Laura Ingalls Wilder-Author

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born February 7 1867 , near the village of Pepin in the "Big Woods" of Wisconsin. In Laura's early childhood, her father settled on land not yet open for homesteading in what was then the Indian Territory near Independence, Kansas--an experience that formed the basis of Ingalls' novel Little House on the Prairie. Within a few years, her father's restless spirit led them on various moves to a preemption claim in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, living with relatives near South Troy, Minnesota, and helping to run a hotel in Burr Oak, Iowa. After a move from Burr Oak back to Walnut Grove, where Charles Ingalls served as the town butcher and Justice of the Peace, Charles accepted a railroad job in the spring of 1879 which led him to eastern Dakota territory, where he was joined by the family in the fall of 1879. Over the winter of 1879-1880, Charles landed a homestead, and called DeSmet, South Dakota, home for the rest of his, Caroline, and Mary's lives. After staying the cold winter of 1879–1880 in the Surveyor's House, the Ingalls family watched the town of DeSmet rise up from the prairie in 1880. The following winter, 1880–1881, one of the most severe on record in the Dakotas, was later described by Wilder in her book, The Long Winter. Once the family was settled in DeSmet, she attended school, made many friends, and met homesteader Almonzo Wilder (1857–1949). This time in her life is well documented in the Little House Books.

Shortly before her sixteenth birthday, Laura accepted her first teaching position, teaching three terms in one-room schools, when not attending school herself in DeSmet. She later admitted that she did not particularly enjoy teaching, but felt the responsibility from a young age to help her family financially, and wage earning opportunities for females were limited. Laura stopped teaching when she married Almanzo Wilder, whom she called Manly, on August 25, 1885. Wilder had achieved a degree of prosperity on his homestead claim, owing to favorable weather in the early 1880s, and the couple's prospects seemed bright. She joined Almanzo in a new home on his claim north of De Smet and agreed to help him make the claim succeed. On December 5, 1886, she gave birth to Rose Wilder (1886–1968) and later, an unnamed son, who died shortly after birth in 1889.

The first few years of marriage held many trials. Complications from a life-threatening bout of diphtheria left Almanzo partially paralyzed. While he eventually regained nearly full use of his legs, he needed a cane to walk for the remainder of his life. This setback, among many others, began a series of disastrous events that included the death of their unnamed newborn son, the destruction of their home and barn by fire, and several years of severe drought that left them in debt, physically ill, and unable to earn a living from their 320 acres of prairie land. The tales of their trials at farming can be found in The First Four Years, a manuscript that was discovered after Rose Wilder Lane's death. Published in 1971, it detailed the hard-fought first four years of marriage on the Dakota prairies.

About 1890, the Wilders left DeSmet South Dakota and spent about a year resting at Wilder's parents' prosperous Spring Valley Minnesota farm before moving briefly to Westville Florida. They sought Florida's climate to improve Wilder's health, but being used to living on the dry plains, he wilted in the heat and Southern humidity. In 1892, they returned to DeSmet and bought a small house (although later accounts by Lane mistakenly indicated it was rented). The Wilders received special permission to start their precocious daughter in school early and took jobs (Almanzo as a day laborer, Laura as a seamstress at a dressmaker's shop) to save enough money to once again start a farm.

In 1894, the hard-pressed young couple moved a final time to Mansfield, Missouri, using their savings to make a down payment on a piece of undeveloped property just outside of town. They named the place Rocky Ridge Farm. What began as about 40 acres of thickly wooded, stone-covered hillside with a windowless cabin, over the next 20 years evolved into a 200-acre relatively prosperous poultry, dairy, and fruit farm. The ramshackle log cabin was eventually replaced with an impressive 10-room farmhouse and outbuildings.

The couple's climb to financial security was a slow process. Initially, the only income the farm produced was from wagon loads of firewood Almanzo sold for 50 cents in town, the result of the backbreaking work of clearing the trees and stones from land that slowly evolved into fertile fields and pastures. The apple trees did not begin to bear fruit for seven years. Barely able to eke out more than a subsistence living on the new farm, the Wilders decided to move into nearby Mansfield in the late 1890s and rent a small house. Almanzo found work as an oil salesman and general delivery man, while Laura took in boarders and served meals to local railroad workers. Recipes that she used are included in the biography, I Remember Laura, by Stephen W. Hines. Any spare time was spent improving the farm and planning for a better future.

Wilder's parents visited around this time, and presented to the couple, as a gift, the deed to the house they had been renting in Mansfield. This was the economic jump start they needed; they eventually sold the house in town and using the proceeds from the sale, were able to move back to the farm permanently, and to complete Rocky Ridge.

Almanzo died in 1949 at the age of ninety-two, Laura died at the age of ninety on February 10, 1957, both on their Rocky Ridge Farm at Mansfield, Missouri.

Willa Cather-Author

Willa Siebert Cather was born on December 7, 1873 in the home of her maternal grandmother, in Back Creek Valley, near Winchester, Virginia. Her father had lived on the land for six generations!

In 1883 the family moved to Catherton Precinct in Webster County, Nebraska. This region, a broad plateau between the Little Blue and Republican rivers, is known as “The Great Divide. Later that year in 1884- 1885 the family moves again to the county seat in Red Cloud.

Willa was an American author who grew up in Nebraska. She is best known for her depictions of frontier life on the Great Plains in novels such as O Pioneers! My Antonia, and the Song of the Lark.

For her novels, Cather turned to the prairie for inspiration.

She received both national and state honors for her writing. In 1973 the U.S. Post Office honored Willa by using her image on a postage stamp. In 1981 the U.S. Mint created the Willa Cather medallion, a half ounce gold coin. And in 1986 Willa was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and the Hall of Fame.

On April 24, 1947 Willa Cather dies at the age of 73. She is buried at Jaffrey, New Hampshire, on the hillside spot that she selected. The inscription on her tombstone reads:

Willa Cather

December 7, 1876-April 24, 1947

THE TRUTH AND CHARITY OF HER GREAT

SPIRIT WILL LIVE ON IN THE WORK

WHICH IS HER ENDURING GIFT TO HER COUNTRY AND ALL ITS PEOPLE

“…that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”

From My Antonia

Grandma Moses

Anna Mary Robertson was born in Greenwich, New York, on September 7, 1860

Grandma Moses the third of ten children born to Russell King Robertson, a farmer, and Margaret Shannahan. She had a happy childhood and worked hard on their family farm. Her father enjoyed seeing the children's drawings and would buy them large sheets of blank newspaper upon which they could draw. The young Anna Mary loved to draw happy, colorful scenes. She only attended school in the summer due to the cold and her lack of warm clothing. At twelve she began earning her living as a hired girl at homes near the family farm.

In 1887 Anna Mary married a farm worker, Thomas S. Moses, and the couple settled on a farm in Virginia. They had ten children, five of whom died at birth. In 1907 the family moved to Eagle Bridge, New York, where Grandma Moses spent the rest of her life.

It was on this farm in Eagle Ridge that Anna Mary painted her first painting. She was wallpapering her parlor and ran out of paper. To finish the room she put up white paper and painted a scene. It is known as the Fireboard, and it hangs today in the Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vermont. Her husband died in 1927, and her son and daughter-in-law took over the farm. As she aged and found farm work too difficult, Grandma Moses took up embroidering pictures in yarn to fill her spare time. At the age of seventy-six, because of arthritis, she gave up embroidery and began to paint. Her early work was usually based on scenes she found in illustrated books and on Currier and Ives prints (prints made during the 1800s, showing American lives, historical events, and celebrities.

In 1938 Grandma Moses's paintings were discovered by an art collector and engineer, Louis Caldor. He saw a few of her paintings displayed in the window of a drug store in Hoosick Falls, New York, while on vacation. He purchased these, and the next day he bought all the paintings Grandma Moses had at her farm. In October of 1939, three of these paintings were exhibited at the "Contemporary Unknown Painters" show at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Her first one-woman show was held in New York City in 1940 and immediately she became famous. Her second one-woman show, also in New York City, came two years later. By 1943 there was an overwhelming demand for her pictures, partially because her homespun, country scenes brought about wonderful feelings and memories for many people.

Most of Grandma Moses's paintings were done on pieces of strong cardboard, 24 by 30 inches or less. She regularly portrayed happy scenes of rural home life, sometimes picturing herself as a child. She also painted a number of historical pictures, usually about her ancestors, one of whom built the first wagon to run on the Cambridge Pike. In some works figures are dressed in eighteenth-century costumes, as people might have dressed in the country. Certain color schemes correspond to the various seasons: white for winter, light green for spring, deep green for summer, and brown for autumn. Among her most popular paintings are The Old Oaken Bucket, Over the River to Grandma's House, Sugaring Off, and Catching the Turkey.

Grandma Moses worked from memory, portraying a way of life she knew from experience. The people in her paintings are actively engaged in farm tasks, and, although separated, are part of the established order of seasonal patterns. In most paintings the landscape is shown as a large, scenic view and would be completed before the tiny figures were put in. Grandma Moses died on December 13, 1961.

Excerpt from Encyclopedia of World Biography

2nd questionnaire received

Saturday afternoon I relieved my 2nd completed farmgirl history questionnaire...now only 21 more to go!

Abigail Adams

Abigail Adams-November 11, 1744-October 28, 1818. She was the wife of John Adams, who was the second President of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth. Abigail was the first Second Lady of the United States, and the second First Lady of the United States.

In ten years Abigail gave birth to six children:

Abigail (1765-1813)

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)

Susanna Boyleston (1768-1770)

Thomas Boylston Adams (1772-1832)

Elizabeth (stillborn in 1777)

...Abigail Adams on Women's Rights

Abigail Adams was an advocate of married women's property rights and more opportunities for women, particularly in the field of education. Women, she believed, should not submit to laws not made in their interest, nor should they be content with the simple role of being companions to their husbands, They should educate themselves and thus be recognized for their intellectual capabilities, so they could guide and influence the lives of their children and husbands. She is known for her March 1776 letter to John Adams and the Continental Congress, requesting that they, " remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to forment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no choice or representation."

Unfortunately, John declined Abigail's "extraordinary code of laws," but acknowledged to Abigail, "We have only the name of masters, and rather than give up this, which would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat, I hope General Washington and all our brave heroes would fight."

Excerpt from Abigail Adams-Wikipedia

Farmgirl History Project

It's begun....

Questionnaires have been sent out to several dozen potential farmgirls from as far away as the state of Washington to across the pond in the Netherlands!