20. The legal description of the 160 acres was SW 1/4 of Section 27, Township 24 North, Range 15 West. The transaction was recorded in Deed Book F, 488, and Mortgage Record Book A, 545–46, Pepin County Courthouse, Durand, Wis. See also Zochert, Laura, 15–17.
21. LIW, Little House in the Big Woods, 6–7, 12, 31, 45, 102, 119, 186, 194, 212, 216. See also LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
22. Richard N. Current, Civil War Era, 452–54; Zochert, Laura, 20; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 31–32. The transactions were recorded in Deed Book F, 410, 490, Deed Book G, 162, 164, and Mortgage Record Book C, 67, Pepin County Courthouse, Durand, Wis.
23. Zochert, Laura, 23; Warranty Deed Book D, 121–22, Montgomery County Courthouse, Independence, Kans.
24. Warranty Deed Book 11, 381, Montgomery County Courthouse, Independence, Kans. But also see Zochert, Laura, 38.
25. James R. Shortridge, Peopling the Plains: Who Settled Where in Frontier Kansas (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 46–49; William F. Zornow, Kansas: A History of the Jayhawk State (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957), 161–63.
26. L. Wallace Duncan, History of Montgomery County, Kansas (Iola, Kans.: Press of Iola Register, 1903), 43, 79.
27. In Little House on the Prairie, Laura wrote that they were forty miles from town, which may explain why she and Rose were looking around in Oklahoma and never found the place when they drove out in the 1930s to do research for the book (76). The actual location was the SW 1/4 of Section 36-33-14; Zochert, Laura, 39, 43; 1870 Manuscript Census.
28. 1870 Manuscript Census.
29. Ibid.; Shortridge, Peopling the Plains, 49.
30. Willard H. Rollings, The Osage: An Ethnocultural Study of Hegemony on the Prairie-Plains (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992); John J. Mathews, The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), 650–92.
31. H. Craig Miner and William E. Unrau, The End of Indian Kansas: A Study of Cultural Revolution, 1854–1871 (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978), 107–8.
32. Ibid., 117.
33. Ibid., 121–23; Paul W. Gates, Fifty Million Acres: Conflicts over Kansas Land Policy, 1854–1890 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1954), 194–206.
34. Gates, Fifty Million Acres, 221–22.
35. Ibid., 222; Miner and Unrau, End of Indian Kansas, 125, 138.
36. LIW, Little House on the Prairie, 52–65, 149–71, 185–98. In telling about their Kansas adventures, Laura said that Carrie had come with them from Wisconsin, although she was not actually born until the family arrived in Kansas.
37. Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 41–43; Zochert, Laura, 46–51. Later, Laura would suggest that her father had been part of a posse that dispatched the bloody Bender family, who robbed and killed passing travelers who visited their store in nearby Labette County on the road between Fort Scott and Independence. She said that she had avoiding writing about it in her novels because the story was inappropriate for young readers. She was no doubt mistaken in this, however, since the Benders did not arrive until 1871, after the Ingallses had left Kansas and returned to Wisconsin (LIW and RWL, A Little House Sampler, ed. William T. Anderson [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988], 220–22; Edith Connelley Ross, “The Bloody Benders,” Kansas Historical Collections 17 [1926–1928], 464–79).
38. In Little House in the Big Woods Wilder spelled the family's name “Huleatt” (180); the 1870 Manuscript Census gave it as “Hewlet.”
39. LIW, Little House in the Big Woods, 178; 1870 Manuscript Census.
40. LIW, Little House in the Big Woods, 12–13, 199–202; Durand Times, October 10, 1871.
41. LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
42. Ibid.; Notes from Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society (Pepin) 6 (May 1981): 2; LIW, Little House in the Big Woods, 64, 131–55; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 42–43.
43. Zochert, Laura, 52–53; Notes from Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society (Pepin) 16 (May 1991): 3.
44. Zochert, Laura, 52–55.
45. LIW, Little House in the Big Woods, 84–85; Laura Ingalls Wilder Lore 2 (fall 1976): 7. The book was 761 pages long and published in 1871.
46. Notes from Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society (Pepin) 7 (May 1982): 2, 4; A Pathway through Pepin's History (Pepin, Wis.: Pepin Commercial Club, n.d.), 7. A high degree of social democracy and community involvement is suggested by the presence of those traits in nearby Trempeleau County, as described in Merle Curti, The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), 112–15, 139.
47. LIW, Little House in the Big Woods, 33–36, 39.
48. Ibid., 28–33, 38. On the limited alternatives available to frontier women, see Julie Roy Jeffrey, Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–1880 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1979), xvi, 10, 62, 190; Glenda Riley, The Female Frontier: A Comparative View of Women on the Prairie and the Plains (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), 3–4, 76; and Deborah Fink, Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 65–67. Elizabeth Jameson, however, notes the creativity and assertiveness demonstrated by many western women in playing out their prescribed roles in “Women as Workers, Women as Civilizers: True Womanhood in the American West,” in The Women's West, ed. Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson, 148–64 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987).
49. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; LIW, Little House in Big Woods, 44, 238.
50. Deed Book J, 150, Pepin County Courthouse, Durand, Wis.; Henry and Polly Quiner also received one thousand dollars for their half, from Oscar Anderson. Deed Book J, 160, Pepin County Courthouse, Durand, Wis.; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 46–49; Zochert, Laura, 63–67.
51. Zochert, Laura, 72.
52. Charles W. Howe, ed., A Half Century of Progress: Walnut Grove, Minnesota and Vicinity, from 1866 to 1916 (Walnut Grove, Minn.: Walnut Grove Tribune, 1916), 3–4, 39–40; William T. Anderson, The Walnut Grove Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Walnut Grove, Minn.: Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, 1987), 13, 15.
53. Webb and Swedberg, Redwood: The Story of a County, 134–36.
54. Quoted in ibid., 133.
55. Anderson, Walnut Grove Story, 13. The farm was located on the northwest corner of Section 18, Township 109, Range 38. Charles Ingalls made final payment on the farm on July 7, 1876 (Redwood County Deed Record No. 5, 411–13, Redwood County Courthouse, Redwood Falls, Minn.).
56. Webb and Swedberg, Redwood, 155; Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge, The History of Redwood County, Minnesota (Chicago: H. C. Cooper Jr., 1916), 1:266; Annette Atkins, Harvest of Grief: Grasshopper Plagues and Public Assistance in Minnesota, 1873–1878 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1984), 13–29.
57. Zochert, Laura, 73–78; Anderson, Walnut Grove Story, 15; Laura Ingalls Wilder Lore 6 (fall–winter 1980): 5.
58. Zochert, Laura, 81–83; LIW, On the Banks of Plum Creek, 172–76.
59. LIW, “Prairie Girl.”
60. The transaction was recorded in Redwood County Deed Record No. 5, 412.
61. Edwin C. Bailey, Past and Present of Winneshiek County, Iowa (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1913), 1:102–4; W. E. Alexander, History of Winneshiek and Allamakee Counties, Iowa (Sioux City: Western, 1882), 120, 180–81.
62. Bailey, Past and Present, 1:7–9, 55–59, 65–66.
63. Zochert, Laura, 98; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 65; Charles H. Sparks, History of Winneshiek County with Biographical Sketches of Its Eminent Men (Decorah, Iowa: J. A. Leonard, 1877), 71–72.
64. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; Zochert, Laura, 99–100.
65. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; Zochert, Laura, 101, 107.
66. Zochert, Laura, 106, 110; Decorah Republican, February 11, 1876, March 1, 15, June 7, 1878.
67. Wilder's “Pioneer Girl” manuscript is invaluable for this entire chapter, but this paragraph and the several following ones are especially dependent upon it.
&n
bsp; 68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.; Zochert, Laura, 112.
70. Zochert, Laura, 117–19.
71. LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid.; Howe, Half Century of Progress, 4; display with election results at LIW Museum, Walnut Grove, Minn.
75. LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
2. Schoolgirl and Courting Days, 1879–1885
1. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; Zochert, Laura, 129–30.
2. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; Zochert, Laura, 130–31.
3. Herbert S. Schell, History of South Dakota, 3rd. ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), 158–74.
4. “Alexander Mitchell,” Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), 8:39–40; Robert J. Casey and W. A. S. Douglas, Pioneer Railroad: The Story of the Chicago and North Western System (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948), 135–38.
5. Casey and Douglas, Pioneer Railroad, 161–65; James F. Hamburg, The Influence of Railroads upon the Processes and Patterns of Settlement in South Dakota (New York: Arno Press, 1981), 82–116.
6. Kenneth Hammer, “Dakota Railroads” (Ph.D. diss., South Dakota State University, 1966), 183–201. On the Dakota, or Sioux, Indians, see Royal B. Hassrick, et al., The Sioux: Life and Customs of a Warrior Society (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964); James H. Howard, The Dakota or Sioux Indians: A Study in Human Ecology (Vermillion: Dakota Museum, 1966); Robert M. Utley, The Last Days of the Sioux Nation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963).
7. George W. Kingsbury, History of Dakota Territory (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1915), 2:1053–59.
8. LIW, By the Shores of Silver Lake, 61–62.
9. Brookings County Press, March 27, July 10, 24, August 21, 1879; Brookings County History Book Committee, Brookings County History Book (Freeman, S.Dak.: Pine Hill Press, 1989), 45.
10. Brookings County Press, May 15, August 21, September 11, October 9, 23, 30, November 6, 1879 (quotation from September 25).
11. LIW, By the Shores of Silver Lake, 41, 57.
12. Ibid., 58–59; John U. Terrell, Black Robe: The Life of Pierre-Jean De Smet, Missionary, Explorer and Pioneer (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964).
13. LIW, By the Shores of Silver Lake, 158–61, 168–71, 209–13.
14. Ibid., 183–86; De Smet News, June 6, 1930 (fiftieth anniversary issue).
15. Charles Ingalls, Homestead Application No. 4091 (Final Certificate No. 2708), May 11, 1886, National Archives; LIW, By the Shores of Silver Lake, 233–37.
16. LIW, By the Shores of Silver Lake, 240–42; LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
17. LIW, By the Shores of Silver Lake, 241–42.
18. Hamburg, Influence of Railroads, 90; On T-towns, see John C. Hudson, Plains Country Towns (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), chap. 7; Town Lot Record Book No. 1, 3–4, Kingsbury County Courthouse, De Smet, S.Dak.
19. A map published in the De Smet Leader on September 22, 1883, identified the locations of all the businesses in town and several of the residences.
20. LIW, By the Shores of Silver Lake, 247–48, 272–73.
21. Ibid., 267–75; LIW, The Long Winter, 28–31. Although Wilder made it sound as if her mother had been averse to fieldwork in The Long Winter (4), in her “Pioneer Girl” manuscript she indicated that her mother, in fact, did help in the field if it was necessary. That women's fieldwork was not uncommon is made clear by Riley, Female Frontier, 53, 117–18, 132–33; Fink, Agrarian Women, 68–69; Janet M. Labrie, “The Depiction of Women's Field Work in Rural Fiction,” Agricultural History 67 (spring 1993): 123–27.
22. Schell, History of South Dakota, 180–88; LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; LIW, The Long Winter, 74.
23. LIW, The Long Winter, 77–80; John E. Miller, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town: Where History and Literature Meet (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 58–59.
24. LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
25. LIW, The Long Winter, 288.
26. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; LIW to RWL, March 7, 1938, Box 13, Lane Papers.
27. LIW, The Long Winter, 127, 133–35, 140, 143–44, 147, 157, 169; LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
28. In The Long Winter, Wilder and Lane told the story somewhat differently and at much greater length from the way Wilder had originally related it in “Pioneer Girl” (262–85, 295–308).
29. In Little Town on the Prairie, Wilder changed Clayson's name to Clancy (35–46, 56).
30. Ibid., 28, 37, 48–49, 111–12, 307.
31. LIW, The Long Winter, 65, 129, 175; LIW, On the Banks of Plum Creek, 55–60, 105, 173–76; LIW, Little Town on the Prairie, 8, 11–13.
32. LIW, Little Town on the Prairie, 93–94, 184, 228.
33. Ibid., 41–46, 56.
34. LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.; LIW, Little Town on the Prairie, 127–36, 145–84.
37. LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
38. Ibid.; LIW, Little Town on the Prairie, 239–51.
39. LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
40. Miller, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town, 117–21.
41. Ibid., 118–20.
42. 1880 Manuscript Census.
43. Miller, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town, 122–23, 140.
44. De Smet Leader, August 9, 1884; Laura Ingalls Wilder Lore 6 (fall–winter 1980): 6; LIW, Little Town on the Prairie, 277.
45. Grade ten was added in 1893, eleven in 1899, and twelve in 1908. John E. Miller, “End of an Era: De Smet High School Class of 1912,” South Dakota History 20 (fall 1990): 201.
46. Miller, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town, chap. 4.
47. Ibid., 60–61; LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; LIW to RWL, March 7, 1938, Box 13, Lane Papers.
48. 1880 Manuscript Census.
49. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; LIW, Little Town on the Prairie, 197–99.
50. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; LIW, These Happy Golden Years, 100, 114–22, 130, 133–34.
51. Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmers'Frontier, 1865–1900 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 44, 104–5; Ray A. Billington and Martin Ridge, Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier, 5th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1982), 634–36.
52. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; LIW, These Happy Golden Years, 96–98.
53. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; Miller, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town, chap. 7.
54. LIW, “Pioneer Girl.” Contract on display at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Mansfield, Mo.
55. LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
56. Ibid. In These Happy Golden Years, Wilder melded Stella into the character of Nellie Oleson (171–81).
57. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; LIW, These Happy Golden Years, 185–99.
58. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; LIW, These Happy Golden Years, 214–16.
59. LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
60. Ibid.; Kingsbury, History of Dakota Territory, 2:1363–70. Several De Smetites went to New Orleans (De Smet Leader, February 14, March 7, 1885).
61. Contract on display at Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, Mansfield, Mo.; LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
62. Ibid.; AJW, Homestead Application No. 3610 (Final Certificate No. 1490), September 16, 1884, National Archives.
63. LIW, “Pioneer Girl”; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 127–28.
64. LIW, “Pioneer Girl.”
65. Ibid.
3. The Joys and Sorrows of Early Married Life, 1885–1894
1. LIW, The First Four Years, 3–6.
2. William T. Anderson, The Story of the Wilders (by the author, 1973), 2–5; Dorothy Smith, The Wilder Family Story (Malone, N.Y.: Industrial Press, 1972), 7–8.
3. Anderson, Story of the Wilders, 5–6; Smith, Wilder Family Story, 15–18, 21.
4. William T. Anderson, ed., A Wilder in the West: The Story of Eliza Jane Wilder (De Smet, S.Dak.: Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, 1985).
5. Ibid., 5; AJW, Homestead Application No. 3610 (Final Certificate No. 1490), September 16, 1884, AJW, Cash Entr
y No. 10979, August 6, 1891, National Archives.
6. “I wrote Free Land,” Rose told the Saturday Evening Post, “because I could no longer bear hearing people say, ‘But everything is so changed now; there's no more free land.’ Everything certainly is changed now, but as to really ‘free’ land, there never was any” (Saturday Evening Post 210 [March 5, 1938]: 34).
7. Royal's and Eliza's claims are also on file at the National Archives. They are also recorded in Tract Book 22 for South Dakota, Township 111 North, Range 56 West.
8. See Tract Book 22 referred to in previous note.
9. For Almanzo's homestead's file, see footnote 5, above.
10. LIW, The First Four Years, 23, 49, 50, 52.
11. Ibid., 11–14, 22, 24, 29, 45; LIW and RWL, Little House Sampler, ed. Anderson, 9.
12. Ibid., 131–32; LIW, The First Four Years, 22.
13. De Smet Leader, July 7, 28, August 11, September 15, October 27, November 10, December 8, 15, 1883, August 30, 1884.
14. Ibid., August 11, 1883, June 5, 12, 26, 1886, May 7, 21, 1887.
15. Ibid., November 13, 1886.
16. Ibid., November 7, 1885, August 7, 28, November 6, December 11, 1886.
17. Ibid., February 17, April 7, 1883, February 6, August 15, September 18, 1886, February 26, 1887.
18. Ibid., July 11, December 26, 1885, January 9, April 17, September 11, December 25, 1886, January 15, March 26, April 16, August 6, 1887.
19. LIW, The First Four Years, 48.
20. Ibid., 43–44, 52, 54; De Smet Leader, July 3, August 7, 1886.
21. LIW, The First Four Years, 62–63.
22. Ibid., 70–72.
23. Grace Ingalls Diary, January 12, March 20, 1887, March 5, 1888, Box 17, Lane Papers.
24. LIW, The First Four Years, 102–3, 116.
25. Ibid., 72–73; De Smet Leader, July 30, August 6, September 3, 1887.
26. LIW, The First Four Years, 82–83; De Smet Leader, July 30, 1887.
27. De Smet Leader, September 26, October 3, 1885, May 14, 1887; LIW, The First Four Years, 87–88.
28. Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 134; LIW, The First Four Years, 88; Grace Ingalls Diary, March 5, April 18, 1888, Box 17, Lane Papers.
29. LIW, The First Four Years, 89.
30. Ibid., 89–90. Almanzo's sworn affidavit for purchasing the land later as a preemption claim said that they were back at the tree claim by April 1888 (AJW, Cash Entry No. 10979, August 6, 1891, National Archives).
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