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.