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.
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.
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?
Actually, Laura was 65 when her first book was published.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
Good point.
Thanks for the correction.
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.
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.