The third weekend in September is Wilder Days in Mansfield, Missouri, full of activities and events. More information at:
http://www.wilderdays-mansfieldmo.com/blog/
(from info Tweeted by LIW Museum WG)
The third weekend in September is Wilder Days in Mansfield, Missouri, full of activities and events. More information at:
http://www.wilderdays-mansfieldmo.com/blog/
(from info Tweeted by LIW Museum WG)
As found by “Pioneer Girl“:
Barbara Mayes Boustead, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Omaha, Nebraska, has researched the accuracy of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s descriptions of the Long Winter, also known as “The Hard Winter”, and verified her accounts.
The story was reported in USA Today, August 21, 2011.
Also, read my own article written about The Long Winter.
It’s not the most in-depth story ever done, but a still a nice look at some of the De Smet, South Dakota Laura Ingalls Wilder sites and travel spots available now.
From the Today Show:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Here’s an interesting thing to discover online, full text copy of Rose Wilder Lane’s book Discovery of Freedom in a downloadable PDF. If you’re curious to read this book, here’s your chance: Just follow this link… I opened up the PDF and took a quick look. It appears safe–my virus software (which is the best) didn’t twitch.
Yes, I censored the title for this review. Avert your eyes now if you don’t want to see the uncensored title of this book!
Shocked I was, I tell you, shocked to see the pink cover with that title pop up on Amazon when I was doing a routine search of “Laura Ingalls Wilder” to see what new books or DVDs might have come out. Then I thought it might be some self-published teenaged angst tale trying to cash in on the Laura market. But, no, this is a for-real, legitimate book, and a very well-reviewed one, at that.
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Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated is the memoir of Alison Arngrim, the actress who played Nellie Oleson on the Little House on the Prairie television series. This book is one of three recent memoirs by the primaries in the young cast of “Little House”, and this is, by far, the one getting the best reviews.
Melissa Gilbert’s Prairie Tales is not about her time on the “Little House” series. In fact, those years are only briefly touched upon. Melissa Anderson’s entry, The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House is very poorly reviewed, being regarded as nothing more than a rather dull episode guide. So, though I have a copy of Prairie Tales, it’s Confession of a Prairie Bitch I will be looking forward to receiving in the mail.
Update 8-19-2011: It appears the text of “Pioneer Girl” has been removed from the paper mentioned below.
A reader here (thank you, Angela!) pointed out to me an online source now available for reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s unpublished memoirs, “Pioneer Girl”. I have often quoted from this memoir on this site, and have also had many queries as to where and how to get a copy. There are two archives in Missouri which have the manuscript but, as I understand it, are unable to publish it due to copyright ownership disputes. My copy came by way of one of these archives.
The online source you may all access and read is part of a Ph.D. thesis titled, Woman Writes Herself: Exploring Identity Construction in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Pioneer Girl,” by Nichole Mancino. Laura’s manuscript is included starting on page 215 in Appendix A. Ms. Mancino reproduces the manuscript in her thesis with permission and I ask all of you to respect the copyright: Read and enjoy but do not reproduce it either on the web or in other forms without permission.
The paper can be found at: OhioLINK ETD Center
http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi/Mancino%20Nicole.pdf?bgsu1282590942
The owners of the television series claimed ownership of the name “Little House on the Prairie” in a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles in 2008. The lawsuit wanted the museum to change its trademark, website and store names. Friendly Family Productions said it had no issue with the museum using the words “little house on the prairie” to describe the site or the museum, because that descriptive use does not infringe on their trademark. They, however, objected to the use applied to merchandise for sale in the store and on the website, as well as having the name “Little House on the Prairie” used on merchandise, in what they consider an unlicensed use of the name.
The Little House on the Prairie, Inc., is a non-profit organization operated by Bill Kurtis and Jean Schodorf. Kurtis told the Montgomery County Chronicle, ““The Little House site and museum will continue with minimal change.”
A settlement was reached January 24, 2011 in New York, but its contents were not disclosed. The agreement reached will not become final until signed by all parties in early February.
Though neither party is allowed to discuss the specifics of the agreement, it should be noted the website of the Kansas museum is no longer available.
When I lived out west for ten years or so, and it never snowed and summers were brown and winters were rainy, the book I most read and reread when I was homesick was “The Long Winter”. I can’t say it’s my favorite of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, but it is the one whose atmosphere and descriptions most reminded me of home in Minnesota.
You see, we love our lakes and the rich green of summer, but it’s the crisp whiteness of winter, with the sparkle of the snow and bite of the air that really defines my home state for me. Though “The Long Winter” takes place in South Dakota, the winters are not far different. I’ve never had to twist hay to stay warm, nor gone hungry, but I have had to struggle through snow drifts up to my waist while a wind as sharp as a knife cut through me as I carried heated water from the house to the livestock in the barn. And, yes, I loved every minute of it.
But who could have loved The Long Winter? Who could have loved the isolation and endless storms? Who could have loved the snow that measured as much as eleven feet deep and buried houses and towns? Curiously enough, the people who loved it were the ones who lived it. In a history of that winter of 1880-1881, written in 1904, it says, “…it is the almost universal testimony of the pioneers that they have never gotten more real enjoyment out of a winter than they did from the winter of the big blockade.” Reflecting upon that winter, Laura wrote in 1917, “There is something in living close to the great elemental forces of nature that causes people to rise above small annoyances and discomforts.”
Though they had the disadvantage of not having supplies brought from the East, as many of their pioneer neighbors did, the Ingalls did have the advantage of long acquaintance with winters in nearby regions, including on the Minnesota prairie in Walnut Grove (“On the Banks of Plum Creek”) only 110 miles away from De Smet, South Dakota. They knew how to survive and adapt.
“On the 2nd of February, when it appeared that nature had exhausted all of her resources in supplying material for drifts, a snow storm set in which continued without cessation for nine days. In the towns the streets were filled with solid drifts to the tops of the buildings and tunneling was resorted to to secure passage about town. Farmers found their homes and their barns completely covered and were compelled to tunnel down to reach and feed their stock. Among the homesteaders, “straw barns” were very popular, affording a cheap and comfortable protection for stock and these became hidden under the general level of the snow on the prairies and a favorite method of reaching stock stabled in this way was through a well sunk directly down from above, through which provender was carried in. The supply of fuel and necessities for living were soon exhausted. There were few mills in the country and flour soon was not obtainable, but there was wheat in abundance and it was ground into a sort of graham in coffee mills.
“The farmers burned hay and in the towns the lumber from the yards, small buildings, bridges, fences, particularly the snow fences along the railways, were burned.” All winter long the Ingalls family twisted hay to keep warm. In her memoirs, Laura said, “When the thermometer stands at 25 to 40 below zero and a blizzard wind is raging, it takes a great deal of twisted hay to keep an unfinished shack warm enough to live in.”
“One of the great inconveniences was the lack of oil for lighting. The country was new and the production of lard and tallow only as yet nominal. The kerosene at the stores lasted but a few days after the trains stopped, and many families were compelled for several months to sit in darkness,” said Doane Robinson. Laura described the button light Ma made in “The Long Winter”, adding in her memoirs, “…we did not use the light in the evenings, but kept it for an emergency…”
“In every town the business men organized themselves into relief committees to see that there was an equitable distribution of such supplies as could be secured, and they extended their relief work over all of the adjacent territory so that all were supplied, and, while there was great hardship, there was very little real suffering,” Robinson wrote. All of which fits Laura’s account of those times.
One thing left out of Laura’s book, “The Long Winter”, which she included in her unpublished memoirs was the presence in their house of another couple, George and Maggie Masters. The history by Doane Robinson describes situations like these, “Several families would colonize in one habitation to save fuel.” In the case of the Ingalls, the wife gave birth during that winter. Laura, in her unpublished memoirs, said, “Maggie Masters’ baby was born in her room upstairs with only Ma and Mrs. Garland to help her. There was no doctor to be had.”
George Masters, the husband, considered himself a paying guest and refused to share the work. “Times like these test people, and we were getting to know George Masters,” Laura wrote. “We had not asked him and Maggie to live with us, but they were out of money and had no other place to go, so they stayed on. This was all right and they would have been welcome, but instead of taking hold and helping with good spirit, share and share alike, George gave himself all the airs of a boarder, because he had promised to pay his share of the living expenses when work opened up in the spring… Pa did all the chores while George sat by the fire… George lay snug in his bed until his breakfast was ready. He was always first at the table… he would not deny himself even for Maggie–as we did, because she was nursing the baby.” Clearly, even after all the years, Laura was no fan of George Masters, though “in justice” she did admit he paid them the following year, but didn’t count the value of the Ingalls’ milk, potatoes, hay, and work. And, yes, he was a relative of Genevee Masters, the girl who became part of the much-loathed combination character Nellie Oleson.
Laura’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, used this story of shared habitation during a hard winter, to an extent, in her novel, “The Young Pioneers” (originally published as “Let the Hurricane Roar”).
Though Laura’s story of the Hard Winter ended in the spring with the warming Chinook winds, for the area the melting snow brought catastrophic floods as “the prairies became one vast lake” with destructive flooding to towns and cities as the rivers flooded.
Given the severity of the winter, one would think those who survived it, and those who had thought to settle this land, would have been deterred, but no. “It would seem that the terrible winter and the great disasters following would have had the effect of suspending immigration to Dakota, but no such result followed. Everywhere the prospective settlers were gathered, awaiting the raising of the blockade that they might flock in and, except in the flooded section along the Missouri, the territory was blessed with an abundant harvest.”
Based on the arrival in America of Edmund and Francis Ingalls in 1628, and at the rate they and their families reproduced at an average of ten offspring per generation over the next 3+ centuries, it can be conclusively proven that every single person on the planet is, in fact, an Ingalls.
The only original “Little House” as described in Laura’s books that is still standing is the Surveyor’s House from “By the Shores of Silver Lake.” It is not, however, in its original location. The house was moved into the town of DeSmet, South Dakota.
Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder were quite small in stature, especially by current standards. Laura was 4 feet 11 inches tall, and Almanzo was 5 feet 4 inches tall. They were not, however, much below average for the time they were born. As part of my research into Civil War Missouri I’ve been through a considerable number of records which indicate few women in 1865 were more than 5 feet tall. You can browse these records on my Civil War St. Louis website. If you visit Laura and Almanzo’s Rocky Ridge home in Mansfield, Missouri you’ll see the custom-made counters in Laura’s kitchen are built quite low to be comfortable for her to work at.
Searching back through Almanzo Wilder’s family history yields no other person named Almanzo. A name origin source says Almanzo is an Old German name meaning “precious man”.
The School for the Blind Mary Ingalls attended in Vinton, Iowa is still open and in operation.
Carrie Ingall’s husband, David Nevin Swanzey, named Mount Rushmore.
Laura Ingalls Wilder spoke Swedish. A neighbor in the Big Woods taught Laura Swedish as a child.
Laura had two sets of “double cousins”. Double cousins are cousins from families where the parents are brothers and sisters from the same two families. In this case Charles “Pa” Ingalls married Caroline “Ma” Quiner. Pa’s brother Peter Ingalls married Ma’s sister Eliza Ann Quiner, having at least 6 children. Also Pa’s sister Pauline Ingalls married Ma’s brother Henry Quiner, having at least 7 children. These children were Laura, Mary, Carrie, and Grace Ingalls’ double-cousins.
Laura’s mother, Caroline Lake Quiner, lost her father, Henry Newton Quiner, when his ship wrecked in a storm on the Great Lakes in October 1844. Hurricane force winds from a storm October 19, 1844 also pushed waters into the city of Buffalo, New York causing disastrous flooding and numerous deaths. About a month after her father’s death, Caroline’s mother gave birth to another child, son Thomas Lewis Quiner. This is the Uncle Tom who told the story of the expedition to the Black Hills.
more to come…
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