I loved these books! I got to visit De Smet, SD, a few years ago and tour the town, which was a highlight of that summer. I have pictures somewhere…
One of my favorite things about reading them as an adult was the fact that everyone seemed so in control of their emotions, as the culture of the time dictated, but Laura had quite a temper that would spark off every once in a while. My favorite of these scenes was either in The Long Winter or Little Town on the Prairie, when Carrie and her friend get in trouble for rocking on their bench during school, and when they’re punished by having to keep on rocking (more than poor frail Carrie’s health could stand), Laura shoves them aside and rocks the bench until the screws come out, and then she and Carrie are kicked out of school for the day. Shocking! I love that illustration of wild-eyed Laura rocking that bench while her hair comes loose from its braid.
I’d forgotten about the bench-rocking. I liked Laura.
I never wanted to smack Pa (although I haven’t read the books since I was a kid, so I might now). Ma, on the other hand… She was so prissy and self-righteous and boring, and she kept trying to make Laura into a prissy self-righteous bore, and she *moralised *all the time. Laura would ask for a drink of water and Ma would use it as an opportunity for a sermon. And she was a racist bitch.
I don’t know what it is about mothers in nineteenth-century autobiographies being syrupy, moralising, intolerable geebags. Marmee in Little Women is the same. I think it was some kind of mid-nineteenth-century ideal of womanhood that hasn’t aged well.
One thing that struck me was how self reliant the children had to be, living at times on the margins of survival. In one book, I think it’s Plum River, the adults have gone to town to get some necessary supplies before winter sets in. They tell the girls to stay indoors and on no account to go outside. The adults haven’t been gone long when big clouds come over and it begins to snow.
Laura recalls a story about some kids left in a cabin in similar circumstances where the adults got snowed in at the town and couldn’t get back for days. When the parents returned they found that their children had frozen to death despite burning every stick of furniture in the place. There is only enough wood for a couple of days actually inside the Ingalls’ cabin, but there is a winter’s worth stacked in the barn – which wouldn’t have been safe to retrieve in a white out. More memories of people who get lost and frozen a few yards from home. After some discussion the girls (Laura and Mary iirc) decided they simply must disobey their parents and go outside to fetch more wood.
By the time Pa and Ma struggle back through the thickening snow they find the girls have stacked enough wood for a couple of months inside the cabin. They don’t get blamed for disobeying though and Pa says the girls did the right thing.
I haven’t read the books in several years, and don’t have them to check, but I’m pretty sure that setup is mentioned at some point in the books. Maybe it’s not until the Long Winter.
They do mention doing so frequently during winters in the books. I believe they hadn’t done so at that point because they did not expect a blizzard to pop up so quickly at that time of year. After Ma and Pa get back, Pa strings a rope for them all to use.
No, I think when Pa is gone to work on the railroad during the winter on Plum Creek, Ma uses the rope to go take care of the stock. Although she is extremely adamant that they are not to come after her no matter how long she is gone.
Funny NY Times article about Alison Arngrim / Nellie Oleson:
““Little House,” Ms. Arngrim and her snotty character remain so popular in France that she spends up to three months a year touring there. “It’s similar to David Hasselhoff and Germany,” she said. “They don’t think Nellie is mean. They just think she’s French.””
There’s a new Laura Ingalls Wilder bio, PRAIRIE FIRES: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser.
Reading a review of it in the NY Times, I found these paragraphs which reminded me of this thread:
"What destroyed Charles Ingalls’s dream? Did the market steal rewards from farmers with falling crop prices? Was it simply that rainfall would rarely suffice for their farming methods, with seasons of adequate rain giving rise to hopes that droughts then knocked for a loop? Did the federal government make false promises? Were American cultural ideals — particularly the sanctification of self-sufficient yeoman farmers — at fault? Or did individuals simply make ill-considered choices and cause their own troubles?
“There was blame to go around,” Fraser writes of the troubled relationship between [Laura Ingalls] Wilder and [daughter Rose Wilder] Lane. The same assessment surely applies to the conundrum of pioneer failure. In some of the book’s most thought-provoking reflections, Fraser lays out the choice the two women faced. Could the descendants of fiddle-playing, spirit-lifting, steady and kind Charles Ingalls write a forthright appraisal of his poor judgment in betting his family’s fortunes on risky prospects? Letting Pa off the hook and blaming the government was unmistakably the preferable option."
Please let me jump in here. I’m also a Wilder fan.
Some thoughts:
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.
She might not have been close to Mary either seeing when the parents died Mary went to live with her other sisters.
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.
Laura was 50 before she started making real money as an author.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Another interesting (and long) article about Laura Ingalls Wilder; this one focuses on the Great Depression and its effects on her and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane
Have modern genealogists researched the Ingalls family?
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.
The Ingalls information is out there that a genealogist can research.
I’d love to read any research that’s published online.
I don’t know about research on the Civil War rosters, but Laura and Charles Ingalls were Mayflower descendants, of Richard Warren. Here’s the line of descent:
Laura Ingalls Wilder → Charles Ingalls → Lansford Ingalls → Margaret Delano → Jonathan Delano → Jabez Delano → Jonathan Delano → Mercy Warren → Nathaniel Warren → RICHARD WARREN
Laura was a 7th cousin of FDR, whose policies she and Almanzo hated. (Their common ancestor is Mercy Warren) From the article linked above, in post 55:
"It did not take long at Rocky Ridge [their Missouri farm] for “Roosevelt” to become a dirty word. In one memorable episode in family folklore, Almanzo Wilder ran a federal farm agent off his property when the man dropped by to talk about new production quotas that Congress had enacted. The 81‑year‑old farmer yelled at the government man to “get the hell” off his land “and if you’re on it when I get to my gun, by God I’ll fill you with buckshot.”
Laura was also a cousin of Ulysses S. Grant, Alan Shepard, and, more distantly, of Richard Gere:
Ulysses S. Grant → Jesse Grant → Noah Grant → Susanna Delano → Jonathan Delano → Mercy Warren → Nathaniel Warren → RICHARD WARREN
Alan B. Shepard, Jr. → Alan B. Shepard → Frederick Shepard → Rosina Johnson → Abner Johnson → Anna Delano → Silvanus Delano → Jonathan Delano → Mercy Warren → Nathaniel Warren → RICHARD WARREN
Richard Gere → Homer Gere → Albert Gere → George Gere → Sarah Tewksbury → Lucina Fuller → Consider Fuller → Maria Ryder → Mary Sylvester → Hannah Bartlett → Joseph Bartlett → Mary Warren → RICHARD WARREN
And post 7 on page 1 mentions one Civil War connection (though the link is broken)
In Little House in the Big Woods, there’s “Uncle George” Ingalls who is supposed to have run away to serve as a drummer boy and has come back “wild”, scary–at a family dance Laura is afraid of his crazy behavior, maybe he has PTSD. This site gives quotes from the book, her memoir and some commentary:
"Uncle George was the one Laura was afraid of in “Little House in the Big Woods” because everyone said he was a ‘wild man.’ “Uncle George had run away to be a drummer boy in the army, when he was fourteen years old,” Laura said. In “Pioneer Girl,” her unpublished memoirs, she added, "Afterward Uncle George stole a cow and was arrested… Pa said, What could you expect of a boy who had joined the army when he was fourteen, and lived off the country all those years? In the South, when the Union soldiers wanted anything they just took it, and George had got used to that way of doing. All that was wrong with George was that he couldn’t seem to realize the war was over and that he was in the North, where he couldn’t live off the country any more.“Civil War service records from Ancestry.com also indicate that George may have deserted the army. The enlistment information matches, but his middle initial is given as “A”.” http://www.dahoudek.com/LIW/family/aqwg06.aspx (scroll down to “George Whiting Ingalls”)