Woodside - Libertarians on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books

Also by Christine Woodside

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Copyright 2016 by Christine Woodside

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First Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Woodside, Christine, 1959- author.

Title: Libertarians on the prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the making of the Little House Books / Christine Woodside.

Description: First edition. | New York: Arcade Publishing, [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2016019624 | ISBN 978-1-62872-656-5 (hardback), 978-1-62872-659-6 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Wilder, Laura Ingalls, 1867-1957. | Wilder, Laura Ingalls, 1867-1957. Little house books. | Lane, Rose Wilder, 1886-1968. | Ingalls family. | Authors, American20th centuryBiography. | Women pioneersUnited StatesBiography. | Frontier and pioneer lifeUnited States. | LibertarianismUnited StatesHistory20th century. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary. | LITERARY CRITICISM / Childrens Literature.

Classification: LCC PS3545.I342 Z976 2016 | DDC 813/.52 [B]dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019624

Cover design by Laura Klynstra

Cover photos: Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane, courtesy of Herbert

Hoover Presidential Library; prairie image: Shutterstock

Printed in the United States of America

For Nat, who steered my proverbial wagon on this literal and drawn-out journey

C ONTENTS

N OTE TO THE R EADER

Laura Ingalls Wilders Little House books include:

Little House in the Big Woods , published by Harper and Brothers (which published all of the books on this list) in 1932, about the Ingalls familys life in a log cabin in the early 1870s in Wisconsin.

Farmer Boy , published in 1933, about Almanzo Wilders childhood on a prosperous farm outside Malone, New York, in the 1860s.

Little House on the Prairie , published in 1935, about the Ingalls familys year living in Native American territory that later became Kansas.

On the Banks of Plum Creek , published in 1937, about the Ingalls familys migration to Minnesota in the 1870s, and their farm and town life.

By the Shores of Silver Lake , published in 1939, about the familys last migration to work on the new railroad and file a homestead claim in Dakota Territory in 1879 and 1880.

The Long Winter , published in 1940, about the Hard Winter of 188081 in Dakota Territory.

Little Town on the Prairie , published in 1941, about Lauras social life and studying to be a teacher in De Smet, South Dakota.

These Happy Golden Years , published in 1943, about Lauras coming of age and Almanzo Wilders courtship near De Smet, South Dakota.

Not part of the original series but included with it is The First Four Years , which is an unedited manuscript about Laura and Almanzos disastrous attempt to farm in Dakota Territorys drought years in 18851889. This book was published in 1971, after the death of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane.

Pioneer Girl, Lauras memoir that provided the framework for the series, was published eighty-five years after Laura wrote itin 2015. It tells the factual story of Lauras life from age three in 1870 through her marriage to Almanzo Wilder in 1885. Laura drafted it by pencil on tablets at the request of Rose, who revised it twice but was unable to find a magazine that would serialize it. Pamela Smith Hill edited and annotated Pioneer Girl with a group called the Pioneer Girl Project; the publisher was the South Dakota Historical Society Press.

I NTRODUCTION

Irene Lichty Turns Me Down

In 1976 I wrote a letter to the curator of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri, and asked for a summer jobany job. I was seventeen and lived with my large family in a split-level house in Princeton, New Jersey. I wrote her that I would go alone to Missouri. I would lead tours, file letters, sweep floorswhatever she asked. The curator, Irene V. Lichty, had actually known Laura, the pioneer author of the inspiring Little House books, which told about her self-sufficient childhood in the late nineteenth century. Laura had traveled by covered wagon across the Midwest with Pa, Ma, and her sisters Mary, Carrie, and Grace, from cabins to sod house to shanties, making farms on wild lands.

Soon a light-pink envelope came in the mail. On thin stationery, the note went something like this: Dear Christine, I cannot offer you a job at the Home. We do sometimes hire girls from the area. Mrs. Lichtys ballpoint pen had made channels in the thin paper. But there is nowhere you could stay. I am sorry, but there is nothing for a girl your age to do in this town.

I was crushed, not because she had turned me down but because she seemed so brusque. I was embarrassed to think that she sensed I had no idea what I was asking. Yet, much as I pictured myself standing inside the Wilder home, leading others through the rooms, I lived in Princeton, New Jerseywhat might be called the quintessential settled Northeastern town. I knew nothing of farm or pioneer life: going for the cows, keeping watch for wolves and bears, harvesting potatoes. I ranged free on my bicycle and watched sparrows struggle when a neighbor kid hit them with a BB gun, and my harvesting amounted to going to the produce aisle with my mom.

The introduction to Lauras last book had urged readers to visit and promised that the curators would be excited to hear from us. Mrs. Lichtys note, though, seemed like a reprimand. I felt that somehow Lauras legacy of optimism had, in the nineteen years since her death, faded from her friends attitude. Of course, I had no way to dig deeper then. I put aside my hopes for my dream job and spent the summer making sandwiches in a restaurant.

After my brief correspondence with Mrs. Lichty, an urge to know the real Laura gripped me. From that day on, for the next four decades, through college and adult life of work and family, I read everything I could about Laura. I read the books over and over, noticing more of the themes of independence and wilderness in them each time. In college I wrote a paper for my American West course about the difference between Laura and Mary in By the Shores of Silver Lake. I studied articles, biographies, the columns Laura had written for a farm newspaper, her diary for the trip when she moved to Missouri in 1894 (published in 1962 as On the Way Home ), and, finally, letters, diaries, and manuscripts from the Wilder familyall except those the family had evidently thrown away.

I steeped myself in Lauras philosophy of life. In my thirties, I wrote a newspaper tribute to Lauras energy and temperament as a housewife. It ended with that great scene from one of her farm columns, when she got so sick of cutting her hand on the so-called easier modern butter churn that she kicked it down the hill. But my admiration, I realized, was built on a foundation of selectively positive stories about her. I was ready for more, so I sought every trace of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the American pioneer experience wherever I could find them. I traveled to study the surviving Wilder family papers in Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, and a few other places.