmet, where Laura worked as a dressmaker and Almanzo was a carpenter.
They experienced more success there than in South Dakota, and lived in Missouri for the rest of their lives. Both Laura and Almanzo were famous in the area for their farming skills, and it was through her agricultural career that Laura got a start in writing.
We never forgot them, and I have always thought that they were just too good to be altogether lost. Narrator: And when Wilder preserved her father's stories, she made him a mythic figure -- always looking West.
Fraser: Charles Ingalls came from a family of not great means and some insecurity himself. Narrator: Mottos and slogans of the day said, 'Go West, young man, and grow up with the country,' and the Ingalls family did just that, heading out to Illinois. They can't really put together enough of a stake to last, and so that's Charles' youth. Harper: 'Mother was descended from an old Scotch family and inherited the Scotch thriftiness which helped with the livelihood.
Although born and raised on the frontier, she was an educated and cultured woman. She was very quiet and gentle, but proud and particular in all manners of good breeding.
Wilder: Pa holds his fiddle, and he nearly always sat in his chair when he played and kept time to the music by patting his foot on the floor. Harper: 'The spirit of the frontier was one of humor and cheerfulness no matter what happened, whether the joke was on oneself or on the other fellow.
Strangers coming West possessed or acquired that spirit if they survived as Westerners. Dakota war of , happened five years before Laura was born. Beane: The Dakota War took place because of a number of broken treaties, broken promises between this government and Dakota people.
The people who did fight in the war were fighting to protect the rights of our families to remain in our homeland and to remain Dakota. And the media coverage that happened during that era was media coverage that wastrying to incite fear in people. Fraser: The Ingalls would've known all about that because they were living just across the Mississippi in Wisconsin. So all the Wisconsinites thought that they were next, you know, that they were going to be attacked.
And, you know, Wilder, years later, I think she was rem-- remembering the fear that her mother must have expressed and the racism that her mother clearly felt. In exchange for a small filing fee, men and women, freed slaves and immigrants, were given the chance to own and farm acre plots. American Indians continue to be forced off tribal lands in the rush to settle the Great Plains. Let's get the churches built and the schools built and the railroad built and connect the whole country from coast to coast.
Narrator: Charles and Caroline settle into a log cabin near Pepin, Wisconsin, where they are surrounded by family and neighbors. Young woman:'Once upon a time, 60 years ago, a little girl lived in the big woods of Wisconsin in a little gray house made of logs.
There were no people. There were only trees and the wild animalswho had their homes among them. It's that same sort of connection to 'how I built my cabin, how I lived, and what I saw. Harper: 'Pa stopped the horses and the wagon they were hauling away out onthe prairie in Indian territory. Fraser: They settle on land that it's pretty clear he knew was not available for white settlement at that time.
The logs that Charles Ingalls used to build the little house on the prairie did not belong to him. So this is how children read it.
They read these books with a complete sense of storytelling and faith in these books. Narrator: 'Little House on the Prairie,' Wilder's third novel, would describe her family's time in what she called 'Indian country.
Fraser: She also portrays the child, Laura, as having a fear but also a deep fascination with what she describes as these, you know, wild people who were completely different. That kind of encapsulates the very strange attitude that whites had at that time towards these people as if they were, first of all, not people, that they were something that could be had for the taking.
That is one of the things that makes that novel, I think, one of the most important documents about the history of that time. The family returns to Wisconsin, and the next three years of Laura's life are spent in the cabin near Pepin. Harper: 'When the work was done, Ma would cut out paper dolls for us and let us cook on the stove for our play house dinners. She said I was too little, but sitting by and watching, I caught the trick first.
Fraser: Wisconsin seems to have been probably the most stability that they might have ever experienced if they had just stayed. So they might have saved themselves quite a lot of toil and trouble if they had stayed. But they didn't. When she wrote for children, Wilder eliminated and embellished, shaping and stretching her own history. Fraser: And I think, ultimately, writing the 'Little House' books was her was her way of trying to process all that had happened to her both in positive and negative ways.
But she was also reliving the terror of their experience, because on many occasions, they did face ruin or starvation or disaster. Narrator: Disaster was looming when the Ingalls moved West to Minnesotato start a new life in a dugout.
I think it was one of the nicest places that they'd ever lived. He said the grain was all soft and milky yet, but it was so well grown, he felt sure we would have a wonderful crop. And then we saw that the cloud was grasshoppers, their wings a shiny white making a screen between us and the sun.
Narrator: It's , and the Ingalls have just experienced the Rocky Mountain Locust Invasion -- trillions of grasshoppers in a cloud that covered nearly , square miles. And how, you know, heartbreaking that must have been because it just destroyed all of their hopes in a matter of hours.
Hill: What I think is really striking is that her account in 'Pioneer Girl,' which is essentially nonfiction, traces fairly closely to what she did in the fictional version in 'On the Banks of Plum Creek. Young woman: 'It was a cloud of something like snowflakes, but they were larger than snowflakes, and thin and glittering. Then huge brown grasshoppers were hitting the ground all around her, hitting her head and her face and her arms.
Anderson: The devastating grasshopper plagues ruined their chances of successful farming. Charles, now deeply in debt, signs a pauper's oath -- a public acknowledgement that he is destitute. Sarah: It is not well-known that he signed a pauper's oath during the grasshopper plague, and that was -- I mean, that would've been a huge blow. To swear anything, to swear any kind of oath was -- We don't appreciate what that means today.
Anderson: And they were essentially so in need of funds that Charles Ingalls concocted a scheme that they would move to Burr Oak, Iowa. But little brother got worse instead of better, and one awful day, hestraightened out his little body and was dead. Hill: Probably the biggest omission that Wilder made in the 'Little House' books, the biggest deviation from her real life, was the family's experiences in Iowa and the loss of baby brother Freddy. And Laura Ingalls Wilder chose not to write about him or the family's experiences in Iowa.
Narrator: After the birth of the last Ingalls daughter, Grace, the doctor's bills and debt become insurmountable. I mean, she just would not have dreamed of saying that, I think, in a book for children.
Harper: 'Sometime in the night, we children were waked to find the wagon with a cover on standing by the door and everything but our bed and the stove loaded in. Fraser: You see her again and again trying to grapple with her -- her father's failures as a provider. In the books the -- the movement is attributed to Pa's wandering foot and to this Westward pull that he experiences.
He tries something, and it doesn't work, so he has to go backwards and try something new, and that works for a bit. Narrator: By the late summer of , the Ingalls family is zig-zagging once again, back to Walnut Grove.
In fact, one of the Masters' wastrel sons almost seems to have tried to abuse her or attack her in the middle of the night one night. And she fights him off by telling him that she'll scream if he does anything to her. Fraser: It shows you just how kind of out of control the whole situation had become. Harper: 'She was delirious with an awful fever, and one morning when I looked at her, I saw one side of her face drawn out of shape.
As Mary grew stronger, her eyes grew weaker until when she could sit up inthe big chair among the pillows, she could hardly see at all. Narrator: Mary likely had viral meningioencephalitis, and her blindness deeply affected Laura. And that role of describing the world, describing what was happening in the outside world for her sister made Laura more aware of the outside world, more aware of the importance of vocabulary and description.
And I believe it went on to make Laura the writer that she actually became later on. Narrator: Mary's blindness is attributed to scarlet fever in the novel 'By the Shores of Silver Lake,' which follows the family to what would become De Smet, South Dakota.
Charles Ingalls has a job as a bookkeeper with the Chicago and Northwestern Railway. And Charles Ingalls is building some of those buildings, so it starts to become a town. Anderson: I think the book that gives us the clearest picture of hardship is 'The Long Winter,' when they suffered from near malnutrition and were cold and without supplies and truly isolated in the community of De Smet, South Dakota. Fraser: The actual event,you know, which was really known as the hard winter was even more horrific for the family than she let on in the novel.
Created the "Little House" books Refusing to become discouraged, Wilder changed her approach. For More Information Anderson, William. User Contributions: 1. Tabitha Davis. I personally love Laura Ingalls Wilder! She is so cool! I learned so much! I love her TV shows, and her books! I am currently reading one in my LA class. Ruth Mellott. I've been interested in Laura Ingalls Wilder since I was a girl. I read all and have all of her books and I have her tv series on Tape.
She is the reason, I myself, have become a writer. Junel Colobong. Her writings made me love her and even though im not yet alive whe she was alive i still crave her history and her biography. I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder was my one and only famous author. This is how I found out about Laura: I had to pick one book from the library for my book report i had to check out so i told myself real quick that read what i got. I hurried and picked a book and lucky for me it looked pretty good. I read it and it was so good I looked her up on the internet.
I told my mom about her and she said there was a film about her she said it was called ''Little House On The Prairie'' i was so anxious. I read it and watched it maybe you should too. TIP: You should look for the whole movie series on Wikipedia and type in Little house on the prairie lists. And for the videos go to Youtube. For the books go to Wikipedia and type in Laura Ingalls Wilder and scroll all the way down.
Thanks for reading, hope this helps. These best books I have read in a number of years. I felt privilaged to read them. Hilda Corley. I love all of the books about Laura Ingalls Wilder. I have most of the TV series. Would love to know where to purchase of her books. Amazing book series! The show mirrored an exact image of Laura's life, also.
Esther Smith. My father would read it to me at night. When the movie aired in I was glued to the tv and the when the series stared in when I was 10, I was hooked and looked forward to every episode. Knowing Laura Ingalls Wilders life history, makes me admire here even more. I am grateful to the late Michael Landon for bringing these books to life on television. Edna Serna-Gonzalez. I started reading Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was a child in school.
When the series "Little House" started I felt I knew what was going on. As a teacher, I made sure that I had those books in my classroom. Now my own child and my students read and watch the series also.
I think it is a great American History series. I was so excited to learn that Laura Ingalls Wilder lived up to the 's to see all the changes in history. Laura was an amazing person to remember all those stories. Learn about Martin Luther King Jr. Du Bois and other prominent African American figures. Take a look at author A. A Milne's life and how his children's book changed his life — for good and bad. Learn about the man and the legend that go well beyond his fruitful name.
Her first autobiography was rejected Wilder's first attempt at writing an autobiography, called Pioneer Girl , was uniformly rejected by publishers. Her daughter was her writing partner Wilder gave birth to her daughter Rose in in the Dakota Territory.
By Catherine McHugh. By Wendy Mead.
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