# How was the Ingalls family affected by the US Civil War? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 4, 2012, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998 "2012-06-04T03:29:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/61 "2017-11-22T06:07:53Z")
This is Laura’s maternal uncle, killed at Shiloh, mentioned on p 1: Died of battle wounds sustained 6 Apr 1862 in Shiloh, Tennessee. Joseph Carpenter Quiner was listed as “Private Joseph C. Quinn” of Company B of the 16th Wisconsin Infantry, Section: Unknonw, Grave Number: Unknown of Shiloh National Cemetery, Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee Initial interment site as recorded in Roll of Honor Volume XX, 1869: Savannah, Tennessee. Watertown Republican Newspaper (abbreviated Wttn Rep) May 16, 1862 In the personal column: We understand that Joseph Quiner, of Concord, a member of company B, 16th regiment from this state, died in the hospital at Savannah, Tenn., April 28th, from wounds received at the battle of Shiloh. > **[Joseph Carpenter Quiner (1834-1862) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree](https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Quiner-4)** > > Is this your ancestor? Compare DNA and explore genealogy for Joseph Quiner born 1834 Cincinnati, Hamilton, Ohio died 1862 Savannah, Hardin, Tennessee including ancestors + children + DNA connections + more in the free family tree community. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/62 "2017-11-22T18:34:59Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Please let me jump in here. I’m also a Wilder fan. > > Some thoughts: > > 1. I don’t think Laura and her mother were very close. As was stated above Laura and her disagreed a lot. Laura didn’t attend either of her parents funerals. > > 2. She might not have been close to Mary either seeing when the parents died Mary went to live with her other sisters. > > 3. In one book Rose talks about Pa and Ma. She says she only saw Pa play his fiddle one time and that was the day her parents left Desmet for good and he gave the fiddle to Laura as a parting gift. In fact by that time Pa worked all day and Rose only saw him in passing when he came home and went out to do his chores. She was around Ma a lot because Ma and Mary would watch Rose all day while Laura worked sewing shirts. Sadly though by that time Ma was a tired, broken woman with little energy for a granddaughter. > > 4. Laura was 50 before she started making real money as an author. > > 5. On racism. Remember how in “Little House” Pa tells Laura then when they get to Indian territory she could see a “Papoose”? Well there is a similar story of when Rose was in Florida and Laura tells Rose she will see a “Pickanilly”. In “The Long Winter” there is the story of the indian coming into a store to warn the whites of the impending winter. Well that didn’t happen. Almonzo writes Later that Indians didn’t come into town and the whole thing was just put in by Laura. > > 6. On “The Long Winter”. Later on after Laura had become famous her and Almanzo drove up to Desmet for a founders day event and at that if you had survived that winter the town gave you a special distinction. A medal saying “The Long Winter”. Oh, I don’t know where it is but a man actually recreated the 20 mile journey where Almonzo and Cap went out on sleighs looking for wheat. > > 7. I’m from South Dakota about 200 miles northwest of Desmet and that area has always been known for bad winters. My grandmother has seen snow every month of the year except August. Near there farm is a community area where they have moved many old, historical buildings and they have a cabin that Grace once lived in. > > 8. Rose wrote a lot of her mothers books or at least heavily edited them. You see, Laura could not type. Laura would write out chapter after chapter and send them to Rose for typing up and editing and then they would write back and forth to each other. Rose by then was an accomplished writer and knew what editors and readers wanted. > > Just some random musings. Well, actually… 1. Laura did indeed return in time for her father’s death in 1902. Charles had a heart condition and lingered awhile. Caroline Ingalls died rather suddenly, and Laura lived 600 miles away. 2. Mary was devastated by the death of their mother and never really recovered. Both Carrie and Grace lived in South Dakota and had been able to visit often. Why would Mary want to move 600 miles to live in unfamiliar territory? 3. Actually, Laura was 65 when her first book was published. 4. On racism: Please remember that these people were products of their time. While today it would be racist to tell a child she might see a “papoose,” it was not considered inappropriate at that time. Caroline Fraser says Laura once remarked that had she been an Indian, she would have continued killing white people rather than leave her rightful territory. As Fraser says, that’s quite a statement from a woman in that time and culture. When did Almanzo write this ? He was not a keen letter writer and never wrote an article or book. From the time I first read The Long Winter, I suspected the Indian (probably Sioux) was a fictional character. However, Rose Wilder Lane was prone to invent people and events for “color.” It’s more likely she added this bit of foreshadowing. As a child, I was fascinated by the Black doctor who saved the Ingalls family when they had malaria. Blacks were seldom mentioned in accounts of life on the prairie. In fact, George A. Tann, the doctor in question, lived only a mile from the Ingalls and also delivered Carrie. 1. There’s some controversy over whether or not Rose actually wrote the Little House books, but the evidence points to heavy editing, not ghost writing. Yes, Laura wrote her manuscripts in longhand, as she’d been doing as a successful farm journalist. She could have had the ms. typed, but I think she realized Rose could help her improve it. Rose certainly invented events and details! She was a popular but not a highly respected writer, as her work tended toward sensationalism. She also “borrowed” much of the material in LIW’s manuscript,\* Prairie Girl\*, for her own first novel, written at Rocky Ridge. For a fascinating article on Laura and Rose—a woman ahead of her time in many ways—see [this](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/wilder-women). ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/63 "2017-11-22T20:01:05Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > …Civil War rosters are available. I’ve seen them used on \*Who Do You Think You Are \*. It was Ashley Judd’s ancestor. They told her the Kentucky unit that he served in. He was captured and a POW for 6 months. Released. Rejoined his unit and then wounded. Had a leg amputated and then was a POW again… Interesting - a U.S. or Confederate soldier? Kentucky (birth state of both Lincoln and Davis) supplied troops to both sides. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/64 "2017-11-22T20:46:09Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > If PFC Gomer Pyle could serve in the USMC 1964-1969 without the words “Viet Nam” being mentioned, I think the Ingalls TV family were safe. _Bonanza_ is another example of this. The series was set during the time of the Civil War but none of the Cartwright brothers were called into service. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/65 "2017-11-22T21:09:16Z")
Andy Griffith Show: 1960s North Carolina, yet no racial strife, Civil Rights issues. In fact, few Black actors even as extras, and IIRC, only one Black actor had a speaking line in all that time. Segregation? I guess inferred, as I don’t recall seeing any but white kids in Opie’s classes. ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/66 "2017-11-22T23:12:30Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > Andy Griffith Show: 1960s North Carolina, yet no racial strife, Civil Rights issues. In fact, few Black actors even as extras, and IIRC, only one Black actor had a speaking line in all that time. Segregation? I guess inferred, as I don’t recall seeing any but white kids in Opie’s classes. If it was in the western part of the state Mayberry could have been pretty much all white. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/67 "2017-11-22T23:39:51Z")
> [@P-man](#): > > If it was in the western part of the state Mayberry could have been pretty much all white. Characters in the show frequently refer to going “up to Raleigh,” so I’d assume the fictional town was supposed to be south of there—definitely not the western part of the state. It also sounds like Raleigh was supposed to be within driving distance. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement, was founded in Raleigh. It’s certainly feasible that Mayberry was an all-white town with laws designed to keep it that way, but the show frequently shows rural characters coming in to Mayberry, all of them white. It’s far more likely that the show’s producers wanted to avoid alienating white Southern viewers. Social commentary wasn’t really a part of sitcoms until All in the Family premiered in 1971. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/68 "2017-11-23T06:47:38Z")
More Ingalls family tree info: according to this page, Charles and Laura are related to Diana, Princess of Wales [https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Connection&action=connect&person1Name=Windsor-1&person2Name=Ingalls-1](https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Connection&action=connect&person1Name=Windsor-1&person2Name=Ingalls-1) It looks like Charles’s 4xg grandmother Prudence Hibbard and Diana’s 6xg grandmother Keziah Hibbard were sisters; Diana’s great-grandmother was an American heiress. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2017, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/69 "2017-11-23T07:43:17Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > Characters in the show frequently refer to going “up to Raleigh,” so I’d assume the fictional town was supposed to be south of there—definitely not the western part of the state. It also sounds like Raleigh was supposed to be within driving distance. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement, was founded in Raleigh. It’s certainly feasible that Mayberry was an all-white town with laws designed to keep it that way, but the show frequently shows rural characters coming in to Mayberry, all of them white. Raleigh aside, Mayberry is pretty clearly based on Andy Griffith’s home town of Mount Airy, with the nearby town of Mt. Pilot based on the town of Pilot Mountain. They’re both in Surry County, near the Virginia border, where the western Piedmont meets the Blue Ridge and the show is pretty specifically in the hill country. A bunch of the early episodes have to do with hill folk coming into Mayberry and Andy having to find some way to keep them from practicing traditional hillbilly customs that don’t fit in a modern town. (He has to stop a feud, once, and stop somebody from forcing somebody else to get married at gunpoint, for instance.) ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2017, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/70 "2017-11-26T19:49:02Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > Well, actually… > > 1. Laura did indeed return in time for her father’s death in 1902. Charles had a heart condition and lingered awhile. Caroline Ingalls died rather suddenly, and Laura lived 600 miles away. > > 2. Mary was devastated by the death of their mother and never really recovered. Both Carrie and Grace lived in South Dakota and had been able to visit often. Why would Mary want to move 600 miles to live in unfamiliar territory? > > 3. Actually, Laura was 65 when her first book was published. > > 4. On racism: Please remember that these people were products of their time. While today it would be racist to tell a child she might see a “papoose,” it was not considered inappropriate at that time. Caroline Fraser says Laura once remarked that had she been an Indian, she would have continued killing white people rather than leave her rightful territory. As Fraser says, that’s quite a statement from a woman in that time and culture. > > When did Almanzo write this ? He was not a keen letter writer and never wrote an article or book. From the time I first read The Long Winter, I suspected the Indian (probably Sioux) was a fictional character. However, Rose Wilder Lane was prone to invent people and events for “color.” It’s more likely she added this bit of foreshadowing. As a child, I was fascinated by the Black doctor who saved the Ingalls family when they had malaria. Blacks were seldom mentioned in accounts of life on the prairie. In fact, George A. Tann, the doctor in question, lived only a mile from the Ingalls and also delivered Carrie. > > 1. There’s some controversy over whether or not Rose actually wrote the Little House books, but the evidence points to heavy editing, not ghost writing. Yes, Laura wrote her manuscripts in longhand, as she’d been doing as a successful farm journalist. She could have had the ms. typed, but I think she realized Rose could help her improve it. Rose certainly invented events and details! She was a popular but not a highly respected writer, as her work tended toward sensationalism. She also “borrowed” much of the material in LIW’s manuscript,\* Prairie Girl\*, for her own first novel, written at Rocky Ridge. > > For a fascinating article on Laura and Rose—a woman ahead of her time in many ways—see [this](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/wilder-women). 1. Thanks. I did not realize she returned for her fathers funeral. I suspect it would have been hard for them to afford a train ticket back then. Although she had visited Rose in San Fransisco right about then. 2. Good point. 3. Thanks for the correction. 4. I will have to look around but I have a book where Rose sends her father Almanzo a list of maybe 30 or so questions about life in Desmet around the 1880’s. Many questions were about prices and who did what. But in one case she asked Almanzo if indians ever came into town and he said they they did not. I agree the “Long Winter” incident sounds like indian fiction of the time with the dialogue of “I tell-um white man… heap big snow come”. On Rose. You know what is interesting is when Rose wrote a “fictional” story about the family moving down to Florida for a few years and she mentions a character called “Uncle Charlie”. Well that would have been the name of Ma’s baby boy who died in childhood who would have been her Uncle Charlie if he had lived. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/71 "2017-12-06T04:58:04Z")
More distant cousins of Laura, through Richard Warren: Henry David Thoreau, Orson Welles, Ernest Hemingway, Taylor Swift > **[Richard Warren](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Warren#Descendants_of_Richard_Warren)** > > Richard Warren (c. 1585 – c.1628) was one of the passengers on the Pilgrim ship Mayflower and a signer of the Mayflower Compact. > Richard Warren married Elizabeth Walker, at Great Amwell, Hertfordshire, on 14 April 1610. Elizabeth Walker was the daughter of Augustine Walker of Great Amwell. She was baptised at Baldock in September 1583. This information came to light with the discovery of Augustine Walker's will dated 19 April 1613, in which he named his daughter Elizabeth and her children Mar... ---
**Author:** ![Southpaw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@Southpaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Southpaw)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998/72 "2017-12-07T21:00:09Z")
For those interested, Laura’s autobiography “Pioneer Girl” was published a few years ago in an annotated form. I read it not long after it came out and found it interesting not only for what made it into the books but for what she left out. > **[The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder Is Finally Published 85 Years Later](https://slate.com/culture/2014/11/little-house-nonfiction-laura-ingalls-wilders-memoir-pioneer-girl-reviewed.html)** > > It’s always fun to catch historical figures making hilariously bad predictions, and here’s a doozy. When Laura Ingalls Wilder was writing her Little... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-the-ingalls-family-affected-by-the-us-civil-war/623998.md?page=3)