Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder

by John E. Miller

  The storms eventually abated. Finally on May 9 the first train from the East in four months pulled into De Smet. The town had survived its ordeal. Although activities elsewhere in the territory had continued through the winter (the territorial legislature met in Yankton and established a land-grant college, a penitentiary, a new hospital for the insane, and several normal schools), the isolation imposed on the town by the hard winter reminded people that they were not far removed from the hand of nature.

  If nature still posed major challenges on the frontier, however, the accoutrements of civilization steadily accumulated. Although the first rush into the region had begun to slow, new businesses continued to start up as the countryside filled with homesteaders. By 1882 most of the land within ten miles on either side of the railroad had been entered as homesteads or timber claims or had been preempted for $1.25 an acre. The town's population increased more slowly now; only a few vacant lots remained on Main Street. One of the hustling storekeepers who tried to cash in on the rush of settlers was Chauncy Clayson, who ran a dry-goods store. His mother-in-law, Martha White, who was sewing shirts for him to sell, needed a helper. When Charles learned about it, he figured Laura was old enough to do the job, and at twenty-five cents a day, the money would come in handy.29

  Laura still felt uncomfortable in the midst of so many adults and was reluctant to take the job. Being a dutiful daughter, however, she suppressed her fears and resolutely walked in from the claim to meet her new employers. Later, in Little Town on the Prairie, she explained that her determination not to let the situation get the best of her emanated from her desire to earn money to help send Mary to college. Whatever her motives, the episode casts light on Laura's growing maturity and sense of obligation to the family. Taking on part of the responsibility for her sister's welfare was an extension of the role that she had been playing as Mary's “eyes.”30

  Laura had already displayed traits of feistiness and independence, and later, in her stories about her childhood, she placed special emphasis on them. “Oh, that I had the wings of a bird!” she described herself thinking in The Long Winter. If she could have had them, she “would have spread them and flown, fast, fast, and far away.” And although she probably exaggerated differences in temperament between herself and Mary, no doubt there was considerable truth in her characterization of Mary as dutiful, obedient, and well behaved and of herself—in contrast—as flighty, impulsive, and naughty. In taking a job in town that she really did not want, Laura subordinated her own wishes to the larger needs of the family and acted out a script that substituted self-control for self-gratification.31

  Her family and the culture reinforced self-control. Bible lessons and passages that she studied and memorized at home and at Sunday school had continuing importance in her life. Attending school likewise instilled in her virtues such as modesty, generosity, propriety, and trustworthiness. Each time her mother told her to tighten her corset, it provided a lesson in self-control. When Laura insulted a rival schoolmate, her mother wrote a poetic lesson in her autograph album:

  If wisdom's ways you wisely seek,

  Five things observe with care,

  To whom you speak,

  Of whom you speak,

  And how, and when, and where.

  Restraint and self-control were watchwords at home, and Laura learned them well, even if sometimes her emotions got the best of her. She was growing up. In negotiating the rocky road of adolescence, she increasingly discovered that she was playing the role of an adult, and one rule that prominently applied was, “A grown-up person must never let feelings be shown by voice or manner.”32

  Now, as she worked in town with Mrs. White and the Claysons, she bit her tongue when she observed revolting behavior. The adults insulted and quarreled with each other, while the children blithely paid them no attention. The merchant's wife and her mother were all wrought up about some kind of Catholic conspiracy, which grew even more sinister in their minds when a comet appeared in the sky. Laura could not figure out where they got their strange notions. In any case, she kept her mouth shut, and after six weeks of working in town she was able—joyfully—to go back to the claim and stay with her family.33

  Converting a quarter-section of Dakota prairie into a paying proposition was not an easy assignment, and everyone in the Ingalls family had to pitch in. There was land to break, crops to sow, cattle to care for, a new flock of chickens and a pig to tend to, and a garden to plant and weed. When he had the time, Charles walked into town and did carpentry jobs to earn some much needed cash. It took several years for much of an income to start coming in on a new homestead, so they had to find ways to supplement it. Laura especially enjoyed taking care of the cows. She and her mother worked together to milk them, and then there was butter to churn. Inside, the girls helped Caroline wash dishes, make beds, sweep, scrub, wash and iron clothes, and—when there was time—mend, sew, and knit. All of these activities taught diligence and responsibility.

  Playtime was not something to be taken for granted but had to be earned. Yet, there was always plenty of laughter and fun in the household. At night there were stories and songs and conversation. Just watching the beautiful sunsets was a treat. Colors etched themselves sharply in Laura's consciousness, as is indicated by her vivid descriptions later. She also loved to tramp across the wild prairie landscape, delighting in the beautiful wildflowers and observing meadowlarks, jackrabbits, striped gophers, garter snakes, and other wildlife.

  Before the family moved back into town that fall and the girls started school again, Charles and Caroline took Mary by train all the way to Vinton, Iowa, to a school for the blind. Two neighboring farm children came to stay with Laura, Carrie, and Grace while the parents were gone. Laura was sad to see Mary leave home but grateful to know that she would learn many new things at the school that would enable her to lead a more normal life. She took pride in the fact that her own contribution to her sister's education was significant.34

  Soon the somewhat smaller family was back in town, living again in the store building on Second Street, and Laura and Carrie returned to their studies. They had some new schoolmates, including Ida Brown, the adopted daughter of Rev. Edward Brown, who had come to preach at the Congregational church, and Genevieve Masters, the sister of George and the daughter of “Uncle Sam” Masters, who had brought his whole family to Dakota and lived on a homestead west of town. Genevieve, who later became part of the inspiration for Nellie Oleson in Laura's novels, was mean to Laura, who, however, envied her tall, slim figure, her beautiful complexion, and her pretty clothes. Laura later wrote that she considered herself to be too roly-poly and too plain to be able to compete with girls such as Genevieve. But that did not make her appreciate the other girl's arrogance and meanness any more.35

  Laura emerged as the leader among the other girls. She possessed a sense of fairness and right and was willing to speak up for them in a way that sometimes got her into trouble. She could display a streak of nastiness, too, when she got her ire up and felt that she was being treated unfairly. The new teacher at the school in the fall of 1881 was Eliza Wilder, a single woman homesteader who had filed on both a homestead and a tree claim near the town. She was the older sister of Almanzo Wilder and had earlier taught school back in Minnesota. She apparently lacked the knack of controlling young students, however, and, much to Laura's disgust, played favorites, especially, it seems, with Genevieve Masters. Laura got her comeuppance one day when she defied Miss Wilder's efforts to discipline her and got the other students to sing a naughty little ditty she had made up about “Lazy, lousy, Lizy Jane.” The last laugh was on the teacher, though, as she was soon replaced. Afterward, the students’ behavior greatly improved, and they returned to learning.36

  Caught between powerful pressures to conform to people's expectations and to indulge her own girlish impulses, Laura was undergoing a major transition; the patterns molded during this period largely guided her the rest of her life. Once again, even though realizing tha
t her mother and her older sister considered it too unladylike, she went to play baseball with the boys, dragging Ida Brown and Mary Power with her. When the weather turned colder, she threw snowballs and rode on sleds pulled by the boys. Quickly now, interactions with the opposite sex became more important, and rather than just playing outdoor games with them, attention turned to parties and pairing up with them.37

  Shortly before her fifteenth birthday, Laura received an invitation to her first party from her classmate Ben Woodworth, who, along with his family, occupied the second-floor living quarters of the railroad depot, where his father was the agent. She remembered feeling awkward at first at the party, not knowing what to do or say, but she just observed how the others behaved and followed their cues. A special surprise was the orange that had been set at everyone's plate. It was the first one she had ever seen, and she was not sure what to do with it, but when she saw the others eat them in sections, she followed suit.38

  It did not take the new town long to establish a social whirl—at least a modest one. As elsewhere on the frontier, a literary society quickly was established to enliven things during the colder months. With meetings held in the church or at the schoolhouse, various townspeople volunteered to stage debates, put on skits, sing, give dramatic readings, or participate in spelling matches or anything else that seemed like fun. Laura was not much impressed with a sociable held at Mr. and Mrs. Tinkhams that she and Mary Power each paid a dime to attend, which really was intended for adults. A New England supper hosted by the women of the community provided a reminder of the social origins of many of the people arriving in the first wave of settlement. And, of course, there were revival meetings to stir up enthusiasm and to make converts.39

  The Ingalls family felt themselves right at home among the settlers of De Smet, for they, too, were part of the Yankee migration that swept westward from New York and New England during the 1800s, winding up in the Great Lakes states and eventually in Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas. The frontier was a dynamic cauldron of population movement, as individuals and families frequently moved about, looking for ways to make a living. Charles Ingalls was not alone in possessing an “itchy foot.” His family was typical of hundreds of thousands who moved forward, backward, and laterally along the frontier, searching for suitable locations. The ones arriving in the eastern part of the territory during the Great Dakota Boom carried with them a distinctive set of political, religious, and cultural traditions. Adding spice to the mixture were the European immigrants who derived primarily from Germany, the British Isles, and Scandinavia.40

  Shortly after the town got started, John H. Carroll, the land dealer on the north side of Second Street, won designation as census taker for the county. Charles and Caroline Ingalls and their four daughters were among the 116 residents he counted in De Smet. Only fourteen had been born abroad; thirty-four were listed as having foreign-born fathers, and thirty-two had foreign-born mothers. The backgrounds of the residents were mostly Canadian and British, with a sprinkling of Norwegian, Danish, German, and French heritages among them. Later, Scandinavians and Germans would outnumber considerably the English and the Irish. New York was the state that contributed by far the largest number of De Smet's earliest residents, but there were also healthy contingents from New England, Pennsylvania, and the Midwest. Hardly anybody derived from states south of the Ohio River.41

  As was typical on the frontier, the first arrivals were disproportionately young and male. Children were divided almost equally between the sexes. Among residents in their twenties, however, the ratio was thirty-four men to sixteen women; for those in their thirties, it was twenty to five; in their forties, six to two; in their fifties, three to none; and in their sixties, one to none. The Ingalls's friend Robert Boast was typical of the young men who had come alone and then returned east to bring their brides back with them or to get married. De Smet was typical, too, in that within several years’ time the top-heavy male sex ratio largely evened out as men got married and as other families arrived on the scene.42

  Typical of the early businessmen who set up shop on Main Street was E. H. Couse, who bought Charles Ingalls's first store building to use for a hardware store. Couse was an active temperance man and a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Civil War veterans’ organization. Born in New York, he later lived in Illinois and Minnesota before moving to Volga at the end of the railroad in 1879 and then moving to De Smet the following year. Daniel Loftus, the storekeeper who had tried to profit from Almanzo Wilder and Cap Garland's risky dash during the hard winter, was a Pennsylvanian of Irish background who prospered over the years and rose to prominence as president of the South Dakota Retail Merchants Association. Lumber dealer Charles E. Ely, another Civil War veteran, had fought in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. An Ohioan by birth, his parents hailed from Connecticut and New York. Charles H. Tinkham, whose wife organized the dime sociable, was a cabinetmaker from Maine who combined a funeral parlor with his furniture store on Main Street.43

  Not surprisingly, the first religious denomination to take root in town was the Congregationalists—Yankee through and through. Soon after arriving at Silver Lake, the Ingallses were delighted to be visited by Rev. Edwin Alden, with whom they had first become acquainted in Walnut Grove. He was organizing churches under the auspices of the American Home Missionary Society. The first church service in De Smet was held in the surveyors’ shanty in February 1880, even before the town was formally established. Later, Charles and Caroline participated in organizing a congregation and became charter members. Rev. Edward Brown served as their pastor until retiring from the active ministry in 1884 at the age of seventy. The Connecticut-born cleric had taught school and practiced law before being ordained and serving parishes in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ohio. He claimed to be a cousin of the infamous John Brown of Harpers Ferry fame, which may help explain why Laura later said that his revival sermons sent shudders up and down her spine. Whatever Laura may have felt about Reverend Brown as a teenager, however, during these years she cemented her faith, and it became an indispensable part of her life. Bible-reading and prayer were well-established family habits. Laura apparently never seriously found it necessary to question her basic beliefs. What came so easily to her, however, would not to her own daughter later.44

  The Congregationalists were soon joined in town by two other Protestant denominations, the Methodists and the Baptists, as well as by a Catholic congregation. For a while, until population grew, ministers found it necessary to divide their time among several parishes, with services in each place being scheduled two or three weeks apart. Nevertheless, religion played a crucial role in the community. The third pillar of society—beyond family and religion—was education. Caroline especially accorded it a high value, having been a schoolteacher herself. The decision to send Mary to the school for the blind in Iowa reflected the family's strong commitment to learning. Of all the girls, Laura stood out as a scholar. She obtained high marks and garnered praise from her teachers. De Smet offered only a rudimentary high school curriculum; a full twelve-year graded course of study would not be implemented until 1908. But considering what was available at the time, the girls received a respectable education. Beyond the content of their studies, the notion that learning was valuable stood out as the most important legacy of their schooling.45

  Twelve miles south of De Smet lived a little group of settlers who needed a teacher for their one-room rural school. When Louis Bouchie mentioned the matter to the Ingalls's friend Robert Boast toward the end of 1882, he suggested that they approach Laura. They wanted someone for two months, for which they offered to pay twenty dollars a month. That was below the going rate, but if Laura took the job, the money would help the family's finances considerably. The major problem was that Laura would not turn sixteen, as required by law, until February. That detail was easily sidestepped, however, when the county superintendent, in administering her examination, conveniently forgot to ask about her age. So Laura went to the Bouc
hie school in early December in a wagon driven by her father.

  It was not a pleasant experience for Laura, who had not particularly wanted to teach and who was doing this only out of her sense of duty to the family. Living with the Bouchies was particularly troubling, since the wife disliked the rough frontier environment so much that she appeared to be going mad. Laura's pupils were unruly at first, but over the course of eight weeks she started acquiring the knack of controlling their behavior and getting them to learn. Just as important, Almanzo Wilder came every Friday afternoon to pick her up and transport her back to her family for the weekend. Many things might have rendered a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl a target for the affections of a homesteader ten years older. Almanzo, generally a man of few words, did not likely talk much about it to his friends, but, at the age of fifteen, Laura was pretty, perky, intelligent, strong willed, and independent—reason enough to attract his fancy.

  Laura made it plain to Almanzo that her gratitude for his transporting her was only that and not a sign of any special caring for him. Yet, she must have encouraged him to believe that her affections were winnable. Earlier, she had allowed Almanzo to walk her home from revival meetings in De Smet. She would write in “Pioneer Girl” that her attention at the first revival meeting had been directed toward Cap Garland. But whatever feelings she may have had for Cap receded as Almanzo slowly—but successfully—competed for her favor.46

  Other young men showed an interest in her. There was Alfred Thomas, a young lawyer in town who seemed to lack the courage actually to invite her to go with him to an entertainment one evening, so he lost out. Once a young man named Arthur Johnson escorted Laura home from an evening church meeting. A couple of times Ernest Perry, who lived on a farm just a mile south of the Ingalls's homestead, took her to parties where the young people played kissing games that she did not like. After he tried to slip his arm around her on the second date, she decided to stop going out with him. Fred Gilbert, “a green country boy” who lived on a farm northeast of town, invited Laura to go with him to a Friday night dance, but since she “didn't like his style,” she turned him down. With the young homesteader from New York state, Almanzo Wilder, it was not love at first sight, but the two possessed compatible temperaments, and he had the good sense to be persistent without rushing things. Years later, in writing about it, Laura reduced Almanzo's fictional age, partly to create the artificial drama of having him too young under the law to take out a homestead claim but also partly because of her keen awareness of their ten-year age gap. The adult Laura worried that her young readers might think that she had been a “child bride.”47