Laura Ingalls Wilder

 Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

Laura was born February 7, 1867, seven miles north of the village of Pepin in the "Big Woods" of Wisconsin, to Charles Phillip Ingalls and Caroline Lake (Quiner) Ingalls. She was the second of five children, following Mary Amelia, who went blind in her teens.Their three younger siblings were Caroline Celestia, Charles Frederick (who died in infancy), and Grace Pearl. Her birth site is commemorated by a replica log cabin, the Little House Wayside. Life there formed the basis for her first book, Little House in the Big Woods
Laura was a descendant of the Delano family, relatives of the 32nd president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose progenitor emigrated on the Mayflower in 1620, and of Edmund Rice, who emigrated in 1638 to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One paternal ancestor, Edmund Ingalls, was born on June 27, 1586, in Skirbeck, Lincolnshire, England, and emigrated to America, where he died in Lynn, Massachusetts, on September 16, 1648.

An invitation to submit an article to the Missouri Ruralist in 1911 led to Laura's permanent position as a columnist and editor with that publication, which she held until the mid-1920s. She also took a paid position with the local Farm Loan Association, dispensing small loans to local farmers.
Laura's column in the Ruralist, "As a Farm Woman Thinks," introduced her to a loyal audience of rural Ozarkians, who enjoyed her regular columns. Her topics ranged from home and family to World War I and other world events, and to the fascinating world travels of Rose and her own thoughts on the increasing options offered to women during this era. While they were never wealthy until the "Little House" books began to achieve popularity, the farming operation and Laura's income from writing and the Farm Loan Association provided a stable living.
"[By] 1924," notes professor and scholar John Miller, "[a]fter more than a decade of writing for farm papers, Laura had become a disciplined writer, able to produce thoughtful, readable prose for a general audience." At this time, Rose helped her publish two articles describing the interior of the farmhouse, in Country Gentleman magazine.
It was also around this time that Rose began intensively encouraging Laura to improve her writing skills with a view toward greater success as a writer such as Rose had already achieved. The Wilders, according to Professor Miller, had come to "[depend] on annual income subsidies from their increasingly famous and successful daughter." They both had concluded that the solution for improving their retirement income was for Laura to become a successful writer herself. However, the "project never proceeded very far."
In 1928, Rose hired out the construction of an English-style stone cottage for her parents on property adjacent to the farmhouse they had personally built themselves and still lived in. She remodeled and took it over.

Upon Rose's departure from Rocky Ridge Farm, her parents at once moved back into the farmhouse they had built, which had most recently been occupied by her friends but not she herself. From 1935, Laura and Almanzo were alone at Rocky Ridge Farm. Most of the surrounding area (including the property with the stone cottage Rose had built for them) were sold, but they still kept some farm animals and tended their flower beds and vegetable gardens. Almost daily, carloads of fans stopped by, eager to meet "Laura" of the Little House books.
They lived independently and without financial worries until Almanzo's death at the farm in 1949 at age 92. Laura remained on the farm. For the next eight years, she lived alone, looked after by a circle of neighbors and friends. She continued an active correspondence with her editors, many fans, and friends during these years.
In autumn 1956, 89-year-old Laura was severely ill from undiagnosed diabetes and a weakening heart. She was hospitalized by Rose who had arrived for Thanksgiving, and was able to return home on the day after Christmas. But she declined rapidly from that point, and died in her sleep at home on February 10, 1957, three days after her ninetieth birthday. She was buried beside Almanzo at the Mansfield cemetery. Rose was buried next to them upon her death in 1968.