LAURA INGALLS WILDER

Pioneer days described in 'Little House' books

Laura Ingalls was two months shy of her 16th birthday when she began teaching in a cold, drafty, abandoned claim shanty on the Dakota prairie. Some of her five students were older and taller than the young teacher who so desperately missed her family---Pa and Ma, Mary, Carrie and Grace---back home in DeSmet.

Many years later, millions of children, and grownups, became acquainted with Laura and her pioneer family through her Little House books and the subsequent television series.

A young homesteader named Almanzo Wilder came courting the young teacher, appearing regularly at the schools where she taught for the next three years, until she finally married him in 1885.

Laura lived the pioneer life described in her books---in Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa and DeSmet, South Dakota, where Pa Ingalls finally settled.

But it was many years later, long after she and Almanzo had moved to Missouri, when she began to put her childhood memories on paper, strongly encouraged by her daughter Rose. Little did Rose realize that her own reputation as a writer would be eclipsed by her mother's fame.

The first book, Little House in the Big Woods, was published in l932, when Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65 years old. In rapid succession, her childhood from ages five to 18 filled book after book, all of them written in pencil on school tablets.

The Little House books were a great hit with children, who realized the stories of the Ingalls family were true, but they were just as popular with teachers and parents.

The last book, These Happy Golden Years, published in 1943, told of Laura's schoolmarm years, Almanzo's courtship and their marriage.

In puzzling over her sudden fame, Laura told a reporter, "I was amazed because I didn't know how to write. I went to 'Little red schoolhouses' all over the west and I was never graduated from anything."

A whole new generation of children were introduced to the Ingalls family when NBC's Little House on the Prairie series went on the air in 1974, seventeen years after Laura's death.

Writing seemed to be family talent, perhaps a natural inheritance from Pa's gifted storytelling.

There was no radio to amuse us them, no moving pictures to go see, so when the day's work was done, we sat in the twilight or by the evening lamp and listened to Pa's stories and the music of his violin.

The youngest Ingalls daughter, Grace, provided a sort of sequel to the Little House books in a diary covering the years from l887 to l893. One of her diary entries, written in a lined school "exercise book" described her 1888 classroom:

I study Arithmetic, Reading, Spelling, Geography and Language. Our school-room is very nice. There are six windows, four of which have dark brown curtains or shades, the seates and desks are cullered a rose culler or very dark brown sutaibel for one schollar to sittin, the room is ornimated with pictures some with frames and some not.

Carrie Ingalls, who lived out her adult life in the Black Hills,began an early newspaper career with the DeSmet News. In the early 1900s she was hired by pioneer crusader and reformer, E. L. Senn, owner of a chain of frontier newspapers, to establish and manage several Black Hills newspapers.

Senn is often mentioned in Deadwood history as the fiery crusader who attacked gambling and drinking in the pages of his newspapers and did his best to run the sporting element out of town.

Carrie was a 41-year-old spinster, working at the Keystone newspaper, when she married a prosperous widower, David N. Swanzey, and became stepmother to his two young children. The Swanzeys owned a great deal of property in and around Keystone and were active participants in community life. Carrie made several trips to Missouri to visit her sister Laura; the Wilders always stopped to visit Carrie on their trips back to South Dakota.

The Christian Science Monitor published Laura's account of their visit "In the Land of Used-to-Be" in 1940:

Sister Carrie lives in the Black Hills at the foot of Mt. Rushmore, where the great stone faces are carved in the living granite of the mountain top. As we drove the winding roads, these stone likenesses of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt looked down on us.

Carrie and Grace who used to be my little sisters are now taller than I am. We talked of childhood days and Pa and Ma and Mary.

Readers of the Little House series remember Mary as the Ingalls sister who became blind after a bout of scarlet fever. After Pa's death in 1902, Mary and Ma continued to live quietly in DeSmet until Ma---Caroline Quiner Ingalls---died in l924. Mary came to the Black Hills to visit Carrie and died at Carrie's Keystone home in 1928.

With the death of Grace Ingalls Dow in 194l and Carrie's death in 1946, Laura Ingalls Wilder became the last of those little pioneer girls who grew to womanhood on the South Dakota prairies.

Laura Ingalls Wilder lived to see her 90th birthday on February 7, 1957, and died in her sleep three days later.

But those four little girls---and Pa and Ma Ingalls---will continue to live as long as there are new generations of children to discover the Little House books.