I am the only one of the C. P. Ingalls family left and Rose is the only grandchild. There are Wilder and Ingalls kin scattered all over the country, but the Almanzo Wilder branch will die out with us. . . .
There is material there for an interesting story
The “atom bomb test” that Laura refers to in this letter was the first of twenty-three nuclear weapons tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
JULY 1, 1946
Dear Dorothy,
The “Log of the Edith” arrived safely and I do thank you for it and for binding it so nicely. We enjoyed reading it very much. Manly especially enjoyed reading “The Log” and says to thank you for him.
There is material there for an interesting story, but it would need a great deal of padding to make it salable. A lot of research work would need to be done to make the fiction added true in detail to the time and the different places mentioned.
There should be a reason for the trip and an idea followed as a thread through it all to the end accomplished.
I can see it all as it should be and if I were a few years younger would like to rewrite it myself. Of course as you so kindly say it is not expected of me now. Nor do I know of anyone who would undertake it at the present time. Rose is so tied up and so overworked or I would suggest it to her.
Perhaps some time later someone will like to have the chance to use the material. If Carl feels like trying, tell him there must always be a first time.
Here’s hoping the atom bomb test tonight will do no harm more than expected.
Love,
Aunt Bessie
Going back anywhere is apt to disillusion
Carrie Ingalls Swanzey died in Rapid City after a short illness on June 2, 1946. She was buried with her family in De Smet.
OCTOBER 1, 1946
Dear Mrs. Carson,
Your letter should have been answered before now but I hope you will pardon the delay. My mail got ahead of me and piled up on my desk. Being almost eighty years old slows one down.
We did not go to S. Dakota this summer.
Carrie died suddenly so there was not time for us to get there while she lived and conditions of travel were such that we could not attempt the journey. We did not know Carrie was ill until we got a message that she was dead. After that we received delayed telegrams and miss-sent letters.
I have no snapshot of Almanzo nor myself. I’m sorry. Perhaps you will like my printed photos. Or have I sent you them before?
Thank you for your photo. You look like a person it would be pleasant to know.
We left S. Dakota because Almanzo could no longer endure the winters there.
We are in very good health considering our age. He will be ninety in February, though I think I wrote you that before. I have so many letters to write that I am apt to repeat myself.
Our weather is quite cool now at night, warm and sunny daytimes.
I too long sometimes for the prairies but S. Dakota has changed so much it is a disappointment when we go back. I think going back anywhere is apt to disillusion anyone.
With kindest regards, I am
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
There is a space of years unaccounted for
OCTOBER 28, 1946
Dear Ida Carson,
Thanks for your very interesting letter.
Believe me I love to have your letters, but it is becoming difficult for me to keep up with my correspondence.
I know there is a space of years unaccounted for in the Wilder family history between Farmer Boy and the Little Town on the Prairie. One book anyway, perhaps two, which will remain unwritten. I’ll try to condense them for you.
Almanzo’s father had a friend who moved from N.Y. to eastern Minnesota. He liked it there and Mr. Wilder went out to visit him and look the place over.
Mr. Wilder liked the country so well that he bought a farm near Spring Valley, which is thirty miles south of Rochester, which is the nearest large town. The Wilder family moved to the new farm, all of the family except Royal and Almanzo who stayed behind and ran the old place for a year.
At the end of the year their father and mother were so well satisfied with the new home that they sold the New York farm and Royal and Almanzo drove a team with covered wagon from there to Spring Valley.
One book.
But you know in those days once people started going west they usually kept on going, making stops along the way.
Royal and Almanzo went from Spring Valley to Marshall and later from there to De Smet where they took homesteads and appear once more as characters in the Little House Books.
And all this would make another book. I hope I answered your questions in this synopsis.
You see there was really no reason for the Wilders’ move except to follow Horace Greely’s advice and go west.
If as you suggest we make this the end of our correspondence, please remember that I have enjoyed it and am glad to have known you.
Sincerely your friend,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
FIRST TOURISM AT THE LITTLE HOUSES
Following World War II, American families piled into new cars for summer road trips. Little House readers stopped at Rocky Ridge to meet Laura and Manly, who were always welcoming. Others arrived in De Smet and sought out Aubrey Sherwood for information. He interrupted his editorial duties to show travelers around town and country. “Often I had letters from Mrs. Wilder on my desk, and showed them to the wide-eyed children,” he recalled. When the travelers arrived home, they wrote Laura about their visits.
Esther Clifton described her family’s 1946 trek to South Dakota:
I was born in Bruce, South Dakota, near De Smet. My husband is a professor of Bacteriology at Stanford University and we have two sons, Charles is 8 and John, 6. . . . A friend suggested that we read your Little House books, but Charles couldn’t wait for our reading periods and simply ate them up. When June came I went to the library and got the last four books, intending to have them for summer reading, as we planned to spend the summer in the Middle West. Both boys were absolutely fascinated. . . .
Late in June we went to South Dakota. We spent one night in a camp in Keystone. It seemed strange to me upon leaving that Carrie had lived in Keystone. The next day we stopped in De Smet . . . we all felt we simply could not pass De Smet without trying to find out something about your family. As we drove down the main street the boys kept guessing at buildings—which one had been Pa’s store? I got out—not being at all certain. As I walked down the street I came upon three ladies “visiting.” . . . I told them what I wanted and could hardly believe my ears, for one of the ladies was Mrs. Sterr, who knew. . . . She told us about Carrie’s recent passing, and that you were still living in Missouri. Then she took us to her garage and showed us the old pictures [framed portraits of Pa and Ma] and dishes, trunks etc. [Mrs. Sterr had taken these items from the Ingalls home at Carrie’s request.] She let each of the boys take a little button from Ma’s sewing box and their joy knew no bounds. We saw an old teapot and we were just sure it had been Pa’s.
Another lady, a Mrs. Bowes, drove with us over to the house where your family had lived [the Ingalls home on Third Street]. She was a dear little lady. We came away from De Smet feeling as though we had actually visited all of you.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I have enjoyed your books, too. Just today the librarian sent me a copy of “The Horn Book” magazine and the whole family has enjoyed reading about you. . . . I hope I have not bored you, Mrs. Wilder. We all say thanks a million times for giving us so many happy hours.
The real things haven’t changed
The Carson Pirie Scott department store of Chicago sponsored an eightieth birthday party for Laura at the Merchandise Mart in February 1947. Hordes of children attended; first they witnessed a live radio broadcast of the store’s Hobby Horse Bookstore Presents; Hugh Downs was the announcer. A letter from Laura was read on the air and r
efreshments were served. The guests signed a huge oversize birthday card, which was sent to Laura. It is now displayed at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Museum. Laura was overwhelmed by the honor. By a majority of 1,734 votes in a poll of Chicago children, she was proclaimed the city’s favorite children’s author.
[NO DATE]
Dear Children of Chicago:
I am sorry I cannot make a personal appearance on your program and thank you for wishing me to do so. Instead, I greet you by letter.
I was born in the Little House in the Big Woods of Wisconsin just eighty years ago the 7th of February, and I’m calling this my birthday party. Living through all the Little House books, as told in those stories, I came fifty years ago with Almanzo and our little daughter Rose, to live on our farm in the Ozarks. Rose, now Rose Wilder Lane, grew up and went away. Her home is in Connecticut.
Almanzo and I still live on the farm but are not farming now. We care for our pet bulldog, our comical Rocky Mountain burro and our milk goats. We no longer keep horses but still go driving together in our car. Schoolmates and friends of the Little Town on the Prairie are scattered. Perhaps you would like to hear about them. Ida married her Elmer and went to California where her children and grandchildren are now. Mary Power married the young banker and did not live many years. Nellie Oleson married; later separated from her husband. . . . Cap Garland was killed in an explosion of a threshing machine engine soon after Almanzo and I were married.
[Laura continues by explaining the fates of her parents and sisters, and mentions that Pa’s fiddle is now on exhibit in South Dakota.]
The Little House books are stories of long ago. The way we live and your schools are much different now, so many changes have made living and learning easier. But the real things haven’t changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.
With love to you all and best wishes for your happiness, I am
Sincerely, your friend
Laura Ingalls Wilder
The cards are wonderful
Children from Saginaw, Michigan, sent eightieth-birthday greetings.
FEBRUARY 15, 1947
Dear Miss Dunning,
I have been quite seriously ill and am only now able to be up. This explains the delay in acknowledging the birthday cards sent me from your third grade pupils. The cards are wonderful and I thank them all so much because they made them for me. They are all so quaint and pretty. I don’t see how they could do it.
Dr’s orders are that I shall take it more easy, slowing up on my activities.
There are 225 cards and letters on my desk waiting to be answered and it seems a hopeless task. . . . I shall have to stop writing so much.
Again thanking you and the children I am with love your friend,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
I have thoughts of Burr Oak as a lovely place
Although the Ingalls family lived in Burr Oak, Iowa, in 1876 and 1877, Laura never mentioned the era in her books. In May 1947, L. Dale Ahern, editor of the Decorah Public Opinion, wrote Rose, asking her to confirm that her mother spent time in Burr Oak. Rose replied that Laura “had very clear memories of the place and the people” and would elaborate on them. Laura complied and her letter was printed in the newspaper on June 18, 1947.
Dear Sir:
My family did live in Burr Oak for nearly two years, but I fear my memories of that time will not be very interesting as they are more of the place than the people.
At first we lived in the old Masters Hotel. My parents were partners in the business with the new owners, Mr. and Mrs. Steadman. Their two boys, Jimmy and Reuben, were about the age of my sister Mary and myself and of course we played and quarreled together.
The hotel still stood when Rose saw it a few years ago [1932] as it was then even to the bullet hole in the door between the dining room and kitchen. It was made when the young man of the house, being drunk, shot at his wife who slammed the door between them as she escaped. This had happened some years before, but the bullet hole in the door was thrilling to us children.
Pa used to play his fiddle in the hotel office, and one of the boarders, a Mr. Bisbee, taught me to sing the notes of the musical scale. We stayed there most of the winter, then moved to rooms over Kimball’s grocery.
One night Ma woke Mary and me, telling us to dress quickly. The second building from us, a saloon, was burning and we must be ready to leave quickly if the fire should spread toward us.
Ma and Mary and I stood at the window where we watched the flames and the men in the street carrying buckets of water from the town pump to pour on the fire. Pa was one of them.
The men stood in line. One would fill his bucket and run with it to the fire, while the next man instantly took his place. On returning he took his place at the end of the line, which was constantly moving.
But they all stood still for some moments, with the same man at the pump. At every stroke of the pump handle he would throw up his head and shout “Fire.” Then someone pushed him away and took his place. The bucket which he was frantically pumping water [into] had no bottom in it.
The fire was put out after a while and we all went back to bed.
Mary and I were going to school. It seemed to us a big school, but as I remember there were only two rooms. One began in the downstairs room and when advanced enough was promoted upstairs.
Downstairs we learned to sing the multiplication tables to the tune of Yankee Doodle. Next term we went upstairs to the principal whose name was Reid and who came from Decorah. He was an elocutionist and I have always been grateful to him for the training I was given in reading. I still have the old Independent Fifth Reader from which he taught us to give life to “Old Tubal Cain,” “The Polish Boy” and “Paul Revere.”
We had friends among our school mates. I remember their faces and occasionally the names escape me.
In the spring [1877] we moved to a little brick house at the edge of town. It was a happy summer. I loved to go after the cows in the pasture by the creek where the rushes and the blue flags grew and the grass was so fresh and smelled so sweet. I could see the old stone quarry, but was forbidden to go to it as it was filled with water.
Often on Sunday afternoons my friend, Alice Ward, and I would walk out on the other side of town, past the Sims’ rose-covered cottage to the graveyard. We would wander in the shade of the great trees, reading the inscriptions on the tomb stones. The grass was green and short and flowers were everywhere. It was a beautiful, peaceful place.
I spent a great deal of time that summer caring for baby sister Grace, with the big blue eyes and soft fine hair.
That fall we left Burr Oak and drove in our covered wagon back to Walnut Grove, Minnesota, and the banks of Plum Creek.
As you see, these are just dim childish memories, but I have thoughts of Burr Oak as a lovely place.
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
I’ll answer your questions
MAY 22, 1947
Dear Mrs. Carson,
This will be too late for this school term, but I’ll answer your questions anyway.
Pa’s fiddle is in the museum of the [South Dakota] State Historical Society at Pierre. . . .
Ma’s china shepherdess was at home when I left there. I do not know what became of it afterward.
Cap Garland never married. He was single when killed.
I never saw Grandma Ingalls after the dance.
This last year I received a letter from the other Laura’s granddaughter. Her grandmother was dead sometime ago.
Since the books were published I heard from cousin Lena who drove and rode the black ponies.
Mother’s maiden name was Quiner.
Almanzo is not very strong but he is very well for ninety. Rose is 60. I know what it is to be tired for I am eighty.
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilde
r
I have never gotten over my timidity with perfect strangers
JULY 31, 1947
Dear Mr. Sherwood,
Thank you so much for copies of “The De Smet News” sent me recently. You are very kind to me and my “Little House Books” and I appreciate it.
It is surprising how many people are interested in my account of early times. I have letters from all over this country and Canada. One came from Holland this week.
I am glad if I have made them all interested in De Smet for we have always been proud of the town.
A great many people traveling through stop to see me and I am glad not all come this way for I have never gotten over my timidity with perfect strangers.
Under separate cover I am sending you a photo of Pa which you may like to have in your collection of early De Smet souvenirs. If you already have one, perhaps the school library would be the place for it.
Mr. Wilder and I are very well for persons ninety and eighty years old. Still caring for ourselves and our home.
Rose is well and very busy at her little place in Connecticut.
Best regards to yourself and family and any enquiring friends, if any.
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
I am writing to offer you enlarged photographs of Pa and Ma
The Ingalls home in De Smet was sold by Carrie in 1944. After the deaths of Caroline and Mary Ingalls in 1924 and 1928, the house was rented, with a room reserved for Ingalls property. Following Carrie’s death in June 1946, a De Smet friend took charge of the Ingalls belongings. She recognized the oversize portraits of Charles and Caroline Ingalls, and shipped them to Laura. Laura decided her parents’ portraits would complement the exhibit of Pa’s fiddle at the South Dakota State Historical Society.
AUGUST 2, 1947
The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder Page 26