The Real Laura Ingalls of Little House on the Prairie
My Girl Hero Laura Ingalls Wilder is one of my favorite writers, not just because her stories are so interesting to read but because many of the events she describes really happened to her.
Laura Ingalls was born on February 7, 1867 just outside of the little village of Pepin, Wisconsin. She was the second oldest of her parent's four surviving children, all of which were girls.
Laura's parents were pioneers heading west, just one of thousands of families encouraged by the US government to set up homesteads on lands that had belonged to Native American tribes.
So, through most of her childhood, her family moved A LOT.
Beginning in Wisconsin,
they moved to Missouri,
then Kansas,
then back to Wisconsin,
then Minnesota,
then Iowa,
then back to Minnesota,
then to the Dakota Territories
Then they finally settled down in South Dakota. (show lines on map on iphone?)
Phew!
You practically need an app to keep up.
When she was 18, Laura Ingalls married Almanzo Wilder. When they first settled down, the future looked promising but her life grew hard. Almanzo became ill, family deaths and terrible fires took their toll and the young family's finances began to fail.
So once again in Laura's life, she went on the move. Laura, Almanzo and their daughter, Rose, finally settled in Mansfield, Missouri and this is where her writing career began.
Laura worked as a writer and editor for a local newspaper and developed a loyal readership who enjoyed her stories of home and family life, travel adventures and the expanding options for women of the times. At the same time, Rose, now grown-up and travelling the world had become a well known writer on her own.
Rose encouraged her mother to expand on the stories she had already begun work on based on her pioneer childhood but it wasn't until the legendary stock market crash in 1929 that publishing the stories became urgent.
You see, Laura and her husband lost most of their money at the beginning of the Great Depression. Millions of people were out of work, farms were drying up and times were bad for everyone. With Rose's experience in publishing, Laura was able to quickly improve her stories and find a publisher.
And I am am so glad she did. I love the Little House books and so do millions of others around the world.
Ever since the her first book, Little House in the Big Woods, was published in 1932, Laura's books have never stopped being printed and have been translated into 40 languages.
Laura Ingalls Wilder lived to the grand old age of 90 but she will forever live on in my imagination as little Laura Ingalls.
Thank you, Laura!
Image and Sound Attributions
Rocky Ridge Farm, Mansfield, Missouri By TimothyMN - CC BY-SA 3.0,
Gravesite of Laura Ingalls Wilder and husband Almanzo Wilder at Mansfield Cemetery, Mansfield, Missouri. Buried next to them is daughter Rose Wilder Lane. By Julie Jordan Scott - CC BY 2.0,
Map of the United States of America 1845 courtesy of Norman B. Leventhal Map Center used under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
Little House Wayside - Birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Aaron Carlson used under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
State of Wisconsin 1886 courtesy of Norman B. Leventhal Map Center used under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
iPhone by World Super Cars at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons
Little House on the prarie book image by m01229 used under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Entrance to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove, Minnesota image By Scott Catron (English Wikipedia [1]) [GFDL ( or CC-BY-SA-3.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons
Rag Dolls used under CC0-Public Domain (
Corn Husk Doll By John Morgan (Flickr: Palm Doll) [CC BY 2.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons
Pioneer Girl, Helping Mom, Oak Glen, Ca 5-2008 by Don Graham used under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Rocket sound by Cydon used under the Creative Commons License
Tardis By Edjoerv (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Rose Wilder Lane: A Longing for Far-Away and Unimagined Places (Part Two)
Pamela Smith Hill investigates Rose Wilder Lane’s writing, questioning the truthfulness of her prose and touching briefly on her struggles with depression.
This video is part of Missouri State University's massive online collection. Want more Wilder? Sign up for our next course now, starting April 6, 2015:
Rose Wilder Lane | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Rose Wilder Lane
00:00:22 1 Early life
00:01:31 2 Early career, marriage and divorce
00:05:50 3 Freelance writing career
00:09:14 4 Literary collaboration
00:12:48 5 Successful novels
00:14:39 6 Return to journalism, societal views
00:17:08 7 iThe Discovery of Freedom/i
00:21:20 8 Later years and death
00:24:38 9 In the media
00:26:40 10 Bibliography
00:28:40 11 See also
Listening is a more natural way of learning, when compared to reading. Written language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.
Learning by listening is a great way to:
- increases imagination and understanding
- improves your listening skills
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- learn while on the move
- reduce eye strain
Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.
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The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
=======
Rose Wilder Lane (December 5, 1886 – October 30, 1968) was an American journalist, travel writer, novelist, political theorist, and daughter of American writer Laura Ingalls Wilder. Along with two other female writers, Ayn Rand and Isabel Paterson, Lane is noted as one of the founders of the American libertarian movement.
A Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas
Sarah Uthoff portrays author Laura Ingalls Wilder to tell family stories about Christmas. Event held at the Hoover Presidential Library on November 19, 2010.
Wayside Cabin Pepin, WI Sept. 2009
This was taken at the Wayside Cabin, a replica of Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthplace, seven miles outside of Pepin Wisconsin during Laura Ingalls Wilder Days in 2009.
Hitler is informed that today is Laura Ingalls Wilder's 148th Birthday
Hitler learns about today is Laura Ingalls Wilder's 148th Birthday
Born: February 7, 1867, Pepin, Wisconsin, United States
Died: February 10, 1957, Mansfield, Missouri, United States (aged 90)
Cause of Death: Complications of diabetes mellitus
The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure
Author Wendy McClure visits the Hoover Presidential Library-Museum to discuss her new book The Wilder Life.
LauraPalooza 2012 Days 5 + 6 July 15-16 2012
The last two days of the LauraPalooza trip find our host Sarah Uthoff in De Smet, SD and heading home.
Central MN Family Elevates Idea of a Treehouse
Dean and Donna Lange of Burtrum completed their 850 square-foot, two-story treehouse last year.
My Prairie Cookbook: Memories and Frontier Food from My Little House
Melissa Gilbert, star of Little House on the Prairie, offers fans comforting family recipes as well as behind-the-scenes stories and scrapbook images. A Book signing follows the program.
To access live, real-time captioning, please click on the link in the Event Description below or insert the following URL into a separate browser window:
Dreams of the Dead: Frontier Country Part 9/12 of 'The Frontier'
The prairie and desert lands of what today is Mexico and the Western United States were well-suited to open range grazing. For example: American bison had been a mainstay of the diet for the Native Americans in the Great Plains for centuries. Likewise, cattle and sheep, descended from animals brought over from Europe, were simply turned loose in the spring after their young were born and allowed to roam with little supervision and no fences, then rounded up in the fall, with the mature animals driven to market and the breeding stock brought close to the ranch headquarters for greater protection in the winter. The use of livestock branding allowed the cattle owned by different ranchers to be identified and sorted. Beginning with the settlement of Texas in the 1840s, and expansion both North and West from that time, through the Civil War and into the 1880s, ranching dominated Western economic activity. Barbed wire, invented in 1874, gradually made inroads in fencing off privately owned land, especially for homesteads.
The end of the open range was not brought about by a reduction in land due to crop farming or new settlements, but by overgrazing. Cattle stocked on the open range created a tragedy of the commons as each rancher sought increased economic benefit by grazing too many animals on public lands that nobody owned. However, being a non-native species, the grazing patterns of ever-increasing numbers of cattle slowly reduced the quality of the rangeland, in spite of the simultaneous massive slaughter of American bison that occurred. The winter of 1886-1887 was one of the most severe on record, and livestock that were already stressed by reduced grazing died by the thousands. Many large cattle operations went bankrupt, and others suffered severe financial losses. Thus, after this time, ranchers also began to fence off their land and negotiated individual grazing leases with the American government so that they could keep better control of the pasture land available to their own animals.
As the frontier ended, the cowboy life came to be highly romanticized. Exhibitions such as those of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show helped to popularize the image of the cowboy as an idealized representative of the tradition of chivalry.
In today's society, there is little understanding of the daily realities of actual agricultural life. Cowboys are more often associated with (mostly fictitious) Indian-fighting than with their actual life of ranch work and cattle-tending. The cowboy is also portrayed as a masculine ideal via images ranging from the Marlboro Man to the Village People. Actors such as John Wayne are thought of as exemplifying a cowboy ideal, even though Western movies seldom bear much resemblance to real cowboy life.
Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of Indian Wars. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size. The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism. The California Gold Rush of 1848--49 further spurred western migration. New railways made relocation easier for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, or buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread. The loss of the buffalo, a primary resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.