You know, I think this is discussed in the first book of the series. Laura mentioned her “double cousin,” also named Laura Ingells.
I don’t have my copies of the books anymore, so I can’t check. 
Oh, I LOVE those books so much! I don’t think they ever reached the popularity of LIW books, but they are just fabulous for young kids. And, they are the reason I know so much about Jewish culture and tradition too. They take place on NYC’s Lower East Side and in the Bronx just before and during WW I.
THANK YOU!! I read several books from this series when I was in Elementary school, and could never remember what they were called! Now I can add them to my list of books to buy my neice when she’s old enough to read. 
I always loved the Little House books, too, and remember being surprised to find them in the Fiction section of the library. Does anyone have a suggestion for a LIW biography I could read? I’ve known for awhile that the books didn’t follow her life exactly, and it would be really interesting to see what “really” happened.
Thanks!
Engel
Last week i saw an episode of Little House where Charles took his son who was in a coma to a place in the middle of nowhere and built an alter so he could communicate with God, or something. There was an old man who appeared as a guardin angel type of character and lots of supernatural things happened, eg when the boy was cured because God struck him with a lightening bolt.
Up until that point i had always believed that the stories were autobiographical and i seem to remember my mum telling me that they were all true. Surely an episode like that must be completely made up?
No, the TV series is not biographical. While certain facts from the series are true (i.e. Laura did marry Almonzo), the stories in the TV series itself were fiction. The series was produced well after Laura (died 1957) and her only daughter Rose (died 1969) were both dead.
Zev Steinhardt
I loved the Little House books and the All of a Kind Family books, too. I was never under the impression that AoaKF books were biographical though, are they?
2 of my favorite series as a child, along with the Narnia books.
I have seen the Little House books in the biographical section of libraries before, I’m not sure what would make them more fictional than most other autobiographies.
I never made that claim.
You mean there wasn’t a frontier town where the residents blew it up before leaving so that an evil land developer couldn’t profit from it? (I never really watched the series, but I remember my parents watching the series finale)
Here’s another question along these lines regarding the Great Brain books, mentioned above (I loved those books as a kid). Does anyone know if there were any real autobiographical events included, or if the series was entirely fiction? I googled a bit and found out that Fitzgerald was born and raised in Utah and the 1907 birthdate that I found is close enough to the late 19th century period in which the books are set that it’s possible, but I’ve always wondered.
The Great Brain books were fiction based on reality.
Check your local library and see if you can find a book called “Papa Married a Mormon” that one is Tom Fitzgerald’s autobiography. He wrote two or three other books about the people in his family and the Utah town he was born in… the town is not there any more it was destroyed in a flood but the date escapes me.
If my memory is correct, I dug into Fitzgerald’s life fairly deeply when I was in my late teens, Tom wrote “Papa Married a Mormon” in response to a dying wish of his mother. She wanted him to write about the people who came out to the frontier and created cities and brought “civilization” in to the wildreness. After he wrote PMaM people started writing him to find out more about his older brother and that’s when he started to write “The Great Brain Series”.
My favorite memory of the series is when Papa installs a “water closet” ie toilet in the upstairs and Tom has hysterics because no the house will stink and no one will EVER want to come visit! Ahhh we techno brats just can’t fathom that level of anxiety!
I loved the Little House books and All of a Kind Family. I did watch the TV Little House when I was younger but now it is hard to stomach. It’s sooo preachy and the characters have opinions and attitudes that they really would never have in that time period. There was one episode where Charles Ingalls goes on about how bad the Indians were treated and they have rights and so forth. In the books, however, it’s pretty clear that Charles believed that he had a right to the land and thought the Indians were savages. Caroline said more than once “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” I don’t think the frontier men gave much thought to the rights of Indians. That’s only one example.
Pa’s attitude towards Indians in the books is a pretty complex one. He didn’t hate them (as Ma did) and he wasn’t constantly afraid of them (as Ma was). In The Long Winter he takes the old Indian’s warning seriously and reminds Ma that their lives were saved by Indians once before. But at the same time he seems to have believed, absolutely, without questioning, that the White Man should have the land and the Indians should leave. So no, he wouldn’t have made an impassioned speech about Indian rights - but he wouldn’t have said that the only good Indian was a dead Indian, either. In his day, if Laura’s description of him was accurate, he was probably a good deal more tolerant than the average frontier settler.
The All-of-a-Kind Family books were at least semi-autobiographical. The books (wonderful books, BTW) were based on Sydney Taylor’s childhood and grew out of stories that Taylor told her own children about herself and her siblings. This much I got from the dustjacket of the last book in the series (Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family), BTW. I wasn’t able (with a quick and dirty search) to find any more information than that online.
The Great Brain books I know a bit more about. They are semi-autobiographical. As Krisfer says, Fitzgerald was originally an author for adults and wrote Papa Married a Mormon to honor a request of his mother’s that he write the story of the “little people” who built Utah. The book was published in 1955 and did very well. Fitzgerald followed it with two sequels, Mamma’s Boarding House and Uncle Will & the Fitzgerald Curse, which didn’t do quite as well. The first book was mostly about Fitzgerald’s parents and ended with his father’s death. The second book detailed his mother’s widowhood, during which she kept a boarding house, and ended with the flooding and destruction of Adenville. The third book was a prequel about his Uncle Will, a gambler and gunfighter and the black sheep of the family. Fitzgerald planned a fourth book focusing on his Great-Brained brother, Tom, but when he sent it to his publisher, they sent it back recommending that it be reworked as a children’s book – a brilliant plan, as it turned out. Now, Fitzgerald’s adult novels are always listed as biographies, but a little research reveals that they were actually only very loosely based on fact. There doesn’t seem to be much about Mr. Fitzgerald online, but here is one clarifying link. A number of researchers seem to feel that Fitzgerald based Adenville on the towns of Leeds, Harrisburg and Silver Reef. This seems to make sense to me. Perhaps Uncle Will settled in Harrisburg and Thomas Fitzgerald (John D.'s father) followed him there, fell in love with Utah and settled in Price (where John D. was born) to raise his family. Then it would make sense that John D., writing his books, combined the towns together into a fictitious Adenville to simplify things. Harrisburg was destroyed by a flood in 1862 in a fashion very similar to the destruction of the fictitious Adenville, but far too early for John D. (who wasn’t born until after 1900) to remember it. Price, Utah did have a destructive flood in 1915ish, but the town survived it. It’s easy to see how Fitzgerald might have combined all this. I also found an online history site for Price It would seem that Fitzgerald took plenty of license even with his own siblings – even in the more ‘biographical’ adult books. ‘Tom Dennis’ from the books was apparently ‘Thomas N something’ in real life. There was no ‘Sweyn Fitzgerald’ anywhere, but instead a ‘Charles Fitzgerald’ and a ‘William Fitzgerald.’ I suppose one of them must be the fictitious Sweyn, and possibly the other was the adopted brother (called ‘Earnest’ in the adult books and “Frankie” in the childrens series). Or, maybe the adopted brother kept his own name and there was an extra bio-sibling who was left out of all the books. Fitzgerald’s sister was left out out of the children’s series, but included in the adult books under the name ‘Katie,’ even though her actual name appears to have been 'Belle." Fitzgerald’s mother’s name was also changed for some reason – she was called ‘Tena’ in all the books, but was, according to the historical sites I found, named ‘Minnie.’ All very confusing. There are also a few major differences between the children’s series and the adult books. Gunslinger Uncle Will Fitzgerald is central to the adult books and completely left out of the children’s series. The sister, as I mentioned before, is cut from the children’s books and the adopted brother was renamed, made younger and had his history cleaned up for the children’s series. And, perhaps most strikingly: in the children’s books, Papa did not marry a Mormon. In the children’s series, the whole family was Catholic – in the adult books, Mamma (and, later, Tom) were Mormon. Tom, in fact, went on a mission to China and married one of Bishop Aden’s daughters.
Whew. Well, that’s all I could find out on the 'web. Next time I go to the library, I’ll check Something About the Author and see if the biographical entry for Fitzgerald clarifies this at all or just makes it muddier.
Oh, and Shawa, that was a major problem for me with the Little House series – that 1970s mentality slapped on what was supposed to be a period story. And, it wasn’t just the American Indian thing, either – you see this over and over again when you compare the two. Flodnak was right about the specifics of Pa’s views towards American Indians and that’s why that subject is such a great example of this flaw in the TV show. By the 1970s, there was only one “correct” viewpoint about the Indian/pioneer struggle – and the TV show upheld that viewpoint, completely disregarding the fact that, at the time the show was supposed to be portraying, very nearly no white people held anything resembling that view. Pa’s views were, as Flodnak said, a good deal more nuanced than the “only good indian is a dead indian” stand, but still lightyears away from what was spouted by the TV Pa. The book Pa seemed to have a great deal of respect for American Indians in general, but he certainly never considered for one moment that they had any right to keep him out of their lands.
Another example is Laura’s marriage vows. Laura, when she agreed to marry Almanzo, refused to vow to obey him. This was because she could not promise to obey someone against her own better judgement and Almanzo agreed with her. This was pretty progressive on both their parts, but not good enough for the TV show. On the TV show, there had to be a huge, 1970s style conflict about Laura’s desire to have a career, for crying out loud! This 1970s “career” nonsense cropped up earlier on the show, BTW, when Charles lost his job or was injured or something and Caroline got a job cooking in a restaurant. Much teeth-gnashing and scenary-chewing ensued over Charles not wanting “his woman to work!” Yeah, right. In the books, of course, Ma worked as hard as Pa did, and for pay if she could get it. Pioneer women (and, in many ways, children, too) were often surprisingly equal partners when it came to making ends meet. The prohibition was against women working in disrespectable places (Ma and Pa wouldn’t have Laura serving strange men as a waitress in a restaurant, for instance) or doing men’s jobs (Laura helped with the haying because they had to have her help, but not in Town where anyone could see her doing it). Ma worked at hotels over the years, when they needed the money, and cooked at restaraunts. You may remember that she took in boarders when they lived in the surveyers house on Silver Lake. Laura, worked as a seamstress both before her marriage and after it, when Almanzo was ill and unable to work. She helped save the money they needed to stake themselves in Missouri and worked beside Almanzo clearing and working their farm there. She certainly considered her work as a “farmer’s wife” to be a livelihood and a vocation she was proud of. But, of course, that wasn’t good enough for the TV show – she had to have a “career” they recognized and so they made the TV Laura a teacher, despite the fact that the book Laura hated teaching and left it for marriage without a backward glance.
My final example is the one that bothered me most – the way Mary’s blindness was treated. From the beginning, the TV show got it wrong. First, the diagnosis. The book Mary, having been raised by people who never caught even one easy break in their entire lives, geeted her misfortune with stoicism – a quality that was revered by pioneers. Of Mary, Ma said, "I am proud of Mary. She has never once repined. The TV Mary, of course, did more than repine – she yelled, cried, hollered and cursed – stoicism not being a trait revered by 1970s-style TV. Next, Mary’s college. For the book Ingalls, sending Mary to college was a goal – something they worked at together, over a period of years, to achieve at great sacrifice to them all. On the TV show, Mary went off to college immediately – still pouting, crying and cursing – and was promptly saved by 1970s-style romance in the form of a pretty-boy blind-school instructor. And, finally, Mary’s post-college life. In the books (and real-life) it was something of a tragedy to modern eyes – she didn’t marry, she never had children, she never had a “career” – she lived with her parents until their deaths and then with her younger sisters… you see, that’s why her family sacrificed to send her to school. Because they knew that that 7 year period was all the adventure and independence she was ever going to have. They knew the type of life she could expect as a disabled woman in the late 1800s – she knew it, too and,yet, she never once repined!. She made the most of it. She played the organ for the local church and was a tireless church-worker. She helped in whatever ways she could around her parent’s, and later her sister’s home, knowing that she would never have a home of her own. She did the best she could in all things, and she never once repined! You know, I never much liked the book Mary – prissy and namby-pamby thing that she was – but, dammit, like her or not, she was a hero! And the stupid TV show stripped that from her because they were just too narrow-minded to see that history is full of all kinds of heroism and much of it just doesn’t translate easily to the small screen.
Jess (who, believe it or not, has a lot more to say about the horrible abomination that was the Little House TV series, but will, in the interests of kindness, spare you from having to read any more of it!)
Wow Jess, very impressive! No, go on. I’d like to hear it.
Never were truer words spoken. We visited the Ingalls homestead (It’s a museum now) in De Smet. The curator was delighted when he found we’d actually read the books.
He said he always cringed when people came in and proudly proclaimed, “Oh we know all about the Ingallses, we watch the show all the time!” Then he had to explain, no, that didn’t happen and no, they made that up and no, it wasn’t really like that at all…
I never watched the show myself, but I’ve heard how ridiculously inaccurate it is. For one thing, how in the hell could anyone try to portray Charles Ingalls without his beard?
Anyway, in the interests of fighting ignorance, those of you who never read the books, do it.
Those of you who have read them, tell the ones who only know the show that they don’t know squat.
The LH series was pretty good at first, IMO. Then it suffered the fate of so many series who have run out of ideas and good dramatic material. In the latter part of the series, I remember Pa also accepting that Nellie had a Jewish boyfriend (and later husband). Complete fiction. I highly doubt the real Charles Ingalls would have been so progressive. Marrying someone outside of your faith was a VERY big deal in this country up until the last few decades. Of course, Michael Landon was Jewish and the series was his baby so I understand his motive, but, you know, it just seemed so out of time and place.
Yet another example is when Albert fell in love with a girl who was being sexually abused by her father. IIRC Pa beats the crap out of the man. Oh boy, people. This is from an era when your children were considered your property. People simply did not involve themselves in other families’ business. Not that Ingalls wouldn’t have had sympathy, but to interfere? I don’t think so.
In any event, I thought Little House is still a better show for my kids to watch than, say, Dawson’s Creek or Full House. Everything’s relative, I suppose.
Well, since Ellen asked nicely I’ll risk further hijacking zev’s thread to give you just one more. I like this example because it’s illustrative both of what a lunatic I am to even notice this crap and what idiots the perpetrators of the show were to think that they were “improving” the moral tone of the stories by modernizing them.
Anyone remember the episode where Laura and Nellie were competing for Almanzo and Nellie was going to make him a meal? She asked him his favorite meal and it was: Cinnamen Chicken. That’s right, boys and girls, Cinnamen Chicken :rolleyes: . Anyway, Nellie doesn’t know how to make Cinnamen Chicken and Laura (or maybe Caroline?) is going to help her. So, to make Nellie look bad, Laura switches the cinnamen container for cayenne pepper and practically poisons Almanzo and ruins the whole batch of chicken. Big yuks, right? After all, it’s just entertainment, right? And, that old prohibition against wasting food was just old-fashioned-clean-your-plate-semi-abusive-eating-disorder-creating nonsense that we’re all too evolved to worry about or pay attention to, right? Well, no. In fact, people with a prohibition against wasting food tend to be people who’ve actually gone hungry! Now, by about this period in the books, Laura (and the whole town) had recently endured the Hard Winter, in which a series of horrible blizzards had closed down the railroads and cut off the food supplies. The Ingalls and their neighbors had managed – just barely – to survive on seed wheat, ground in coffee mills and made into unleavened bread or unseasoned porridge. Yum. And, even when food was plentiful, it tended to be unvaried. The Ingalls, throughout Laura’s childhood, ate a LOT of salt pork and corn meal. Chicken was a treat. I’m willing to bet that never, in her whole long life, did Laura Ingalls Wilder ever purposefully waste a chicken.
And, this isn’t even the most important reason why that episode was so loathsome. The only similar occurance in the books was during the last one (These Happy Golden Years). Nellie has figured out a way to tag along on Laura and Almanzo’s buggy rides. Laura, sick of her, accidently-on-purpose frightens the horses to make them run a bit and scare Nellie. However, Laura is ashamed of herself for stooping to Nellie’s level and, when Almanzo drops her (Laura) off, she tells him he must choose – that he can take Nellie for a ride, or Laura but not both of them. He chooses Laura, of course. So which of these versions has the more progressive lesson? The one with two silly girls squabbling over a hapless man, plotting and tricking each other to ‘get’ him? Or the one in which a level-headed young woman turns her back on game-playing and speaks frankly and honestly to her swain?
And, Myron? You were 100% correct about the beard. The two things that most symbolized Charles Ingalls in the books – his beard and his fiddle – were completely left out of Michael Landon’s portrayal of the man. I’d love to visit De Smet (I’ve been to Pepin, but never De Smet or Missouri), and can only imagine that poor curator’s pain. “Oh we know all about the Ingallses, we watch the show all the time!” My God. It just sends shivers down my spine!
The TV show might have been a perfectly acceptable show, had it not been named “Little House on the Prarie”, and all the characters underwent name changes.
PunditLisa? I’m with you on the one example – the mixed-marriage, but I’m not sure the show didn’t (purely by accident, probably) get the child-abuse one right. Now, I doubt very sincerely that a girl of that time would have told her boyfriend about sexual abuse, so that part was pretty unlikely, but vigilantism would almost certainly have been the community’s response. Even in those days, the idea that your children were your property didn’t extend so far as all that. I don’t know of a specific sex-abuse case, but I have heard of children being removed from physically abusive situations and put into foster care within their community – not structured, in the modern sense, of course, but more casually. And I imagine those situations were often enforced rather strongly. Frankly, I can see the real Charles Ingalls, upon finding out (again, probably accidently, because such a victim would almost certainly not have confessed the abuse), “convincing” the father-abusor to let the girl move in with friends. Of course, it wouldn’t have been taken to the law – not officially, anyway – out of respect for the victim’s shame. Maybe I’ll do some research on this later – it’s an interesting question: How much abuse (and what kinds of abuse) rose past the level of acceptability in the Old Days and how did the community deal with those cases?
Hey- I read those books and I truly believe that Pa was both straight and deeply loved Caroline. She wasn’t just his beard!
My favorite things on the show include:
1- it snowed one time in 12 years in Minnesota
2- the famous mountains of Minnesota were always visible in the background
3- the fact that the mill owner Mr. Hanson lived in a room above the post office then left his rambling mansion to the school for the blind
4- the fact that there were cowboys on the streets when the family moved to Mankato
5- Charles was a carpenter and lived in the ugliest house in Walnut Grove
6- The family’s adoption of more children always coincided with the growing from cute lil’ thing to icky adolescence of the kids they already had
As far as 20th century liberalism, it’s all relative. The TV Ingalls family was a pack of cross burning neo-Nazis compared to Dr. Quinn (who even added gays and illegal aliens to her list of defendees).