Laura Ingalls Wilder Biography, Family, Children, Autobiography, Museum and Books

Laura Ingalls Wilder Biography

Laura Ingalls Wilder was an American writer. She was born on February 7, 1867 as the second of five children to Charles Phillip Ingalls and Caroline Lake in the Big Woods region of Wisconsin.

She is known for the Little House on the Prairie series of children’s books released from 1932 to 1943 which were based on her childhood in a settler and pioneer family. On December 10, 1882, two months before her 16th birthday, Wilder accepted her first teaching position. She taught three terms in one-room schools when she was not attending school in De Smet. Between 1883 and 1885, she taught three terms of school, worked for the local dressmaker, and attended high school, although she did not graduate.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum

The museum exhibits include artifacts spanning over a century of the lives of the pioneering history described in the “Little House” books. Visitors can see Pa’s fiddle, handwritten manuscripts for the “Little House” books, keepsakes of the Ingalls and Wilder families, tools and articles made by Almanzo, needlework made by Laura and many other items familiar to her loyal readers.

Also featured within the museum is a section dedicated to the life, writings and career of Rose Wilder Lane. Rose’s desk, her manuscripts and souvenirs from world travels are displayed to reflect the creative and exciting life of the Wilders’ only daughter.

The museum at Rocky Ridge Farm is by far the most comprehensive Ingalls and Wilder family collections in the world. It’s truly a testament to Laura’s love for these treasures that they remained safe though all of her travels.

The Laura Ingalls Wilder – Rose Wilder Lane Museum operates solely on sales and con tributions from visitors and members of the non-profit Wilder Home Association. If your interested in the restoration, preservation and education of Laura’s legacy, learn how you can Become a Member.

Ingalls Family

Her parents were Charles Phillip Ingalls and Caroline Lake. She was the second of five children. The eldest was Mary Amelia and the younger siblings were Caroline Celestia, Charles Frederick, and Grace Pearl.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Children

She married Almanzo Wilder on August 25, 1885. On December 5, 1886, Wilder gave birth to her daughter Rose Wilder. In 1889, Wilder gave birth to a son who died at 12 days of age before being named. He was buried at De Smet, Kingsbury County, in South Dakota. On the grave marker, he is remembered as “Baby Son of A. J. Wilder”.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Autobiography

In 1929–1930, already in her early 60s, Wilder began writing her autobiography, titled Pioneer Girl. At the time, it was rejected by publishers and was never released. At her daughter’s urging, Wilder rewrote most of her stories for children. The result was the Little House series of books. In 2014, the South Dakota State Historical Society published an annotated version of Wilder’s autobiography, titled Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography.

Pioneer Girl includes stories that Wilder felt were inappropriate for children: e.g., a man accidentally immolating himself while drunk, and an incident of extreme violence of a local shopkeeper against his wife, which ended with the man’s setting their house on fire. She also describes previously unknown sides of her father’s character. According to its publisher, “Wilder’s fiction, her autobiography, and her real childhood are all distinct things, but they are closely intertwined.” The book’s aim was to explore the differences, including incidents with conflicting or non-existing accounts in one or another of the sources.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Books

• Little House in the Big Woods
• Farmer Boy
• Little House on the Prairie
• On the Banks of Plum Creek
• By the Shores of Silver Lake
• The Long Winter
• Little Town on the Prairie
• These Happy Golden Years

Laura Ingalls Wilder House

It is a historic house museum at 3060 Highway A in Mansfield, Missouri. Also known as Rocky Ridge Farm, it was the her home from 1896 until her death in 1957. She wrote the Little House on the Prairie series while living there. The house, together with the nearby Rock Cottage on the same property, represents one of the few surviving places where she resided. The house is owned by a local non-profit, and is open to the public for tours. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991.

Pioneer Girl Laura Ingalls Wilder

The book offers more history and less fiction: it is presented as Wilder first wrote it, complete with asides to her daughter, no section breaks, and spelling mistakes. Carefully, not to say exhaustively, annotated with research into the places they settled and the people they encountered, it provides a fascinating counterpoint to Wilder’s sterilised chronicle of sunny life on the open prairie. The reality, unsurprisingly, was rather more vicious.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Award

Jacqueline Woodson won the 2018 Wilder Award, the author of more than two dozen books for children and young adults, she was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2015 and is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

Where Is Laura Ingalls Wilder Buried

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Laura Ingalls Wilder Quotes

1. 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 have courage when things go wrong.
2. It is the simple things of life that make living worthwhile, the sweet fundamental things such as love and duty, work and rest, and living close to nature.
3. Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat.
4. Courage and kindness, loyalty, truth, and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.
5. Remember me with smiles and laughter, for that is how I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, then don’t remember me at all.
6. Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.
7. As you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that things truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. It is not the things you have that make you happy. It is love and kindness and helping each other and just plain being good.
8. Let’s be cheerful! We have no more right to steal the brightness out of the day for our own family than we have to steal the purse of a stranger.
9. Every job is good if you do your best and work hard. A man who works hard stinks only to the ones that have nothing to do but smell.
10. The only stupid thing about words is the spelling of them.
11. Remember well, and bear in mind, a constant friend is hard to find.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Facts

1. Wilder was related to one of the Salem “witches.”
2. As a child, Wilder survived a cloud of 3.5 trillion locusts.
3. Wilder lived most of her life in the American South
4. Wilder’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, was a yellow journalist who taught her mother the tricks of the trade.
5. Through her great-grandmother, Margaret Delano Ingalls, Wilder was related to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom she loathed.
6. The Little House books were used as post-WWII propaganda.
7. Wilder had an “adopted” heir she never knew.
8. Wilder never owned a television
9. Laura has been sculpted in butter

Laura Ingalls Wilder School

• MAY
  28
  MONDAY
  WILDER – STUDENT HOLIDAY
• MAY
  31
  THURSDAY
  5TH GRADE JR. ACHIEVEMENT DAY
  6TH GRADE FIELD DAY
• JUN
  1
  FRIDAY
  5TH GRADE FIELD DAY
• JUN
  4
  MONDAY
  6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
  6TH GRADE HONOR’S NIGHT @STEELE
• JUN
  5
  TUESDAY
  8:00 AM – 11:00 AM
  SPANISH SPELLING BEE @WILDER CAFE
• JUN
  6
  WEDNESDAY
  5TH GRADE AWARDS (THROUGHOUT THE DAY)
  6:30 PM
  ALLISON L. STEELE ELC COMMENCEMENT
• JUN
  7
  THURSDAY
  5TH GRADE AWARDS (THROUGHOUT THE DAY)
  WILDER – LAST DAY OF SCHOOL (NO BACKPACKS)
  7:30 PM
  BYRON P. STEELE, II HIGH SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT

Laura Ingalls Wilder Cause Of Death

In autumn 1956, 89-year-old Wilder was severely ill from undiagnosed diabetes and cardiac issues and hospitalized by Lane. She was able to return home on the day after Christmas, however, her health declined after her release from the hospital, and she died in her sleep, at home, on February 10, 1957, three days after her 90th birthday. She was buried beside Almanzo at Mansfield Cemetery in Mansfield. Lane was buried next to them upon her death in 1968.

Laura Ingalls Wilder – Video