31. LIW, The First Four Years, 87, 93–95 (quotation on 95).
32. Ibid., 121–22; John E. Miller, “More than Statehood on Their Minds: South Dakota Joins the Union, 1889,” Great Plains Quarterly 10 (fall 1990), 214–15.
33. De Smet Leader, January 24, 1885, March 13, September 18, 1886, July 23, 1887, June 7–July 12, 1890; Dakota Huronite, December 25, 1884; Schell, History of South Dakota, 223–27.
34. Grace Ingalls Diary, August 27, 1889, Box 17, Lane Papers; LIW, The First Four Years, 125–27.
35. Quoted in William T. Anderson, Laura's Rose: The Story of Rose Wilder Lane (De Smet, S.Dak.: Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, 1976), 4.
36. LIW, The First Four Years, 128–31.
37. Ibid., 131–32; Grace Ingalls Diary, November 17, 1889, Box 17, Lane Papers.
38. Grace Ingalls Diary, November 17, 1889, May 18, 1890, Box 17, Lane Papers; Anderson, Story of the Wilders, 9–10; Mary Jo Dathe, Spring Valley: The Laura Ingalls Wilder “Connection,” 1890 (by the author, 1990), 14; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 138; AJW, Cash Entry No. 10979, August 6, 1891, National Archives.
39. AJW, Cash Entry No. 10979, August 6, 1891, National Archives.
40. De Smet Leader, February 1, March 22, April 5, July 12, 1890; Grace Ingalls Diary, May 18, 1890, Box 17, Lane Papers.
41. Dathe, Spring Valley, 14–16, 20–21.
42. Ibid., 19–20.
43. Ibid., 22–23, 25; Alene M. Warnock, Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Westville, Florida, Years (by the author, 1979), 7; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 139.
44. Warnock, Westville, Florida, Years, 8; quotation in LIW and RWL, Little House Sampler, ed. Anderson, 40.
45. RWL, “Innocence,” Harper's (April 1922), reprinted in LIW and RWL, Little House Sampler, ed. Anderson, 44.
46. Ibid., 46, 48–49; RWL, “Grandpa's Fiddle,” in LIW and RWL, Little House Sampler, ed. Anderson, 65.
47. Zochert, Laura, 194.
48. Smith, Wilder Family Story, 25–26; Anderson, Story of the Wilders, 6–7, 10–13; Anderson, Wilder in the West, 31.
49. LIW and RWL, Little House Sampler, ed. Anderson, 56–58; William T. Anderson, The Story of the Ingalls (by the author, 1971), 15.
50. LIW and RWL, Little House Sampler, ed. Anderson, 60–64.
51. Ibid., 55–56.
52. Ibid., 65–66.
4. In the Land of the Big Red Apple, 1894–1911
1. Missouri Ruralist, December 1, 1923.
2. Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Memphis Railway Company, “Among the Ozarks: The Land of ‘Big Red Apples,’” 2nd ed. (Kansas City: Hudson-Kimberly, 1892), 17 (copy on file at State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia).
3. Ray Ginger, Age of Excess: The United States from 1877 to 1914 (New York: Macmillan, 1975), chap. 8; Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), chap. 4.
4. Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 144–45; RWL, introduction to On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894, by LIW (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 6–12.
5. LIW, On the Way Home, 15–21.
6. Ibid., 25, 27n.
7. Ibid., 28–59 (quotation on 59).
8. Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 148–49; LIW, On the Way Home, 62–65 (quotation on 65).
9. LIW, On the Way Home, 67–71.
10. Ibid., 71, 74.
11. RWL, afterword to ibid., 75–76.
12. Missouri Ruralist, July 22, 1911; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 150–51.
13. Warranty Deed Record Book No. 28, 178, Wright County Courthouse, Hartville, Mo.; RWL, afterword to On the Way Home, by LIW, 77–83.
14. Missouri Ruralist, July 22, 1911, June 1, 1912, February 20, 1918.
15. Ibid., July 22, 1911, February 20, 1918; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 152–53.
16. Vearl Rowe, Sketches of Wright County, Part III: Schools and Education (by the author, n.d.), 68–69; Mansfield Mirror, March 25, 1948; RWL to Jasper Crane, December 13, 1961, Box 4, Lane Papers; William Holtz, Ghost in the Little House, 32–33; LIW, On the Way Home, 95; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 153–54.
17. Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 155–56.
18. Ibid., 157–58.
19. RWL, Old Home Town (1935; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 8–9.
20. Charles Ingalls, in a biographical sketch about him published in Ogle's Compendium of Biography (1898), identified himself as a Populist. Laura Ingalls Wilder Lore 6 (fall–winter 1980): 6. In July 1948, as the national party conventions were approaching, Rose wrote in the Economic Council Review of Books, “At the age of three, prone on the rag carpet in a Dakota claim-shanty, I licked a pencil-point thoroughly and with anxious care cast my first vote, for Cleveland, on a sample ballot. (My father had previously given me my first political instruction)” (4). Allowing for some faulty recollection on her part (she would have been still a month short of two years old in November 1888, and may rather have been thinking of 1892, when Cleveland ran a third time for the presidency), Rose's memory would support the notion that her father had been a Democrat at that time. On the Republican tenor of Mansfield and the surrounding region, see Mansfield Mirror, April 8, 1948 (fortieth anniversary issue); History of Laclede, Camden, Dallas, Webster, wright, Texas, Pulaski, Phelps and Dent Counties, Missouri (Chicago: Goodspeed, 1889), 379; and election voting returns.
21. Warranty Deed Record Book No. 39, 489, Wright County Courthouse, Hartville, Mo.
22. Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 162–63.
23. Warranty Deed Record Book No. 36, 317–18, Wright County Courthouse, Hartville, Mo.; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 165–66.
24. RWL, afterword to On the Way Home, by LIW, 83–84.
25. Mansfield Mail, January 22, May 6, 27, 1904, December 22, 1906; Mansfield Press, October 9, 1908, April 23, May 21, 1909; Larry Dennis and Debbie Arnall, Mansfield, Missouri: The First Hundred Years, 1882–1982 (Mansfield, Mo.: Centennial Book Committee, 1983), 185.
26. Clyde A. Rowan, ed., History and Families: Wright County, Missouri (Hartville, Mo.: Wright County Historical Society, 1993), 12, 14, 160; Mansfield Mirror, April 8, 1948; History of Laclede, 413–23. Milton D. Rafferty notes the crucial importance of the coming of the railroad in transforming the economic and cultural geography of the Ozarks region (The Ozarks: Land and Life [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980], 98).
27. Vearl Rowe, Sketches of Wright County, Part I: General History (Mountain Grove, Mo.: by the author, 1984), 13.
28. Rafferty, Ozarks, 47–48; Russel Gerlach, Settlement Patterns in Missouri: A Study of Population Origins with a Wall Map (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), 21–22; Russel Gerlach, “The Ozark Scotch-Irish,” in Cultural Geography of Missouri, ed. Michael O. Roark, 11–29 (Cape Girardeau: Southeast Missouri State University, 1983); Floyd C. Shoemaker, “Missouri's Tennessee Heritage,” Missouri Historical Review 49 (January 1955): 127–42; Vearl Rowe, Sketches of Wright County, Part IV: Churches (Mountain Grove, Mo.: by the author, n.d.), 33–39; Dennis and Arnall, Mansfield, Missouri, 177–80.
29. Robert K. Gilmore, Ozark Baptizings, Hangings, and Other Diversions: Theatrical Folkways of Rural Missouri, 1885–1910 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984); Douglas Mahnkey, Bright Glowed My Hills (Point Lookout, Mo.: School of the Ozarks Press, 1968), 2, 35.
30. David Thelen, Paths of Resistance: Tradition and Dignity in Industrializing Missouri (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). While the language of the introduction to Old Home Town as published blurs the identity of the town and implies that her comments were relevant to small towns everywhere, the original drafts of the manuscript at the Hoover Presidential Library make clear that Lane had Mansfield in mind in writing this piece (see drafts, Box 40, Lane Papers). For an analysis of this collection of short stories, see William Holtz, “Rose Wilder Lane's Old Home Town,” Studies in Short Fiction 26 (fall 1989): 479–87.
31. RWL, O
ld Home Town, 23.
32. Ibid., 23–24.
33. RWL, postscript to On the Way Home, by LIW, 77.
34. RWL, “I, Rose Wilder Lane…,” Cosmopolitan 80 (June 1926): 42.
35. RWL, Journal, April 10, 1933, Box 23, Lane Papers.
36. Quoted in Holtz, Ghost in the Little House, 33.
37. RWL, “I, Rose Wilder Lane…,” 42.
38. RWL, Economic Council Review of Books (September 1947), 2; RWL, “Rose Wilder Lane, by Herself,” Sunset, the Pacific Monthly 41 (November 1918): 26; RWL, “We Women Are Not Good Citizens,” Woman's Day (March 1939), 4.
39. RWL to Norma Lee Browning Ogg, May 17, 1964, Box 10, RWL to Jasper Crane, December 13, 1961, Box 4, Lane Papers.
40. Rowe, Sketches of Wright County, Part III, 68; RWL to Jasper Crane, December 13, 1961, Box 4, Lane Papers.
41. Holtz, Ghost in the Little House, 41–48; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 168–69.
42. Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 169, 171; Warranty Deed Record Book No. 42, 483, No. 53, 112, No. 55, 452, 511, and No. 63, 496, Wright County Courthouse, Hartville, Mo.
43. History of Laclede, 355; Rowe, Sketches of Wright County, Part I, 29.
44. State of Missouri, Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Inspection (1902), 64.
45. Missouri Yearbook of Agriculture (1915), 301, 304, 307–8; Forty-Third Annual Report of the Missouri State Board of Agriculture (1910), 474–79.
46. Mansfield Mail, October 28, 1905, September 7, 1906; Mansfield Press, October 9, 16, 1908, April 2, 1909.
47. De Smet News, September 11, October 16, 1903; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 166–67.
48. See fragment beginning, “In the days of old when black magic was practiced,” in folder titled “Laura's ‘Ideas for Work,’ 1903+,” Box 14, Lane Papers.
49. Holtz, Ghost in the Little House, 48–53. Rose may have later had a child that lived only a short time or may have suffered a miscarriage that left her unable to have any more children.
50. Peggy Dennis interview, by the author, Mansfield, Mo., June 18, 1993; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 173.
51. Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 171–75.
5. Building a Writing Career, 1911–1923
1. Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 176.
2. Missouri Ruralist, February 18, 1911.
3. Ibid., July 22, 1911.
4. Ibid., June 1, 1912, February 5, April 20, June 20, 1914, November 20, December 5, 1915.
5. Mansfield Mirror, October 2, 1913.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., March 20, July 24, 31, August 7, 1913.
8. Ibid., July 10, 1913, May 6, 1915.
9. Ibid., July 24, December 4, 1913, October 8, 1914, May 27, 1915, May 4, December 21, 1916 (the quotation is from the July 1, 1915, issue).
10. Mansfield Mirror, January 23, December 26, 1912, March 13, 1913.
11. Ibid., February 13, March 27, November 27, December 4, 1913, June 4, 1914, February 11, May 13, 1915, March 16, May 18, November 9, 23, December 14, 1916, December 13, 1917, February 7, 1918. The contradictory relationship between the movies of the time and traditional culture is noted by Robert Sklar in Movie-Made America: A Social History of American Movies (New York: Random House, 1975), 139–40.
12. Mansfield Mirror, September 25, October 2, 1913, October 22, 1914, August 16, 1917.
13. RWL to LIW, undated [December—] (begins “I am sending you some drapery samples”), Box 13, Lane Papers.
14. RWL to LIW, undated (page 4 begins “How would it be, with your organizing ability”), Box 13, Lane Papers.
15. RWL to LIW, undated (begins “The Star Farmer looks quite nifty”), undated (begins “I open this letter to suggest”), Box 13, Lane Papers.
16. LIW, West from Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder to Almanzo Wilder, San Francisco 1915, ed. Roger Lea MacBride, 3–5 (New York: HarperTrophy, 1976).
17. Ibid., 8–9, 12–14, 17, 20.
18. Ibid., 30, 35, 38–39, 41.
19. Missouri Ruralist, March 5, 1916.
20. LIW, West from Home, 43–46, 71–73, 78–79, 98. See also original letter, LIW to AJW, September 23, 1915, Box 13, Lane Papers, whose statement “Rose hoots at that idea” was edited out of the published letters.
21. LIW, West from Home, 67, 92–93.
22. Ibid., 95.
23. Ibid., 110–11, 113; Missouri Ruralist, December 5, 1915.
24. LIW, West from Home, 109.
25. RWL to LIW, undated (begins “I open this letter to suggest”), Box 13, Lane Papers.
26. John E. Miller, “Laura Ingalls Wilder's Apprenticeship as a Farm Author,” Papers of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Dakota History Conference, comp. Arthur R. Huseboe and Harry F. Thompson, 481–88 (Sioux Falls, S.Dak.: Augustana College, 1994).
27. Missouri Ruralist, July 22, 1911, July 20, 1916, February 20, 1919, March 20, 1920.
28. Ibid., February 5, 1920.
29. Ibid., August 20, 1916, April 20, 1918, December 5, 1919; LIW, The Long Winter, 65.
30. Missouri Ruralist, February 18, 1911, July 20, 1917, November 20, 1919, June 15, 1922, January 1, 1924.
31. Ibid., October 5, 20, 1916, January 5, February 20, 1917, September 5, October 20, November 5, 1918.
32. Ibid., May 20, 1918, March 5, 1919, October 20, 1920, June 15, 1921.
33. Ibid., February 1, 1924, April 5, June 20, 1916.
34. Ibid., May 5, 1917.
35. Lawrence O. Christensen, “Popular Reaction to World War I in Missouri,” Missouri Historical Review 86 (July 1992): 386–95; John C. Crighton, Missouri and the World War, 1914–1917: A Study in Public Opinion (Columbia: University of Missouri Studies, 1947); Mansfield Mirror, June 10, 17, August 9, 1917; Missouri Ruralist, August 5, 1917.
36. Mansfield Mirror, May 17, July 5, August 2, 9, 1917, April 18, 1918.
37. Ibid., January 3, March 21, April 25, August 15, 22, September 19, October 24, 1918.
38. Mansfield Mirror, April 4, 25, May 2, 9, 1918; Missouri Ruralist, January 5, 1918.
39. Missouri Ruralist, February 20, July 5, 1918.
40. Mansfield Mirror, November 7, 14, 1918, February 6, May 8, 1919.
41. Missouri Ruralist, August 5, 1919.
42. Ibid., October 5, 1916.
43. Ibid., November 5, 1917.
44. Ibid., October 5, 1917, February 20, 1918, April 1, 1924.
45. Ibid., November 1, 1922.
46. LIW, “Whom Will You Marry?” McCall's 49 (June 1919): 8, 62.
47. RWL to LIW, April 11, 1919, Box 13, Lane Papers.
48. Ibid.
49. San Francisco Bulletin, February 10, March 19, April 24, 1915.
50. Holtz, Ghost in the Little House, 93–136, 184.
51. Ibid., 136–41.
6. Turning to Autobiography, 1923–1932
1. RWL to “Dear Comrades” [Berta and Elmer Hader], [December 1924], Box 5, Lane Papers; Holtz, Ghost in the Little House, 141.
2. RWL to Guy Moyston, December 24, 1923, Box 9, Lane Papers.
3. RWL to Guy Moyston, undated, January 19, 1924, May 4, 1925, Box 9, Lane Papers.
4. RWL to Guy Moyston, February 9, 1924, July 27, 1925, Box 9, Lane Papers.
5. RWL to Guy Moyston, February 9, 1924, August 30, [1925], Box 9, Lane Papers.
6. RWL to Guy Moyston, [late 1924], May 7, December 1, 1925, Box 9, Lane Papers; Holtz, Ghost in the Little House, 142.
7. Mansfield Mirror, April 3, 1924; Holtz, Ghost in the Little House, 144–45, 151–52.
8. RWL to Guy Moyston, July 9, 1924, Box 9, Lane Papers; Mansfield Mirror, July 10, 1924, July 7, 1927, July 12, 1928, June 13, 1929, June 23, 1932; RWL, “Prairie Hollow Singing,” Country Gentleman 91 (February 1926): 15–16, 135–36, 139. The county singing conventions continued into the 1960s.
9. Mansfield Mirror, January 10, June 12, 1924; RWL, Diary, January 3, 1924, Box 21, Lane Papers.
10. RWL to Guy Moyston, July 9, 1924, Box 9, Lane Papers.
11. Man
sfield Mirror, February 5, April 23, 1925, January 21, June 17, December 23, 1926, January 5, 1928, January 24, 1929.
12. Ibid., March 5, July 16, 1925, April 29, July 29, 1926, April 7, May 5, 1927, February 2, 1928.
13. Rose mentioned her fox-hunting expeditions and her efforts to get a fox-hunting article published in her diary on March 7, June 1, 7, and July 21, 1930, Box 21, Lane Papers. Amon Short recalled how when he was a young boy his father took Rose fox hunting (interview by the author, Mansfield, Mo., August 19, 1995).
14. LIW, “My Ozark Kitchen,” Country Gentleman 90 (January 17, 1925): 19, 22; LIW, “The Farm Dining Room,” Country Gentleman 90 (June 13, 1925): 21–22; LIW and RWL, Little House Sampler, ed. Anderson, 137; Holtz, Ghost in the Little House, 148; RWL to LIW, [November 1924], Box 13, Lane Papers.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., RWL to LIW, November 12, 1924, Box 13, Lane Papers.
17. RWL to Guy Moyston, February 17, March 31, 1925, Box 9, Lane Papers.
18. Mansfield Mirror, February 26, 1925.
19. RWL to Guy Moyston, March 9, 22, 1925, Box 9, Lane Papers.
20. Mansfield Mirror, March 19, April 2, 1925; RWL to Guy Moyston, April 1, 1925, Box 9, Lane Papers.
21. De Smet News, April 25, May 2, 1924; LIW to Martha Carpenter, June 1925, Box 17, Lane Papers.
22. LIW to Martha Carpenter, June 22, September 2, October 9, 1925, Box 17, Lane Papers.
23. RWL to Guy Moyston, July 27, 1925, Box 9, Lane Papers.
24. Ibid., May 7, 1925.
25. Ibid., June 9, August 10, 1925.
26. Ibid., July 27, 1925.
27. Ibid. On the relationship between mother and daughter, see Holtz, Ghost in the Little House, 31–34, 142–44, 155, 194–96, 220–25, 230–32, 237–39, 243–45, 264–65, 273–76, 293–94, 334–35, 373–76; and Anita Clair Fellman, “Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane: The Politics of a Mother-Daughter Relationship,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 15 (spring 1990), 535–61.
28. RWL to Guy Moyston, September 12, 1925, Box 9, Lane Papers.
29. Ibid., January 14, [1925].
30. Ibid., February 17, [ca. April 20], 1925; Holtz, Ghost in the Little House, 153–54.
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