I am glad you and your daughter and friends enjoyed my books. I have certainly enjoyed your letter telling me of it.
Yes! I am still quite a busy woman though not as usefully as yourself. You must be very proud of your son and anxious of course. Also glad you are doing your part in the world’s work.
I thank you for your kind letter and good wishes, and with all good wishes for you and yours, I am
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
It was a good and pleasant life with work and play
In February 1945 Congressman Clarence E. Kilburn from Malone, New York, wrote: “It seems Mrs. Kilburn and I have been living with you and Almanzo because we have gotten every one of your books from the Congressional Library. . . . This spring when we get home, we are going to try to locate Almanzo’s old farm. I have been over on the floor of the House and had a visit with Dewey Short, your Member of Congress. He knows your daughter Mrs. Lane, and I didn’t realize until talking with him that she wrote Let the Hurricane Roar. . . . I have read it twice a year ago.” Laura and the congressman corresponded, and on March 9, 1945, she sent him a copy of Rose’s Give Me Liberty. She also spoke passionately of her concern for America.
We are looking forward to our Congress to save us from the situation which is developing and I respectfully beg you to use every effort to preserve the way of life which has proven such a good way all through the long years since “Little House in the Big Woods.”
It was a good and pleasant life with work and play, careful planning and saving. What we accomplished was without help of any kind from anyone. There was no alphabetical relief of any description and if there had been we would not have accepted it. Now here we are at 78 and 88 years old, with our farm idle for lack of help, still doing our own work and paying taxes for the support of dependent children, so their parents need not work at anything else; for old age pensions take care of those same parents when children are grown, thus relieving the children of any responsibility, and all of them from incentive to help themselves.
Rose stopped writing fiction in 1937 and has done nothing but American propaganda since. She says she doesn’t think this is the time for any American to do anything else.
Congressman Kilburn responded that “I agree with you about Congress, and imagine we feel the same.” He also inquired about the Wilders’ lives after the book series: “If you get a chance I would greatly appreciate hearing from you again giving me a little more on what happened to you since ‘These Happy Golden Years.’”
Laura replied:
Both Mr. Wilder and myself were much interested in your letter. . . . The Wilder farm, north and west of Burke, on the old map, belonged to Almanzo’s uncle, William Wilder. The farm described in Farmer Boy, belonging to Almanzo’s father, was south and west of Burke, about ½ mile south of the main road from Malone to Burke and nearly midway between the two towns. Our daughter Rose Wilder Lane, found the farm a few years ago. . . .
Almanzo came with his father’s family to eastern Minnesota and from there he went to Dakota Ter. where he again enters the story in By the Shores of Silver Lake. And from there on through the series. . . .
In those days, you know, young men went west to “grow up with the country.” I am the little Laura, grown up now. It may interest you to know that the names, dates and circumstances of all the books are actually true—all true—written from my own and Almanzo’s memories.
It is a long story, filled with sunshine and shadow, that we have lived since These Happy Golden Years.
In the first few years of our marriage we experienced the complete destruction of our crops by hail storms; the loss of our little house by fire; the loss of Almanzo’s health from a stroke of paralysis and then the drouth years of 1892–1893–1894.
In the fall of 1894 we, with our seven year old daughter, Rose, left Dakota, by way of a covered wagon holding all our worldly goods, drawn by our team of horses. We arrived in Mansfield, Missouri, with enough money to make part payment on a rough, rocky forty acres of land and a little left to buy our food for a time. The only building on the land was a one-room log cabin with a rock fireplace, one door but no window. When the door was closed light came in between the logs of the walls where the mud chinking had fallen out. We lived there a year.
Almanzo had recovered from the stroke but was not strong. He changed work with neighbors to build a log barn for his horses and a henhouse for a few hens.
In the spring we planted a garden and together we cleared land of timber. I could never use an ax but I could handle one end of a cross-cut saw and pile brush ready to burn. Almanzo made rails and stove wood out of the trees we cut down. With the rails he fenced the land we cleared; the stove wood he sold in town for 75 cents a wagon load with the top on. I hoed the garden and tended my hens. We sold eggs and potatoes from our new ground planting besides the wood and when we were able to buy a cow and a little pig, we thought we were rich.
After that it was much easier. We worked and saved from year to year, adding to our land until we owned 200 acres, well improved; a fine herd of cows; good hogs and the best laying flock of hens in the country.
These years were not all filled with work. Rose walked three-quarters of a mile to school the second year and after and her schoolmates visited her on Saturdays. She and I played along the little creek near the house. We tamed wild birds and squirrels; picked wild flowers and berries. Almanzo and I often went horseback riding over the hills and through the woods. And always we had our papers and books from the school library for reading in the evenings and on Sunday afternoons.
P.S. I cannot resist telling you that when we were building up our 200-acre farm we also built a 10-room farm house, using mostly material from the farm. We used hand-finished oak lumber from our own trees to panel rooms and build the open stairs, and hand-finished oak beams in the ceiling. At the time there was no planing mill to finish the lumber.
Please pardon me for this extremely long letter. But as we say of one who gets what he richly deserves, “You asked for it.”
“The Long Winter” was on the radio
MAY 4, 1945
Dear Mrs. Masson,
I thank you for your kind appreciation of my books. If they have helped children a little I am very glad indeed.
“The Long Winter” was on the radio, Blue Network last January but I missed hearing it, so do not know how it was presented.
My New York agent, George Bye, will get it in the movies if there is a chance, I am sure. All such details are in his hands. . . .
Things have been rather up in the air ever since
On April 12, 1945, Ursula Nordstrom wrote a chatty letter, inviting Laura to New York City to meet booksellers and librarians. Later that day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died suddenly at Warm Springs, Georgia. While Americans huddled around radios, absorbing the unexpected news, strong cyclones hit Oklahoma, moved east through Missouri, and then entered Illinois. Seven died in Missouri; at Rocky Ridge Farm, Laura and Almanzo barely escaped calamity.
MAY 7, 1945
Dear Miss Nordstrom,
It was a pleasure to have a letter from you and I would have answered sooner, but on the night of April 12 (date of your letter) we went through a cyclone, and things have been rather up in the air ever since.
We were very fortunate in that our house stood, with the loss of only some of the shingles and one of the big windows in the living room. It is one of the wonders of the cyclone that the house was not blown away.
Our big trees in the yard on every side of it were pulled out by the roots, broken and twisted in every shape. Big oaks were thrown across our driveway from both sides and for two weeks we could not drive out, had no telephone connection nor electricity. It was quite a return to former times being isolated with our coal oil lamps for lights. Neighbors’ buildings were blown away . . . highway and country roads were blocked with fallen trees; fences all through the neighborhood were blown flat or torn down. But no
one near us was injured, though they were a few miles away.
You see Almanzo and I have had still another adventure and escaped.
I would love to visit New York and am happy that a welcome still awaits me, but it will have to be at some unknown time in the future.
I am sorry too that I cannot see my way clear to writing another book soon. My mind is filled with what might be written, but I lack the time and energy.
You would be astonished at the number of letters still coming, from five or six a day, to letters from schools enclosing 12 to 20, three such last week, each asking questions. I answer most of them for I cannot bear to disappoint children.
With kindest regards,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
I lost my sense of time in writing these books
A class from Los Virgenes School in Calabasas, California, wrote letters to Laura, which she answered “all in one,” as she said. The children’s teacher received a separate reply.
MAY 7, 1945
Dear Mrs. Kelley,
A fountain pen sometimes plays tricks. Please excuse it. [A blob of ink stained the letter.]
I am sorry I have no photograph I can send you. Perhaps Harpers would send you one for the school if you asked them. The printed ones on the pamphlet enclosed are the best I can do, as our photographer has gone to war.
I am so glad that you and the children enjoy my books and your little school must be delightful; the letters are so nice. I have answered the children’s letters the best I could and hope their curiosity will be satisfied in a measure.
I lost my sense of time in writing these books from memory and it was hard to bring myself altogether back to the present time, so I can understand the children’s point of view.
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
We are having an awful spring
MAY 21, 1945
Dear Carrie,
This is just a note to tell you I have sent De Smet Cemetery Association $5.00 in your name and mine for care of Ingalls family lot. So you need not bother to think of it.
We are having an awful spring. First planting of potatoes and garden seed rotted in the ground it was so cold and wet. Since then the ground has not been dry enough to plow. Corn can’t be planted, hay spoils before it dries and it looks as though we will be needing more food than will be raised this year.
Well! the big oak trees in front and west of the house are all cleared away. A cyclone did it. It uprooted them, just tore them up by the roots. It tore out a big walnut tree by the barn and split the elm by the iris bed. The great, old oak close in front of the house was broken in pieces and trunk split the whole length. Some shingles were torn off the house and the big south window in the front room was blown out, but we were lucky the house didn’t go. A good many houses did, and people were hurt. It was two weeks before we could get the big trees out of our driveway so we could get out. Telephone and electric wires were down two weeks.
Am looking for that letter you were writing at once.
Lots of love,
Laura
I would be glad to have you call on me
Clara J. Webber, a children’s librarian at the Alliance, Ohio, Public Library, noted the intense interest readers showed in the Little House books. She began a long correspondence with Laura Ingalls Wilder, asking her many questions that the children posed.
JUNE 15, 1945
Dear Children,
Thank you for your nice letters. I am glad you like my stories of long ago when I was a little girl.
It was rough riding in covered wagons in those days. It was quite different from riding on soft cushions over springs of a car as we do now, and we did have hard times but we didn’t let them beat us. We had good times and were happy even if we sometimes had bad luck.
I fed chickens and milked cows too for many years after I was married and 300 chicks are a good many to raise, but they are lots of fun to watch grow.
Almanzo and I still like animals. We have a big brown and white bulldog now, three milk goats and a Rocky Mountain burro. They are all spoiled pets.
When our only child Rose was a baby we had a great St. Bernard dog who used to take care of her.
Almanzo is eighty-eight years old . . . and I am seventy-eight.
I am glad you liked to hear Pa’s fiddle in the stories. You may like to know that . . . I gave the fiddle to the South Dakota Historical Society. . . .
If any of you come past here I would be glad to have you call on me, but perhaps you would be disappointed to see Laura so grown up for it has been many years since she was the girl in the stories.
With love to you all, I am
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Please give my love to the children
Miss Crawford of Winfield, Kansas, was one of Laura’s periodic correspondents.
DECEMBER 29, 1945
Dear Miss Crawford,
A little late to send Christmas wishes, but in time to wish you a very happy New Year.
I am glad to hear from you again and also that my books are still popular.
Please give my love to the children of Winfield and Cowley county. Tell them I am wishing them all a very happy New Year.
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
The boundless sweep of the prairie
Teacher Ida Carson read the Little House books to her classes in South Dakota and Iowa.
MARCH 25, 1946
Dear Mrs. Carson,
I am glad to have your letter. It is interesting to hear from someone who knows the Dakota prairies so well and who feels their fascination as I do.
We have been away from them, living here, for more than fifty years, but we still are homesick for Dakota at times. On our several visits back to De Smet we came away still unsatisfied: the country and the town are so changed from the old, free days, that we seem not able to find there what we were looking for. Perhaps it is our lost youth we were seeking in the place where it used to be.
But there is something about the boundless sweep of the prairie that makes it unforgettable. . . .
[Rose’s] two books “Let the Hurricane Roar” and “Free Land” are Dakota stories. Her latest books, “Give Me Liberty” and “The Discovery of Freedom” are well worth reading, especially for educated persons. . . .
Almanzo and I are living by ourselves on the farm where we have lived for fifty years. We do not farm now, being too old for hard work and not able to get help. We have sold a part of the land and what we have is in pasture that we rent. Almanzo is 89 years old and I am 79.
I enclose a brochure, thinking it may interest you. With kindest regards, I am
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
I’m sure they are great kids
APRIL 23, 1946
Dear Mrs. Carson,
Thank you for the picture of your school. The children look so interesting. I’m sure they are great kids.
Pa and Ma, Mary and Grace are buried in the De Smet cemetery. They never went farther west.
Cap Garland was a very real person and did and said the things I have told of him. I never knew of any connection with Hamlin Garland.
I hope you read Farmer Boy sometime. I am sure you would enjoy it.
Royal died many years ago at his home in eastern Minnesota.
I wish you a pleasant visit in S.D. I would be glad to spend some time there this summer, but I suspicion that our traveling days are over.
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Wilders always called me Bessie
Perley Day Wilder was born in 1869, twelve years Almanzo’s junior. Most of his youth was spent on the Wilder farm in Spring Valley, Minnesota. During his early twenties Perley traveled south on the Mississippi on a skiff called Edith. He kept a log of the trip. His daughter Dorothy and her husband, Carl, were visitors on Rocky Ridge.
JUNE 9, 1946
Dear D
orothy and Carl,
The picture [enclosed] is rather faded as you see, but can be photographed and give you a more lasting one. Perley is on the right. My cousin Peter Ingalls is in the middle and cousin Joe Carpenter to the left. You are to keep the picture. The picture of Almanzo was taken from a badly faded photo.
Because there was already a Laura in the family, the Wilders always called me Bessie. . . .
The New Dealers are in control of most publishing houses in New York and because they think Rose’s “Discovery of Freedom” teaches ideas contrary to their plans, they are working against its publication and distribution [this was Rose’s hypothesis]. Even the publishers of the book are trying to stop it, so I doubt if you can get it from them. The address where you can get it is on the printed sheet. I have marked it in red. I am sure you would find the book interesting.
There have been two days of sunshine here. My cough is much better.
We both send love and hope you arrived home safely. We are delighted that you came and shall look forward to seeing you again.
Uncle Almanzo and Aunt Bessie
Impossible for me to dictate another book
JUNE 24, 1946
Dear Mrs. Carson,
I hope you will pardon my delay in answering your letter. I have been so very busy there was no time for letter writing.
It is impossible for me to dictate another book for the reason that there is no one I could dictate it to.
All my books were written in longhand and sent to New York to be typewritten. There is no one here who does such work and I cannot go away to find a stenographer.
Five years after I was married Cap Garland was killed in an explosion of a threshing machine engine. He was an interesting person to know and one of our best friends. . . .
The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder Page 25