Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

 

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder (February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957) was an American writer, mostly known for the Little House on the Prairie series of children's books, published between 1932 and 1943, which were based on her childhood in a settler and pioneer family.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the television series Little House on the Prairie was loosely based on the Little House books, and starred Melissa Gilbert as Laura and Michael Landon as her father, Charles Ingalls.

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born to Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born to Charles Phillip and Caroline Lake Quiner Ingalls on February 7, 1867. At the time of Ingalls' birth, the family lived seven miles north of the village of Pepin, Wisconsin, in the Big Woods region of Wisconsin. Ingalls' home in Pepin became the setting for her first book, Little House in the Big Woods (1932). She was the second of five children, following older sister, Mary Amelia. Three more children would follow, Caroline Celestia (Carrie), Charles Frederick, who died in infancy, and Grace Pearl. Ingalls Wilder's birth site is commemorated by a replica log cabin at the Little House Wayside in Pepin.

Ingalls was a descendant of the Delano family, the ancestral family of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One paternal ancestor, Edmund Ingalls, from Skirbeck, Lincolnshire, England, emigrated to America, settling in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Laura is the 7th great granddaughter of the Mayflower passenger Richard Warren. She was a third cousin, once removed, of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.

On the site of the original Little House (from the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder); historians reconstructed the house near Independence, Kansas, to closely match what it would have been like when the Ingalls family lived there. 

When she was two years old, Ingalls Wilder moved with her family from Wisconsin in 1869. After stopping in Rothville, Missouri, they settled in the Indian country of Kansas, near modern-day Independence, Kansas. Her younger sister, Carrie, was born in Independence in August 1870, not long before they moved again. According to Ingalls Wilder, her father Charles Ingalls had been told that the location would be open to white settlers, but when they arrived this was not the case. The Ingalls family had no legal right to occupy their homestead because it was on the Osage Indian reservation. They had just begun to farm when they heard rumors that settlers would be evicted, so they left in the spring of 1871. Although in her novel, Little House on the Prairie, and Pioneer Girl memoir, Ingalls Wilder portrayed their departure as being prompted by rumors of eviction, she also noted that her parents needed to recover their Wisconsin land because the buyer had not paid the mortgage.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's home near Pepin, Wisconsin

The Ingalls family went back to Wisconsin where they lived for the next three years. Those experiences formed the basis for Wilder's novels Little House in the Big Woods (1932) and the beginning of Little House on the Prairie (1935).

On the Banks of Plum Creek (1939), the third volume of her fictionalized history which takes place around 1874, the Ingalls family moves from Kansas to an area near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, settling in a dugout on the banks of Plum Creek.

They moved there from Wisconsin when Ingalls was about seven years old, after briefly living with the family of her uncle, Peter Ingalls, first in Wisconsin and then on rented land near Lake City, Minnesota. In Walnut Grove, the family first lived in a dugout sod house on a preemption claim; after wintering in it, they moved into a new house built on the same land. Two summers of ruined crops led them to move to Iowa. On the way, they stayed again with Charles Ingalls' brother, Peter Ingalls, this time on his farm near South Troy, Minnesota. Her brother, Charles Frederick Ingalls ("Freddie"), was born there on November 1, 1875, dying nine months later in August 1876. In Burr Oak, Iowa, the family helped run a hotel. The youngest of the Ingalls children, Grace, was born there on May 23, 1877.

The family moved from Burr Oak back to Walnut Grove where Charles Ingalls served as the town butcher and justice of the peace. He accepted a railroad job in the spring of 1879, which took him to eastern Dakota Territory, where they joined him that fall. Ingalls Wilder omitted the period in 1876–1877 when they lived near Burr Oak, skipping to Dakota Territory, portrayed in By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939).

Wilder's father filed for a formal homestead over the winter of 1879–1880. De Smet, South Dakota, became her parents' and sister Mary, who was blind, home for the remainder of their lives. After spending the mild winter of 1879–1880 in the surveyor's house, they watched the town of De Smet rise up from the prairie in 1880. The following winter, 1880–1881, one of the most severe on record in the Dakotas, was later described by Ingalls Wilder in her novel, The Long Winter (1940). Once the family was settled in De Smet, Ingalls attended school, worked several part-time jobs, and made friends. Among them was bachelor homesteader Almanzo Wilder. This time in her life is documented in the books Little Town on the Prairie (1941) and These Happy Golden Years (1943).

On December 10, 1882, two months before her 16th birthday, Ingalls accepted her first teaching position. She taught three terms in one-room schools when she was not attending school in De Smet. (In Little Town on the Prairie she receives her first teaching certificate on December 24, 1882, but that was an enhancement for dramatic effect.) Her original "Third Grade" teaching certificate can be seen on page 25 of William Anderson's book Laura's Album (1998). She later admitted she did not particularly enjoy it, but felt a responsibility from a young age to help her family financially, and wage-earning opportunities for women were limited. Between 1883 and 1885, she taught three terms of school, worked for the local dressmaker, and attended high school, although she did not graduate. (According to the books, this was due to her first teaching job starting before her schooling finished.)

Almanzo James Wilder (February 13, 1857 – October 23, 1949) was the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the father of Rose Wilder Lane, both noted authors.

Laura and Almanzo Wilder, circa 1885

Ingalls' teaching career and studies ended when the 18-year-old Laura married 28-year-old Almanzo Wilder on August 25, 1885, in De Smet, South Dakota. From the beginning of their relationship, the pair had nicknames for each other: she called him "Manly" and he, because he had a sister named Laura, called her "Bess", from her middle name, Elizabeth. Almanzo had achieved a degree of prosperity on his homestead claim; the newly married couple started their life together in a new home, north of De Smet.

On December 5, 1886, Wilder gave birth to her daughter, Rose. In 1889, she gave birth to a son who died at 12 days of age before being named. He was buried at De Smet, Kingsbury County, South Dakota. On the grave marker, he is remembered as "Baby Son of A. J. Wilder".

Their first few years of marriage were difficult. Complications from a life-threatening bout of diphtheria left Almanzo partially paralyzed. Although he eventually regained nearly full use of his legs, he needed a cane to walk for the remainder of his life. This setback, among many others, began a series of unfortunate events that included the death of their newborn son, the destruction of their barn along with its hay and grain by a mysterious fire, the total loss of their home from a fire accidentally set by Rose, and several years of severe drought that left them in debt, physically ill, and unable to earn a living from their 320 acres of prairie land. These trials were documented in Wilder's book The First Four Years (published in 1971). Around 1890, they left De Smet and spent about a year resting at the home of Almanzo's parents on their Spring Valley, Minnesota, farm before moving briefly to Westville, Florida, in search of a climate to improve Almanzo's health. They found, however, that the dry plains they were used to were very different from the humidity they encountered in Westville. The weather, along with feeling out of place among the locals, encouraged their return to De Smet in 1892, where they purchased a small home.

Location of Wilder homestead where both of Wilder's children were born – De Smet

Rocky Ridge Farm (Photo by CJ McLaughlin)

In 1894, the Wilders moved to Mansfield, Missouri, and used their savings to make the down payment on an undeveloped property just outside town. They named the place Rocky Ridge Farm and moved into a ramshackle log cabin. At first, they earned income only from wagon loads of fire wood they would sell in town for 50 cents. Financial security came slowly. Apple trees they planted did not bear fruit for seven years. Almanzo's parents visited around that time and gave them the deed to the house they had been renting in Mansfield, which was the economic boost Wilder's family needed. They then added to the property outside town, and eventually accrued nearly 200 acres. Around 1910, they sold the house in town, moved back to the farm, and completed the farmhouse with the proceeds. What began as about 40 acres of thickly wooded, stone-covered hillside with a windowless log cabin became in 20 years a relatively prosperous poultry, dairy, and fruit farm, and a 10-room farmhouse.

The Wilders had learned from cultivating wheat as their sole crop in De Smet. They diversified Rocky Ridge Farm with poultry, a dairy farm, and a large apple orchard. Wilder became active in various clubs and was an advocate for several regional farm associations. She was recognized as an authority in poultry farming and rural living, which led to invitations to speak to groups around the region.

An invitation to submit an article to the Missouri Ruralist in 1911 led to Wilder's permanent position as a columnist and editor with that publication, which she held until the mid-1920s. She also took a paid position with the local Farm Loan Association, dispensing small loans to local farmers.

Wilder's column in the Ruralist, "As a Farm Woman Thinks", introduced her to a loyal audience of rural Ozarkians, who enjoyed her regular columns. Her topics ranged from home and family, including her 1915 trip to San Francisco, California, to visit Rose Lane and the Pan-Pacific exhibition, to World War I and other world events, and to the fascinating world travels of Lane as well as her own thoughts on the increasing options offered to women during this era. While the couple were never wealthy until the "Little House" books began to achieve popularity, the farming operation and Wilder's income from writing and the Farm Loan Association provided them with a stable living.

The People in God's Out-of-Doors

from Mrs. Wilder's Nature Songs.

I love to listen to the bird songs every day

And hear the free winds whisper in their play.

Among the tall old trees and sweet wild flowers.

I love to watch the little brook

That gushes from its cool and rocky bed

Deep in the earth. The sky is blue o'er head

And sunbeams dance upon its tiny rivulette.

I love the timid things

That gather round the little watercourse.

To listen to the frogs with voices hoarse,

And see the squirrels leap and bound at play.

Then, too, I love to hear

The loud clear whistle of the pretty quail.

To see the chipmunk flirt his saucy tail,

Then peep from out his home within the tree.

I love to watch the busy bees,

pioneergirl.com

To see the rabbit scurry in the brush.

Or sit when falls the dewy evening's hush

And listen to the sad-voiced whippoorwill.

Mrs. A. J. Wilder, Mansfield, Mo. "From Mrs. Wilder - Nature Songs: The People in God's Out-of-Doors," 12. This article

was included in Alma Z. Moore's "For Home Keepers and Their Especial Affairs" column.

The Story of Rocky Ridge Farm

by A.J. Wilder (byline), Wright County, Missouri

How Mother Nature In the Ozarks Rewarded Well Directed Efforts AFter a Fruitless Struggle On the Plains of

the Dakotas. The Blessings of Living Water and a Gentle Climate - Written for the Missouri Ruralist - By A.J.

Wilder, Wright County, Missouri

Editor's Note: Among the stories received in the course of our farm home story contest, the following came from

Mr. Wilder with the request that it be published, if worthy, but that it be not considered an entrant for any prize.

We certainly consider it worthy -- one of the most helpful and interesting -- and believe all contributors to this

feature will approve of our giving it good position on this page since we cannot give it a prize. The list of winners

will be found on page 5.

To appreciate fully the reason why we named our place Rocky Ridge Farm, it should have been seen at the time

of the christening. To begin with it was not bottom land nor by any stretch of the imagination could it have been

called second bottom. It was, and is, uncompromisingly ridge land, on the very tip top of the ridge at that, within a

few miles of the highest point in the Ozarks. And rocky -- it certainly was rocky when it was named, although

strangers coming to the place now, say, "but why do you call it Rocky Ridge?"

The place looked unpromising enough when we first saw it, not only one but several ridges rolling in every

direction and covered with rocks and brush and timber. Perhaps it looked worse to me because I had just left the

prairies of South Dakota where the land is easily farmed. I had been ordered south because those prairies had

robbed me of my health and I was glad to leave them because they had also robbed me of nearly everything I

owned, by continual crop failures. Still coming from such a smooth country the place looked so rough to me that I

hesitated to buy it. But wife had taken a violent fancy to this particular piece of land, saying if she could not have

it she did not want any because it could be made into such a pretty place. It needed the eye of faith, however, to

see that in time it could be made very beautiful.

So we bought Rocky Ridge Farm and went to work. We had to put a mortgage on it of $200, and had very little

except our bare hands with which to pay it off, improve the farm and make our living while we did it. It speaks

well for the farm, rough and rocky as it was that my wife and myself with my broken health were able to do all

this.

A flock of hens -- by the way, there is no better place in the country for raising poultry than right here -- a flock of

hens and the wood we cleared from the land bought our groceries and clothing. The timber on the place also made

the rails to fence it and furnished the materials for a large log barn.

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At the time I bought it there were on the place four acres cleared and a small log house with a fireplace and no

windows. These were practically all the improvements and there was not grass enough growing on the whole

forty acres to keep a cow. The four acres cleared had been set out to apple trees and enough trees to set twenty

acres more were in nursery rows near the house. The land on which to set them was not even cleared of the

timber. Luckily I had bought the place before any serious damage had been done to the fine timber around the

building site, although the start had been made to cut it down.

It was hard work and sometimes short rations at the first, but gradually the difficulties were overcome. Land was

cleared and prepared, by heroic effort, in time to set out all the apple trees and in a few years the orchard came

into bearing. Fields were cleared and brought into a good state of fertility. The timber around the buildings was

thinned out enough so that grass would grow between the trees, and each tree would grow in good shape, which

has made a beautiful park of the grounds. The rocks have been picked up and grass seed sown so that the pastures

and meadows are in fine condition and support quite a little herd of cows, for grass grows remarkably well on

"Rocky Ridge" when the timber is cleared away to give it a chance. This good grass and clear spring water makes

it an ideal dairy farm.

Sixty acres more have been bought and paid for, which added to the original forty makes a farm of one hundred

acres. There is no waste land on the farm except a wood lot which we have decided to leave permanently for the

timber. Perhaps we have not made so much money as farmers in a more level country, but neither have we been

obliged to spend so much for expenses and as the net profit is what counts at the end of the year, I am not afraid to

compare the results for a term of years with farms of the same size in a more level country.

Our little Rock [sic] Ridge Farm has supplied everything necessary for a good living and given us good interest

on all the money invested every year since the first two. No year has it fallen below ten per cent and one extra

good year it paid 100 per cent. Besides this it has doubled in value, and $3,000 more, since it was bought.

We are not by any means through with making improvements on Rocky Ridge Farm. There are on the place five

springs of running water which never fail even in the driest season. Some of these springs are so situated that by

building a dam below them, a lake of three acres, twenty feet deep in places will be made near the house. Another

small lake can be made in the same way in the duck pasture and these are planned for the near future. But the first

thing on the improvement program is building a cement tank as a reservoir around a spring which is higher than

the buildings. Water from this tank will be piped down and supply water in the house and barn and in the poultry

yards.

When I look around the farm now and see the smooth, green, rolling meadows and pastures, the good fields of

corn and wheat and oats; when I see the orchard and strawberry field like huge boquets [sic] in the spring or full

of fruit later in the season; when I see the grape vines hanging full of luscious grapes, I can hardly bring back to

my mind the rough, rocky, brushy, ugly place that we first called Rocky Ridge Farm. The name given it then

serves to remind us of the battles we have fought and won and gives a touch of sentiment and an added value to

the place.

In conclusion I am going to quote from a little gift book which my wife sent out to a few friends last Christmas:

"Just come and visit Rocky Ridge,

Please grant us our request,

We'll give you all a jolly time--

Welcome the coming; speed the parting guest."

pioneergirl.com

A. J. Wilder (byline). "The Story of Rocky Ridge Farm." Missouri Ruralist IX (July 22, 1911): 1. This article was

accompanied by a photograph of Almanzo Wilder and his brother Perley, with the following caption: "A Little of the

'Selvage Edge' At Rocky Ridge-- the Hillside Above the Spring."

"[By] 1924", according to the Professor John E. Miller, "after more than a decade of writing for farm papers, Wilder had become a disciplined writer, able to produce thoughtful, readable prose for a general audience." At this time, her now-married daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, helped her publish two articles describing the interior of the farmhouse, in Country Gentleman magazine.

Rose's graduation picture

It was also around this time that Lane began intensively encouraging Wilder to improve her writing skills with a view toward greater success as a writer than Lane had already achieved.[33] The Wilders, according to Miller, had come to "[depend] on annual income subsidies from their increasingly famous and successful daughter." They both had concluded that the solution for improving their retirement income was for Wilder to become a successful writer herself. However, the "project never proceeded very far."

In 1928, Lane hired out the construction of an English-style stone cottage for her parents on property adjacent to the farmhouse they had personally built and still inhabited. She remodeled and took it over.

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 wiped the Wilders out; Lane's investments were devastated as well. They still owned the 200-acre farm, but they had invested most of their savings with Lane's broker. In 1930, Wilder requested Lane's opinion about an autobiographical manuscript she had written about her pioneering childhood. The Great Depression, coupled with the deaths of Wilder's mother in 1924 and her older sister in 1928, seem to have prompted her to preserve her memories in a life story called Pioneer Girl. She also hoped that her writing would generate some additional income. The original title of the first of the books was When Grandma Was a Little Girl. On the advice of Lane's publisher, she greatly expanded the story. As a result of Lane's publishing connections as a successful writer and after editing by her, Harper & Brothers published Wilder's book in 1932 as Little House in the Big Woods. After its success, she continued writing. The close and often rocky collaboration between her and Lane continued, in person until 1935, when Lane permanently left Rocky Ridge Farm, and afterward by correspondence.

The collaboration worked both ways: two of Lane's most successful novels, Let the Hurricane Roar (1932) and Free Land (1938), were written at the same time as the "Little House" series and basically retold Ingalls and Wilder family tales in an adult format.

Little House in the Big Woods is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published by Harper in 1932

The novel describes the homesteading skills Laura observed and began to practice during her fifth year. It does not contain the more mature (yet real) themes addressed in later books of the series (danger from American Indians, serious illness, death, drought, and crop destruction). Hard work is the rule, though fun is often made in the midst of it. Laura gathers wood chips, and helps Ma and Pa when they butcher animals and preserve the meat. This is all in preparation for the upcoming winter. Fall is a very busy time, because the harvest from the garden and fields must be brought in as well.

The cousins come for Christmas that year, and Laura receives a rag doll, which she names Charlotte. Later that winter, the Ingalls go to Grandma Ingalls’ house and have a “sugaring off,” when they harvest sap and make maple syrup. They return home with buckets of syrup, enough to last the year. Laura remembered that sugaring off, and the dance that followed, for the rest of her life.

Each season has its work, which Laura makes attractive by the good things that result. In the spring, the cow has a calf, so there is milk, butter and cheese. Everyday housework is also described in detail.

That summer and fall, the Ingalls again plant a garden and fields, and store food for the winter. Pa trades labor with other farmers so that his own crops will be harvested faster when it is time. Not all work was farming. Hunting and gathering were important parts of providing for the Ingalls as well. When Pa went into the woods to hunt, he usually came home with a deer and then smoked the meat for the coming winter. One day he noticed a bee tree and returned early to get the wash tub and milk pail to collect the honey. When he returned in winter evenings, Laura and Mary always begged him to play his fiddle; he was too tired from farm work to play during summer. In the winter, they enjoyed the comforts of their home and danced to Pa’s fiddle playing.

The novel is based on the childhood of Wilder's husband, Almanzo Wilder, who grew up in the 1860s near the town of Malone, New York. It covers roughly one year of his life, beginning just before his ninth birthday and describes a full year of farming. It describes in detail the endless chores involved in running the Wilder family farm, all without powered vehicles or electricity. Young as he is, Almanzo rises before 5 am every day to milk cows and feed stock. In the growing season, he plants and tends crops; in winter, he hauls logs, helps fill the ice house, trains a team of young oxen, and sometimes — when his father can spare him — goes to school. The novel includes stories of his brother, Royal, and sisters, Eliza Jane and Alice.

Little House on the Prairie is an autobiographical children's novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in 1935.

The novel is about the months the Ingalls spent on the Kansas prairie around the town of Independence. Laura describes how her father built their one-room log house in Indian Territory, having heard that the government planned to open the territory to white settlers soon.

In contrast to Little House in the Big Woods, the Ingalls face difficulty and danger in this book. They all fall ill from malaria,[5] which was ascribed to breathing the night air or eating watermelon. American Indians are a common sight for them, as their house was built in Osage territory, and Ma's open distrust of Indians contrasts with Laura's more childlike observations about those who live and ride nearby. They begin to congregate at the nearby river bottoms and their war cries unnerve the settlers, who worry they may be attacked, but an Osage chief who was friendly with Pa is able to avert the hostilities.

By the end of the novel, all the Ingalls' work is undone when word comes that U.S. soldiers are being sent to remove white settlers from Indian Territory. Pa decides to move his family away before they can be forced to leave.

On the Banks of Plum Creek is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1937

Having left their little house on the Kansas prairie, the Ingalls family travels by covered wagon to Minnesota and settles on the banks of Plum Creek. Pa trades 2 ponies for a dugout and a stable. Later, Pa trades for two new horses as Christmas presents for his family, which Laura and her sister, Mary name Sam and David. Pa soon builds a new, above-ground, wooden house for his family, trusting that their first crop of wheat will pay for the lumber and materials.

Now that they live near a town, Laura and Mary go to school for the first time. There they make friends, and also meet the town storekeeper's daughter, Nellie Oleson, who makes fun of Laura and Mary for being "country girls." Laura and Mary attend a party at the Oleson's home. There, Nellie acts selfishly and grabs the biggest piece of cake. Later, Ma has Laura and Mary invite all the girls (including Nellie) to a party at their house to reciprocate where Nellie is mean to Jack, the Ingalls’ dog, and speaks mean to Ma so her legs get covered with bloodsuckers in return for what she did.

The Ingalls go through very hard times when locusts decimate the much-anticipated wheat crop, and lay so many eggs that there is no hope of a crop the following year. For two harvest seasons, Pa is forced to walk three hundred miles east to find work on farms that escaped the locust plague. Laura and her sister have to quit school because it closed when the locusts arrived.

Pa becomes lost near their home during a severe four-day blizzard. Laura and Mary help Ma with the chores and housework, and Ma plays games with the girls to keep their spirits up. Soon, Pa comes home and they learn that all that time, Pa had been at the creek, close to the house! So, the novel ends with the happy family reunited on Christmas Eve.

By the Shores of Silver Lake is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1939

The novel is based on Laura's late childhood spent near De Smet, South Dakota, beginning in 1879. Because her sister, Mary, was recently blinded due to scarlet fever, Pa asks Laura to "be Mary’s eyes" by describing what she sees, and she becomes more patient and mature through this service. The novel also introduces Laura's youngest sister, Grace. [5]

The story begins in Plum Creek, shortly after the Ingalls have recovered from the scarlet fever which caused Mary to become blind. Aunt Docia comes to visit, and suggests that Pa work as the bookkeeper in Uncle Henry's railroad camp for fifty dollars a month. Since Mary is too weak to travel, Pa went ahead with the wagon and team, and the rest of the family followed later by train. The morning Pa is to leave, their beloved old bulldog, Jack, dies in his sleep, saddening Laura greatly. (The dog upon whom he was based was no longer with the Ingalls at that point, but Laura inserted his death here to serve as a transition between her childhood and her adolescence.)

Several months later, Ma and the children travel to Dakota Territory by train. This is their first train trip and they are excited by the novelty of this newfangled mode of transportation, which can cover in a few hours the distance a horse and wagon would travel in a day. Pa comes for them in town, and the next day they leave for the railroad camp. Laura and her cousin, Lena, play together when they are done with their chores, which range from collecting laundry washed by a neighbor to milking cows; Laura rides a horse for the first time when Lena allows her the use of her pony. As winter approaches, the railroad workers demolish the buildings in the camp and return east. As the Ingalls have nowhere to stay post-demolition, they plan to return east too, but the surveyors, who had planned to stay for the winter, are called back east and ask them to stay in their house in exchange for keeping watch over their surveying equipment.

Laura is excited to move into a beautiful house well stocked with provisions. The newly married Mr. and Mrs. Boast arrive in the middle of a snowstorm. They stay past Christmas, and at New Year's the Ingalls visit the Boasts' small home for dinner. To pass time, Mrs. Boast shares her collection of newspapers with Laura and shows the Ingalls how to make a what-not. Later, Reverend Alden unexpectedly visits, and after learning Mary is blind, informs Ma that there is a college for the blind in Iowa. Laura resolves that she will eventually teach school and help send Mary to college.

During a clear night that winter, Laura and Carrie go for a moonlight walk on the lake and encounter a wolf. When Pa goes out the next day to hunt it, he discovers the perfect section of land for their homestead claim. He plans to file on it at the land office in Brookings as soon as the weather improves. However, his departure is delayed by a rush of men moving west who must also stay in the surveyors' building. The money earned from boarding them is later used for Mary's college education. After Pa's return from Brookings, he builds a store building in town so his family can move when the surveyors return. The novel ends as the Ingalls settle into the snug claim shanty on their new land.

On a hot August day in the 1880s, at the Ingallses' homestead in Dakota Territory, Laura offers to help Pa stack hay to feed their stock in the winter. As they work, she notices a muskrat den in the nearby Big Slough. Upon inspecting it, Pa notes that its walls are the thickest he has ever seen, and fears it is a warning that the upcoming winter will be a very hard one.

In mid-October, the Ingallses wake to an early blizzard howling around their poorly insulated claim shanty. Soon afterward, Pa receives another warning from an unexpected source: an old Native American man comes to the general store in town to warn the white settlers that hard winters come in seven-year cycles and the hardest comes at the end of the third cycle. The coming winter is that twenty-first winter, and there will be seven months of blizzards. Pa decides to move his family into his store building in town for the winter.

In town, Laura attends school with her younger sister, Carrie, until the weather becomes too unpredictable to permit them to walk to and from the school building, and coal too scarce to keep it heated. Blizzard after blizzard sweeps through the town over the next few months. Food and fuel become scarce and expensive, as the town depends on the railroad to bring supplies but the frequent blizzards prevent trains from getting through. Eventually, the railroad company suspends all efforts to dig out the trains that are snowed in at Tracy, stranding the town until spring.

With no more coal or wood, the Ingallses learn to use twisted hay for fuel. As the last of the town's meager food supplies run out, Laura's future husband, Almanzo Wilder, and his friend, Cap Garland, hear rumors that a settler raised wheat at a claim twenty miles from town. They risk their lives to bring sixty bushels of it to the starving townspeople – enough to last the rest of the winter.

As predicted, the blizzards continue for seven months. Finally, the spring thaw comes and trains begin running again, bringing in much-needed supplies and the Ingallses' long-delayed Christmas barrel from Reverend Alden, containing clothes, presents, and a Christmas turkey. With the long winter finally over, they enjoy their long-delayed Christmas celebration in May.

Little Town on the Prairie is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1941

The novel opens in May 1881, after the Hard Winter. At the Ingalls' claim, Pa begins planting the corn and oats that will serve as cash crops for the family, after which he builds the second half of the claim shanty, creating two small bedrooms. Meanwhile, Ma begins planting her new vegetable garden, while Mary, Laura, and Carrie happily help with the farm chores and housework and care for their youngest sister, Grace. After gophers begin eating Pa's seed corn and a mouse cuts his hair in his sleep, the family decides to get a cat, which quickly proves to be a skilled hunter despite being taken from its mother at only five weeks old.

One day at supper, Pa asks Laura whether she will accept a job in town helping to sew shirts; the surge in people newly arrived in town means a need for services such as this. She hates the work, but continues because the money will help send her sister, Mary, to a college for the blind in Iowa. Some of the men in town organize horse races, and Laura's future husband, Almanzo Wilder, wins the buggy race with his two Morgan horses hitched to his brother's heavy peddler's wagon.

On the homestead, the Ingalls' crops of corn and oats are doing well, and Pa plans to sell them to pay for Mary to begin college that fall, but blackbirds descend and destroy both crops. Laura and Mary resign themselves that Mary will have to delay college, but Pa sells one of their cows to make up the amount. When Ma and Pa escort her there, Laura, Carrie, and Grace are left alone for a week. In order to stave off the loneliness stemming from Mary's departure, they do the fall cleaning; they succeed despite a few mishaps, surprising Ma and Pa when they return.

In the fall, the Ingalls move to town; they believe the coming winter will not be as hard as the previous one, but as the claim shanty is not weatherproofed, Pa thinks it is best not to risk staying in it. In town, Laura and Carrie attend school again, and Laura is reunited with her friends, Minnie Johnson and Mary Power. She also meets a new girl, Ida Brown, the adopted daughter of the town's new minister, Reverend Brown, who claims to be related to John Brown of Kansas. Nellie Oleson, her nemesis from Plum Creek, has moved to De Smet and is also attending the school. The teacher for the fall term is Eliza Jane Wilder, Almanzo’s older sister, who has a nearby claim of her own. Nellie turns her against Laura and Wilder loses control of the school for a time. A visit by the school board restores order; however, Wilder leaves at the end of the fall term.

For the winter term, Miss Wilder is replaced by Mr. Clewett. Laura sets herself to studying, as she only has one year left before she can apply for a teaching certificate, but relaxes when the town of De Smet begins having literary meetings at the school, where the whole town gathers for fun every Friday night: singing, elocution, a spelling bee, or plays and minstrel shows put on by the townspeople.

The winter is very mild, so Laura and Carrie never miss a day of school. Laura and her classmates become friendly after a birthday party for Ben Woodworth, and so she begins lagging in her studies, though she remains head of the class. She spends the summer studying to make up for lost time. The next school year, there is another new teacher, Mr. Owen. During a week of church revival meetings, Almanzo asks to escort her home from church. Ma is surprised at this because she is only fifteen, and he is a grown man.

Near Christmas, Mr. Owen organizes a school exhibition to raise awareness of the school's needs, as the school is becoming overcrowded. He assigns Laura and Ida the duty of reciting the whole of American history up to that point. Despite their nervousness, on the night of the school exhibition they perform perfectly, as does Carrie, who recites a poem. Almanzo once again sees Laura home, and offers to take her on a sleigh ride after he completes the cutter he is building.

At home, Laura is met by Mr. Boast and Mr. Brewster, who saw her perform at the exhibition and want her to take a teaching position at Brewster's settlement twelve miles  from town. The school superintendent comes and tests her; although she is not yet sixteen, he grants her a third-grade teaching certificate. The novel ends with her preparing to teach school.

These Happy Golden Years is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1943

As the novel begins, Pa is taking Laura 12 miles from home in the dead of winter to her first teaching assignment at Brewster settlement. Laura being only 15 and a schoolgirl herself, is apprehensive as this is both the first time she has left home and the first school she has taught, but she is determined to complete her assignment and earn money to keep her sister Mary at her college for the blind in Iowa.

The weather is bitterly cold, and neither the claim shanty where Laura boards or the school can be heated adequately. Some of the children she is teaching are older than her, and she has difficulty controlling them. Worse, she boards with the head of the school board and his unhappy wife, who does not hide her resentment of Laura. Soon Laura comes to dread living under their roof, particularly during the weekends when she can't escape to school. Much to her surprise and relief, Almanzo begins driving the twenty-four miles to and from the school so that she can return home on weekends. With advice from Ma (a former schoolteacher herself), she is able to adapt and become more self-assured, and successfully completes the two-month assignment.

Laura is surprised when Almanzo continues to invite her out sleighing once she returns home. Their relationship continues, even as she watches her school friends pairing up with beaux, accepting marriage proposals, and leaving school. Sleigh rides give way to buggy rides in the spring, and she impresses Almanzo with her willingness to help break his new and often temperamental horses. Meanwhile, Laura continues to study for her own education, remaining at the head of her classes while also takes odd jobs and another term of teaching in order to earn money for Mary's education. By the time Mary graduates and returns home, Laura's extra earnings have allowed the Ingalls to settle on their claim and begin a peaceful, prosperous life.

Laura and Almanzo's romance continues to blossom until he offers her an engagement ring. She accepts his proposal to be married the following summer. Her affection is tested when he announces that he must go to his family in Minnesota and will not be back until spring. She finds that life no longer feels complete without him, only to be reunited briefly on Christmas Eve, when he returns to be with her.

While in Minnesota, Almanzo told his family of the engagement, and his older sister, Eliza Jane, Laura's former teacher, planned to arrive in spring to throw a huge, fancy wedding that neither Almanzo nor Laura want or can afford. To stop Eliza Jane from taking over their wedding, Laura agrees to be married at the end of that week. Almanzo rushes to finish their house while she hurries to complete her trousseau. They are married quietly in a small ceremony by the local pastor. She says a tearful but loving goodbye to her family before leaving for the little house Almanzo has built for them.

The First Four Years is an autobiographical novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in 1971

The novel gets its title from a promise Laura made to Almanzo when they became engaged. She did not want to be a farmer, but decided to try farming for three years.

Laura keeps house and Almanzo tends the land and the livestock. They go on frequent pony rides together. At the end of the first year, just as the wheat is ready to harvest, a serious hailstorm destroys the entire crop, which would have made approximately three thousand dollars and paid off their debts on farm equipment and their house.

Faced with mounting debt, Almanzo mortgages the homestead claim. He and Laura have to live on it as a condition of the mortgage, so they rent out their house on the tree claim and Almanzo builds a small home on the homestead claim. Their daughter, Rose, is born in December. At the end of the second year, they harvest a fair wheat crop, and share the proceeds of the wheat sale with the tree claim's renter, making enough money themselves to pay some smaller debts.

In December of the third year, both Laura and Almanzo contract diphtheria, and Almanzo suffers a complication which leaves him permanently impaired physically. The renter decides to leave, and as Almanzo is unable to work both pieces of land, so they sell the homestead claim and move back to their first house.

Laura invests money in a flock of sheep. The wool repays her initial investment, leaving only enough to pay the interest on their debts. Meanwhile, the wheat and oats grow well, but are totally ruined just before harvest after several days of hot, dry wind.

At the end of the third year, though farming has not yet been a success, Laura and Almanzo agree to continue for one more year, a "year of grace", in Laura's words, since they have no other prospects and Almanzo believes they just need one good year to turn things around. Unfortunately, hot winds again ruin the next planting of wheat and oats. Their unnamed son is born in August but dies a few weeks later. Finally, their house is destroyed by a flash fire.

Despite this, the novel ends at the close of the fourth year on an optimistic note, with Laura feeling hopeful that their luck will turn. In reality, continual debt and the hot, dry Dakota summers drove Laura and Almanzo from their land. They later settled in Mansfield, Missouri, founding a successful fruit and dairy farm where they lived comfortably until their respective deaths.

Upon Lane's departure from Rocky Ridge Farm, Laura and Almanzo moved back into the farmhouse they had built, which had most recently been occupied by friends. From 1935 on, they were alone at Rocky Ridge Farm. Most of the surrounding area (including the property with the stone cottage Lane had built for them) was sold, but they still kept some farm animals, and tended their flower beds and vegetable gardens. Almost daily, carloads of fans stopped by, eager to meet the "Laura" of the Little House books.

The Wilders lived independently and without financial worries until Almanzo's death at the farm in 1949 at age 92. Wilder remained on the farm. For the next eight years, she lived alone, looked after by a circle of neighbors and friends. She continued an active correspondence with her editors, fans, and friends during these years.

In autumn 1956, 89-year-old Wilder became severely ill from undiagnosed diabetes and cardiac issues. She was hospitalized by Lane, who had arrived for Thanksgiving. She was able to return home on the day after Christmas. However, her health declined after her release from the hospital, and she died at home in her sleep on February 10, 1957, three days after her 90th birthday. She was buried beside Almanzo at Mansfield Cemetery in Mansfield. Lane was buried next to them upon her death in 1968.

Following Wilder's death, possession of Rocky Ridge Farm passed to the farmer who had earlier bought the property under a life lease arrangement. The local population put together a non-profit corporation to purchase the house and its grounds for use as a museum. After some wariness at the notion of seeing the house rather than the books be a shrine to Wilder, Lane came to believe that making a museum of it would draw long-lasting attention to the books. She donated the money needed to purchase the house and make it a museum, agreed to make significant contributions each year for its upkeep, and donated many of her parents' belongings.

In compliance with Wilder's will, Lane inherited ownership of the Little House literary estate, with the stipulation that it be for only her lifetime, with all rights reverting to the Mansfield library after her death.

Following her demise in 1968, however, her chosen heir, Roger MacBride, gained control of the books' copyrights. as well as her business agent and lawyer. The copyrights to each of Wilder's "Little House" books, as well as those of Lane's own literary works, were renewed in his name after the original copyright had expired.

Controversy arose following MacBride's death in 1995, when the Laura Ingalls Wilder Branch of the Wright County Library in Mansfield—the library founded in part by Wilder—tried to recover the rights to the series. The ensuing court case was settled in an undisclosed manner, with MacBride's heirs retaining the rights to Wilder's books. From the settlement, the library received enough to start work on a new building.

The popularity of the Little House books has grown over the years following Wilder's death, spawning a multimillion-dollar franchise of mass merchandising under MacBride's impetus. Results of the franchise have included additional spinoff book series some written by MacBride and his daughter, Abigail—and the long-running television series, starring Melissa Gilbert as Wilder and Michael Landon as her father.