Prairie Fires

by Caroline Fraser

    74.   On the 1900 Federal Census, Almanzo Wilder reported the year of his birth as 1861; see U.S. Census, Mansfield, Pleasant Valley Township, Wright County, Missouri, June 1, 1900. If 1861 was correct, that would have made him six years older than his wife rather than ten, as has been assumed.

    75.   Anderson, Laura Wilder of Mansfield, pp. 4, 7; see also Miller, p. 99.

    76.   See City of Mansfield website: http://mansfieldcityhall.org/info.html.

    77.   Mansfield Area Historical Society, Images of America: Around Mansfield (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2013), p. 15.

    78.   Gloria Bogart Carter, interview with the author, October 30, 2015. This description was confirmed by members of the Mansfield Historical Society.

    79.   Black Families of the Ozarks, vol. 1, Greene County Archives Bulletin Number Forty-Five (Springfield, MO, n.d.), p. 108. See also History of Laclede, Camden, Dallas, Webster, Wright, Texas, Pulaski, Phelps, and Dent Counties, Missouri (Chicago: Goodspeed, 1889), p. 370.

    80.   See, for example, A Reminiscent History of Douglas County, Missouri, 1857–1957, compiled and written by J. E. Curry (Douglas County Herald, 1957), p. 163.

    81.   See Sketches of Wright County: Part Two, Towns and Hamlets, compiled by Vearl Rowe (Hartville, MO: Wright County Historical Society, n.d.), p. 55.

    82.   Mansfield Area Historical Society, Images of America: Around Mansfield (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2013), p. 19.

    83.   Ibid.

    84.   Lynn, pp. 53, 68, 114.

    85.   Ibid., p. 212.

    86.   Grace Ingalls to Aubrey Sherwood, October 20, 1939, reprinted in “Two Readers Recall Earliest Issues; Sisters Revive Memories in Reading Diary,” De Smet News, November 9, 1939.

    87.   De Smet News, August 31, 1900.

    88.   Kingsbury Independent, May 30, 1902.

    89.   Ibid.

    90.   RWL to Clara Webber, October 24, 1961. Pomona Collection.

    91.   LIW, “First Memories of Father,” Reader, p. 160.

    92.   Ibid.

    93.   Ibid., pp. 161–62.

    94.   “A Pioneer Gone,” Kingsbury County Independent, June 13, 1902.

    95.   Lynn, p. 163.

    96.   Lockwood, p. 128.

    97.   Undated clipping from De Smet News. De Smet Collection.

    98.   Anderson, Story of the Ingalls, p. 17.

    99.   The stock requisition forms are dated 1903, but the envelope itself—addressed to Mrs. A. J. Wilder at Rocky Ridge Farm from the editor’s office of The Farm World, a publication in Chicago—appears to date to 1912, based on the postmark and date of issue of the four one-cent stamps. Whether the fragments and sketches were written in 1903 or a decade later remains unknown.

  100.   Rose Wilder, “Notes to School Friends Written on Textbooks, 1900–1902.” HHPL, WHC.

  101.   Lane to Jasper Crane, December 13, 1961, in The Lady and the Tycoon: The Best of Letters Between Rose Wilder Lane and Jasper Crane, ed. Roger Lea MacBride (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1973), p. 278.

  102.   Ibid.

  103.   RWL, “Old Maid,” in Old Home Town, p. 38.

  104.   Rose Wilder, “Notes to School Friends.”

  105.   RWL, “Long Skirts,” Old Home Town, p. 157.

  106.   Holtz reported these rumors in an endnote in Ghost, p. 391, no. 28. He concluded that Rose’s attendance at the Crowley school would surely have been impossible if she had been pregnant. Lane herself, while acknowledging the stillbirth of a baby early in her marriage, never hinted at such a traumatic event in her teenage years.

  107.   RWL to Norma Lee Browning, May 17, 1964.

  108.   Ibid.

  109.   “Class Exercises at High School,” Crowley Signal, May 7, 1904, p. 1.

  110.   RWL to Gladys Wilder, February 12, 1962. Spring Valley Historical Society. Lane later wrote a profile of Griffith; see “Mars in the Movies,” Sunset, February 1918.

  111.   Lynn, p. 225.

  112.   LIW, “Summer Boarders,” in Reader, p. 66.

  113.   Ibid.

  114.   Photograph, HHPL. The hymn, “Just as I Am,” with lyrics by Charlotte Elliott, begins, “Just as I am, without one plea, / But that thy blood was shed for me.”

  115.   Anderson, Laura Wilder of Mansfield, p. 7.

  116.   “Summer Boarders,” Reader, p. 67.

  117.   Ibid., p. 68.

  118.   Lane, “If I Could Live My Life Over Again,” Hearst’s International, Combined with Cosmopolitan, vol. 78, no. 3 (March 1925), p. 32.

  119.   RWL, Journal, “My Albanian Garden,” November 3, 1926, p. 2.

  120.   1903 Drury College Yearbook, Springfield, Missouri, p. 85.

  121.   See Holtz, Ghost, p. 46. The identity of Rose Wilder’s first employer appears to be unclear.

  122.   Lane, “If I Could Live My Life Over Again,” p. 178.

  123.   See Anderson, Laura Wilder of Mansfield, p. 10.

  124.   No such photograph exists in the archives of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library or in the De Smet Collection; nor have images of the Wilder family appeared in previous biographies or in the copiously illustrated volumes of Wilder photographs, such as William Anderson, LIW Country (New York: HarperCollins, 1990) or Laura’s Album.

  125.   RWL, “Faces at the Window” (published privately, 1972), p. 7.

  126.   Paul Cooley to Rose Wilder, postcard in Mansfield Collection.

  127.   See Rose Wilder, “Ups and Downs of Modern Mercury,” San Francisco Call, September 20, 1908, p. 4, and Rose Wilder, “The Constantly Increasing Wonders in the New Field of Wireless,” San Francisco Call, November 22, 1908, p. 4.

  128.   Wilder, “The Constantly Increasing Wonders…” Compare Rose Wilder’s impressionistic copy with the more factually based report that ran on the front page of the same newspaper the previous month: “Gap to Hawaii Is Bridged by Wireless Men,” San Francisco Call, vol. 104, no. 134 (October 12, 1908), p. 1.

  129.   State of Utah, Death Certificate, Infant Lane, November 23, 1909; first reported in Sallie Ketcham, LIW: American Writer on the Prairie (New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 91, 93n41.

  130.   RWL, “My Albanian Garden,” November 3, 1926, p. 2.

  131.   RWL Photographs, Kansas City, 1910. HHPL.

  132.   “Crowing, Cooing Babies Compete at the Grocers’ Pure Food Show,” Kansas City Post, May 20, 1910, p. 8. HHPL.

  133.   “Bread and Milk May Become High Luxury in Future,” Kansas City Post, May 5, 1910, p. 5. HHPL.

  134.   Wilder’s talk was titled “District Organization”; the women’s association meeting was held as part of a larger event, the Arcadia Land Congress, held May 24–25, 1910, sponsored by the Missouri Immigration Board; see “Ozarks’ Praise to Be Sung at Land Congress,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 15, 1910, p. 18.

  135.   “A Woman’s Land Congress,” Country Gentleman, Albany, NY, July 7, 1910, vol. 75, p. 646.

  136.   Undated newspaper clippings, c. 1910, Mansfield Collection. See “Laura’s Land Congress Speech,” Sampler, pp. 96–99.

  137.   Ibid.

  138.   Among Wilder’s earliest publications was “Profits of the Good Fat Hen: Missouri Woman Offers Statistics to Prove It a Money Maker,” Coffeyville Daily Journal (Coffeyville, Kansas), September 12, 1910, p. 4. This unsigned report quoted extensively from an article by or interview with Mrs. A. J. Wilder said to have run in Woman’s National Daily, a short-lived turn of the century newspaper owned by the Lewis Publishing Company of St. Louis, which also printed Woman’s Magazine and Woman’s Farm Jour
nal. Edward Gardner Lewis, the company’s owner and a notable real estate developer, would eventually face charges of mail fraud arising from the heavy advertising content of the publications.

  139.   RWL to LIW, letter fragment beginning “answers to poultry raisers,” no date. References to Maine later in the letter suggest that the letter dates from the winter of 1910–1911.

  140.   Ibid.

  141.   RWL to LIW, pre-1915 letter, beginning “Muvver dear.”

  142.   RWL to LIW, undated letter fragment, beginning “Newspaper ethics.”

  143.   RWL to LIW, undated letter fragment, beginning “you’ll be astonished at the different looking copy you’ll turn out.”

  144.   See Stephen W. Hines, introduction to Laura Ingalls Wilder: Farm Journalist, pp. 5–6.

  145.   LIW, “The Building of a Farm House,” in Reader, p. 53. The conversational tone of the essay recalls Wilder’s Missouri Ruralist columns, with its references to “The-Man-Of-The-Place,” but Anderson provides no date or place of publication.

  146.   See Anderson, Laura Wilder of Mansfield, p. 13.

  147.   “The Building of a Farm House,” p. 58.

  148.   Ibid., p. 57.

  7. AS A FARM WOMAN THINKS

      1.   LIW, “Who’ll Do the Women’s Work?,” Missouri Ruralist, April 5, 1919, in LIW: Farm Journalist, ed. Stephen W. Hines (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2007), p. 181.

      2.   Some scholars argue that farmers’ post–Civil War complaints about “greedy railroads, creditors, and industrialists” may have been misplaced or exaggerated, but at least one skeptic of those complaints notes nonetheless that the charges against railroads “appear to have the most merit.” See James I. Stewart, “The Economics of American Farm Unrest, 1865–1900,” at EH.net, an online source operated by the Economic History Association: https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-american-farm-unrest-1865–1900/.

      3.   RWL to Jasper Crane, April 19, 1966, in The Lady and the Tycoon, p. 386. Lane refers to Wilson’s campaign slogan for his second term, in 1916: “He Kept Us Out of War.” It’s unclear if she voted for Wilson for his first term, in 1912.

      4.   Karen Graves, Girls’ Schooling During the Progressive Era: From Female Scholar to Domesticated Citizen (New York: Garland, 1998), p. 76.

      5.   Ibid., pp. 78–79.

      6.   “Poultry Raising as an Occupation for Women,” American Food Journal, September 15, 1910, p. 27. The article may have been reprinted from The Woman’s National Daily, a short-lived newspaper published in St. Louis, Missouri. The article appeared previously as “Profits of the Good Fat Hen,” in the Coffeyville Daily Journal (Coffeyville, Kansas), September 12, 1910, p. 4; and in the Parsons Daily Sun (Parsons, Kansas), September 13, 1910, p. 4.

      7.   Mrs. A. J. Wilder, “The Small Farm Home,” Missouri State Board of Agriculture, 43rd Annual Report of the Missouri State Board of Agriculture (Jefferson City: Hugh Stephens Printing, 1911), p. 252.

      8.   Stephen Mather, as quoted in Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (New York: Knopf, 2009), p. 174.

      9.   Homer E. Socolofsky, “The Evolution of a Home Grown Product, Capper Publications,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 2 (Summer 1958), p. 151.

    10.   Ibid., p. 156.

    11.   Ibid., see chart tracking circulation growth, p. 165.

    12.   Mrs. W. T. Flournoy, “Inconveniences of the Farm Home,” 43rd Annual Report of the Missouri State Board, p. 255.

    13.   Mrs. A. J. Wilder, “Favors the Small Farm Home,” Missouri Ruralist, February 18, 1911, in LIW: Farm Journalist, pp. 13–16.

    14.   RWL to LIW, undated pre-1915 letter fragment, beginning “I have taken the tail from the new blue serge dress.”

    15.   RWL to Eliza Jane Wilder Thayer and Wilder Thayer, October 3, 1914. Malone Collection. Weather records reveal that 1911 and 1913 were years of “extreme drought” in southwest Missouri; 1912 was also dry. See Claude Burton Hutchison and T. R. Douglass, University of Missouri College of Agriculture Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin No. 123: Experiments with Farm Crops in Southwest Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri College of Agriculture, January 1915), p. 169.

    16.   RWL to LIW, undated letter fragment, beginning “perceived a real basis.”

    17.   RWL to LIW, undated pre-1915 letter, beginning “Muvver dear.”

    18.   Ibid.

    19.   A. J. Wilder, “The Story of Rocky Ridge Farm,” Missouri Ruralist, July 22, 1911, in LIW: Farm Journalist, pp. 17–19.

    20.   A. J. Wilder, “Substantial Gates on Farm,” Cape County Herald (Cape Girardeau, Missouri), March 29, 1912, p. 7.

    21.   A. J. Wilder, “My Apple Orchard,” Missouri Ruralist, June 1, 1912, in LIW: Farm Journalist, p. 21.

    22.   Mrs. A. J. Wilder, “Judgment Needed with Late Chicks,” Mexico Missouri Message (Mexico, Missouri), July 24, 1913, p. 3.

    23.   See Anderson, Laura Wilder of Mansfield, p. 8. No records survive to indicate the nature of the surgery.

    24.   “Shorter Hours for Farm Women,” Missouri Ruralist, June 28, 1913; LIW: Farm Journalist, p. 24.

    25.   Ibid., p. 23.

    26.   Editorial, “A Woman’s Sphere,” Saturday Evening Post, July 19, 1913. As quoted in Jan Cohn, Creating America: George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), pp. 78–79. Cohn suggests that the author of this editorial may have been Adelaide Neall, who would later edit Rose Wilder Lane’s Post fiction.

    27.   “Shorter Hours for Farm Women,” LIW: Farm Journalist, p. 26.

    28.   Caroline Ingalls to Laura Wilder, June 18, 1913. Mansfield Collection.

    29.   RWL to LIW, undated letter fragment, beginning “I have taken the tail from the new blue serge dress.”

    30.   Ibid.

    31.   “A Homemaker of the Ozarks,” in LIW: Farm Journalist, p. 30.

    32.   RWL, “My Albanian Garden,” p. 2.

    33.   RWL to LIW, undated letter on San Francisco Bulletin stationery, spring of 1915, reprinted in West from Home, p. 3.

    34.   Ibid.

    35.   Wilder’s guilt may also have been exacerbated by the fact that this was the second World’s Fair her husband was missing on her account, having abandoned a planned trip with his brother Royal to New Orleans for the 1884 World’s Fair in order to get back to his fiancée.

    36.   LIW to AJW, September 21, 1915, and September 23, 1915, in West from Home, pp. 103–104, 112–13.

    37.   LIW to AJW, August 22, 1915, and August 23, 1915, in ibid., pp. 11–14.

    38.   LIW to AJW, August 26, 1915, in ibid., p. 23.

    39.   Ibid., p. 24.

    40.   LIW to AJW, August 29, 1915, in ibid., pp. 32–33.

    41.   Ibid., p. 32.

    42.   LIW to AJW, September 21, 1915, in ibid., p. 97.

    43.   Official Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition—1915 (San Francisco: Wahlgreen, 1915), p. 29.

    44.   LIW to AJW, September 4, 1915, in West from Home, pp. 43–44. Grafly’s “Pioneer Mother” was originally displayed in the Exposition at the main entrance to the Palace of Fine Arts; it was later moved to Golden Gate Park; see Sam Whiting, “Panama-Pacific International Expo: Tracking Down the Artifacts,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 14, 2015.

    45.   LIW to AJW, October 6, 1915, in West from Home, pp. 137–38.

    46.   LIW t
o AJW, September 23, 1915, in ibid., p. 109.

    47.   Ibid.

    48.   Ibid., p. 111.

    49.   LIW to AJW, September 21, 1915, in ibid., p. 104.

    50.   Holtz, Ghost, p. 66.

    51.   See “On the Margin of Life,” Bulletin, March 27, 1915.

    52.   See W. Joseph Campbell, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), p. 20n81. The phrase appeared in an article for a trade journal: “Journalistic Kindergarten,” Fourth Estate (May 5, 1900), p. 6.