Prairie Fires

by Caroline Fraser

    17.   Wilder wrote two versions of this tale, the first in PG, pp. 36–39; the second in LHBW, in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 1, pp. 36–39.

    18.   Samuel Ingalls, “A Dream, or Vision, by Samuel Ingalls, of Dunham, in the Province of Lower Canada, on the night of Sept. 2, 1809,” in John J. Duffy, “Broadside Illustrations of the Jeffersonian Federalist Conflict in Vermont, 1809–1816,” Vermont History, vol. 49, no. 4 (Fall 1981), fig. 1, p. 211. Ingalls’s use of the term “wicked club” suggests to historians that he was a Federalist, opposed to Jefferson’s party, the Democratic-Republicans, who were supported by several dozen state political “clubs.” Federalists rallied around Alexander Hamilton’s plan for a strong federal government, charging that Jefferson’s “clubs” bore a dangerous semblance to the French revolutionary Jacobin Club, whose members fomented the Reign of Terror.

    19.   Samuel Ingalls, Rhymes of “The Unlearned Poet” (Angelica, NY: publisher unknown, 1825), no extant copies known. Modern version compiled by Robert L. Middlestead and Barb Klecker, Ellsworth, WI, 2011.

    20.   Ibid., “The Difference of Time,” pp. 19–21.

    21.   Ibid., “Lines Written on the Great Hail and Wind Storm That Passed Through the Counties of Cattarraugus and Allegany in the Spring of 1834,” pp. 46–47.

    22.   Ibid., “A Ditty on Poverty,” pp. 61–62.

    23.   See Proverbs 24:33–34.

    24.   Ingalls, untitled poem in Rhymes of “The Unlearned Poet,” pp. 48–49.

    25.   This was before the turnpike to Olean was completed, when Lansford was ten: See John S. Minard, Esq., History of Cuba, New York: A Centennial Memorial History of Allegany County, New York, ed. Georgia Drew Andrews (Alfred, NY: W. A. Fergusson, 1896), pp. 816, 826.

    26.   Samuel Rezneck, “The Social History of an American Depression: 1837–1843,” American Historical Review, vol. 40, no. 4 (July 1935), p. 676.

    27.   Ibid., p. 665.

    28.   The brothers who left for the west were James and Samuel Worthen Ingalls (known as Worthen). James Ingalls appears on the 1840 U.S. Federal Census for Kane County, Illinois. Those who stayed in Cuba were John W. Ingalls and Aaron Franklin Ingalls: “Aaron Ingals,” age fifty-seven, and “John W. Ingals,” age fifty-four, appear on the 1860 U.S. Federal Census for Cuba, New York, described as farmers. An 1869 atlas shows J. Ingalls owning plot 55 in District 5, near Oil Creek Reservoir (now Cuba Lake), north of Cuba Village. Adjoining the southeast corner of his land appears a plot owned by Aaron Ingalls: see Atlas of Allegany County, New York (New York: D. G. Beers, 1869), pp. 51, 55.

    29.   Daniel Pingree to Samuel Rowell, April 10, 1840, published on the website of Pingree Grove, Illinois: http://www.villageofpingreegrove.org/about-pingree-grove/history-of-pingree-grove/.

    30.   U.S. Federal Census, Campton, Kane County, Illinois, October 2, 1850.

    31.   John Russell Ghrist, Plato Center Memories: A History of Plato Center, Illinois and Surrounding Areas of Kane County (Dundee, IL: JRG Communications, 1999), vol. 1, p. 6.

    32.   Ibid., p. 13. See also “Plato Township,” History of Kane County, ed. John S. Wilcox (Chicago: Munsell, 1904), pp. 715–16.

    33.   According to town records in Concord, Wisconsin, Lansford Ingalls purchased land on December 31, 1853; see www.concordwisconsin.org/history.

    34.   After Charles, the surviving children born to Lansford and Laura Ingalls in New York were Lydia Louise (1838), Polly Melona (1840), and Lansford James (known as James, b. 1842). The two children born in Kane County, Illinois, were Laura Ladocia (known as Docia, b. 1845) and Hiram Lemuel (1848). In Wisconsin were born George Whiting (1851), Ruby Celestia (1855), and Lafayette (1858).

    35.   Martha Quiner Carpenter to LIW, July 18, 1925. HHPL.

    36.   The brother-in-law was Garrett McGregor. For more on the accident, see “Daily Gazette,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, November 12, 1845, p. 2.

    37.   Carpenter to LIW, September 2, 1925.

    38.   Ibid., October 9, 1925.

    39.   Joanna L. Stratton, Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), p. 68.

    40.   Carpenter to LIW, July 18, 1925.

    41.   Ibid.

    42.   Charlotte Holbrook, known as “Lotty” or “Lottie,” was born in 1854.

    43.   See Laura’s Album: A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder, compiled by William Anderson (New York: Scholastic, 1998), p. 9. Original in De Smet Collection.

    44.   Ibid.

    45.   Carpenter to LIW, September 2, 1925.

    46.   See Nancy Cleaveland and Penny Linsenmayer, Charles Ingalls and the U.S. Public Land Laws (privately printed: Seventh Winter Press, 2001), pp. 8, 13.

    47.   1860 U.S. Census, Jefferson County, Wisconsin.

    48.   Frank L. Klement, Wisconsin in the Civil War: The Home Front and the Battle Front, 1861–1865 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1997), p. 3.

    49.   Ibid., p. 20.

    50.   Caroline Ingalls to Martha Quiner Carpenter, October 6, 1861. WHS.

    51.   Ibid. Ingalls’s 1861 letter contains hints of their whereabouts at that time. She was still in Concord; Martha was up north, in Pepin.

    52.   Ibid. According to this letter, in 1861, Lansford and Laura Ingalls had gone north to the headwaters of the Baraboo River, a tributary of the Wisconsin River northwest of Concord. “They felt very bad about leaving their place and it was too bad,” Caroline Ingalls wrote to Martha. Her in-laws were “too old to be moving,” Caroline mourned: Lansford had done his best, but it could not be helped. The newlyweds, Peter and Eliza Ingalls, were traveling with them.

    53.   Donald Zochert, Wilder’s first biographer, claimed that family lore held that the entire Ingalls clan traveled together by covered wagon to Pepin, where “Pa and Uncle Peter and no doubt Uncle Henry swam across Lake Pepin to work as harvest-hands in the Minnesota Territory during the summertime.” He supplies no year for the exodus, and his source appears to have been a written recollection associated with Gertrude Yanisch, granddaughter of Lansford Whiting Ingalls. His work contains no notes, however, and no corroborating documents have surfaced to support the account. See Zochert, pp. 14–15.

    54.   Nancy Frank Quiner to Martha Quiner Carpenter, April 16, 1862. WHS.

    55.   Eliza and Peter Ingalls to Martha and Charles Carpenter, June 29, 1862. WHS.

    56.   Caroline Quiner Ingalls, undated fragment, De Smet Collection. Reprinted in William Anderson, “The Uncle Laura Never Knew,” The Best of the Lore (De Smet, SD: Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, 2007), p. 2.

    57.   Richard Current, The History of Wisconsin: The Civil War Era, 1848–1873 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976), p. 317.

    58.   Klement, p. 27.

    59.   State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Series 1137. Lists of Persons Liable for Military Duty, Autumn, 1862 (Manitowoc-Racine, reel 2 of 3). Medical complaints cited in this paragraph can be found in the “Remarks” column of men interviewed in Outagamie, Ozaukee, Pepin, Pierce, and Prescott Counties.

    60.   Current, p. 313.

    61.   Klement, pp. 30–31.

    62.   No records survive of Jefferson County’s 1862 militia draft. Neither Charles Ingalls nor his brothers or brothers-in-law appear on Pepin County’s 1862 draft list; of them Charles and Peter Ingalls and Henry Quiner fell within the “first class” of recruits, men between the ages of 25–30. See State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Series 1137. Lists of Persons Liable for Military Duty, Autumn, 1862 (Manitowoc-
Racine, reel 2 of 3). In Pierce County, neighbor to Pepin County, a “Charles Ingli” presented himself, but he was thirty years old and unmarried, while Charles Ingalls was twenty-six and married. In Pepin, a significant number of men paid others to take their place, a common practice, enshrined into law the following year in the Enrollment Act of 1863, but it is doubtful that Charles could have supplied the cost, three hundred dollars, and a willing substitute.

    63.   Existing letters cast little light on the Ingallses’ whereabouts after mid-1862. When Eliza Ingalls wrote to her sister Martha Carpenter on June 29, 1862, she said that there “has been a great change in Concord since you left it,” referring to their brother Joseph’s death: Joseph and Nancy Quiner had been living in Concord. She said that Caroline had been among the family members caring for Nancy Quiner in her bereavement and indicated that Caroline and Charles Ingalls had recently been “up here” to make a visit of some days; Eliza had just given birth to the couple’s first child, Alice. That would suggest that Peter and Eliza Ingalls may have been living somewhere north of Concord, perhaps in Waterloo, Wisconsin, twenty-five miles northwest. Civil War Draft Registration Records, 2nd Congressional District, place a Peter Ingalls (age 28) and a James Ingalls (age 21) in Waterloo, Wisconsin, in June 1863. Later in the letter, Eliza refers to having made a recent visit, which lasted several days, to the town of Concord.

    64.   Klement, p. 29.

    65.   Current, p. 333.

    66.   History of Buffalo and Pepin Counties, Wisconsin, compiled by Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge, vol. 2 (Winona, MN: H. C. Cooper Jr., 1919), p. 868.

    67.   See Menomonie’s newspaper, the Dunn County Lumberman, September 6, 1862.

    68.   M. M. Quaife, “The Panic of 1862 in Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 4 (1920–1921), p. 181.

    69.   Ibid., p. 178.

    70.   Ibid.

    71.   In LHOP, the character Mrs. Scott makes this statement; see LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 1, p. 356.

    72.   Warranty deed given to Charles Ingalls and Henry Quiner by Charles and Abbie Nunn for southern quarter of Section 27 in Twp. 24 R. 15, 160 acres, September 23, 1863. Pepin Collection.

    73.   By January, 1865, Henry and Polly Quiner’s children included Louisa (b. 1860) and Charles (b. 1863); Peter and Eliza Ingalls had Alice (b. 1862) and were expecting Ella (born January 25, 1865); Charles and Martha Carpenter had Willie (b. 1861), Joseph (1863), and Lettie (1864).

    74.   LIW, “‘My Work’: Speech to the Sorosis Club, Mountain Grove, Missouri, Winter 1935–36,” in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 1, p. 583.

  2. INDIAN SUMMERS

      1.   Deed given to Gustaf Ryinholt Gustafson by Charles and Caroline Ingalls for South ½ of SW ¼ of Sec. 27, Twp. 24N., R15W, April 28, 1868; Deed given to Gustaf Ryinholt Gustafson by Henry O. Quiner and Polly M. Quiner for North ½ of SW ¼ of Sec. 27, Twp 24N., R15W, April 28, 1868. Pepin, Book G, pp. 162, 164. The question of where Charles Ingalls and his family were living between the April 1868 sale of this property and the fall of the following year, when he and his wife sign paperwork in Chariton County, Missouri, remains unanswered; perhaps the Ingalls and Quiner families continued to live in one of the purchased cabins or with other family members. Town voting records seem to confirm that the family remained in the Pepin area during 1868. Charles, his father, Lansford Ingalls, and Henry Quiner all voted to elect town officers on April 7, 1868; Charles Ingalls served as treasurer for the local school district that year; and Charles Ingalls and his brother-in-law Thomas Quiner voted in the General Election of November 3, 1868. See Town Records of Pepin, 1857–1878, pp. 251, 257.

      2.   1870 U.S. Census, Pepin County, Wisconsin, schedule 3, Production of Agriculture, cited in Catherine H. Latané and Martha Kuhlman, The Village of Pepin at the Time of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Pepin: T&C Latané, 2004), p. 17.

      3.   LIW, “On the Banks of Plum Creek,” manuscript, p. 67 (her pagination).

      4.   See Appendix: Tables of Prices of Wheat and Other Articles, Table I.—Prices in Chicago, in Thorstein Veblen, “The Price of Wheat Since 1867,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 1, no. 1 (December 1892), p. 157.

      5.   E. W. Stephens, “The Grand River Country,” Missouri Historical Review, vol. 17, no. 1 (October, 1922), pp. 24–25.

      6.   1860 U.S. Census, Chariton County, Missouri, Slave Schedule.

      7.   Deed of Trust, Chariton County, May 28, 1868, Book D, pp. 121–22. Robert H. Cabell, Adamantine’s father-in-law, also appears in the paperwork.

      8.   District Treasurer’s Bond, October 15, 1868, signed by Charles Ingalls, treasurer of School District Six of the Town of Pepin, Thomas P. Huleatt, his surety. Witnessed by Henry Quiner.

      9.   Town Records of Pepin, 1857–1878, pp. 264–66. Henry Quiner was the only member of the extended Ingalls-Quiner clan to vote in the April 1869 election. In a town meeting held on May 3, 1869, ninety-nine voters turned up to address bylaws; none of the family voted (except for an “Isaac Ingalls,” whose relationship to Lansford Ingalls and his family, if any, remains unknown).

    10.   Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith, Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women on the Frontier (New York: Smithmark, 1996), p. 20.

    11.   “Letter of Louisiana Stretzel,” Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1840–1849, vol. 1, ed. Kenneth L. Holmes (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), p. 266.

    12.   Peavy and Smith, p. 28.

    13.   Laura Ingalls Wilder, PG, p. 1.

    14.   Dale L. Morgan, cited in Marc Simmons, “Public Discussion of the Privy, a Historically Private Matter,” Santa Fe New Mexican, April 18, 2015.

    15.   Randolph B. Marcy, The Prairie Traveler: The 1859 Handbook for Westbound Pioneers (New York: Dover, 2006 reprint), p. 59.

    16.   Martha Gay Masterson, quoted in Peavy and Smith, p. 42.

    17.   Power of Attorney, signed and sealed in Chariton County, Missouri, August 26, 1869, Miscellaneous Records, Pepin County Courthouse, Durand, Wisconsin, vol. A, p. 342.

    18.   Power of Attorney, signed and sealed in Chariton County, Missouri, September 1, 1869, Miscellaneous Records, Pepin County Courthouse, Durand, Wisconsin, vol. A, pp. 342–43.

    19.   “A Record of Bloody Deeds,” Chariton County Historical Society, State Historical Society of Missouri.

    20.   Sandy Gladbach, interview with the author, February 10, 2015.

    21.   Quiner reappears in the Pepin voting record on September 14, 1869: Town Records of Pepin, 1857–1878, p. 279.

    22.   PG, p. 1.

    23.   The Preemption Act of 1841, 27th Congress, Ch. 16, 5 Stat. 453 (1841), Section 10.

    24.   See Penny T. Linsenmayer, “A Study of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie,” Kansas History, vol. 24, no. 3 (Autumn 2001), p. 174; see also U.S. Federal Census, 1870, Montgomery County, Kansas.

    25.   See “Following the Frontier Line, 1790–1890,” U.S. Census Bureau: https://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/001/.

    26.   D. C. Krone to “Charley,” March 17, 1870. Independence Historical Society.

    27.   Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, July 12, 1804. National Archives, Papers of Albert Gallatin.

    28.   Watercolor by Charles Balthazar Julien Févrét de Saint-Mémin, 1807. Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware.

    29.   Louis F. Burns, A History of the Osage People (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 2004), pp. 18–19.

    30.   Ibid., pp. 263–64.

    31.   See Lins
enmayer, p. 173.

    32.   Charles Ingalls’s cabin is believed to have been built in Montgomery County’s Rutland Township on the southwest quarter of Section 36, Township 13, Range 14. See Margaret Gray Clement, “Research on ‘Little House on the Prairie’” (Independence, KS: Chamber of Commerce, December 1972). For a description of how Clement found the location, see Zochert, pp. 31–33. For maps, see Linsenmayer, pp. 178, 180.

    33.   Burns, pp. 173, 308.

    34.   Ibid., p. 308.