Prairie Girl

by William Anderson

  De Smet was still suffering from drought. Instead of farming, Laura and Manly rented a house in town, close to Pa and Ma’s new home. Manly worked when he could, and Laura took a job sewing at the dressmaker’s. At the age of five, Rose started school.

  Laura earned a dollar a day from her sewing. She saved the money because she and Manly had a plan. They still wanted to farm, but not in dusty, dry Dakota. They had heard of new farming country among the green hills of the Ozark Mountains in Missouri, called the Land of the Big Red Apple.

  In the summer of 1894, Laura and Manly were ready to leave South Dakota and move to Missouri.

  Chapter Six

  Pioneering in the Ozarks

  EARLY ON THE MORNING of July 17, 1894, Laura and Manly and Rose said good-bye to Pa and Ma and Mary and Carrie and Grace. They left De Smet in a covered wagon and headed south.

  For a month the Wilders drove through South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. Each night they camped in a new spot, and Laura cooked over a campfire. She told Rose they were on one long picnic.

  As the wagon jolted and creaked along the roads, Laura kept a diary. She thought it would be interesting to read about the trip sometime in the future. She wrote about the towns they passed, the people they met, and the farms they saw. She described the stormy crossing they made on the Missouri River as they left South Dakota and arrived in Nebraska. She wrote of wading with Rose in creeks and feasting on watermelons and other fruit they bought along the way.

  On the afternoon of August 22, Laura recorded in her diary that they crossed the Missouri state line. As the wagon rolled on, Laura saw healthy green crops; springs of clear, cold water; and beautiful forests. Blue hazy hills and rocky-edged ravines appeared.

  Laura told Rose that this was the Ozark country. They were so glad to be in Missouri that they sang “Ta-rah-rah-BOOM-de-ay” as they neared the town of Mansfield.

  As Manly drove the wagon around a bend into Mansfield, Laura said that this was where they would stop.

  With a hundred-dollar bill Laura had saved from her sewing job in De Smet, she and Manly bought a farm a mile from Mansfield. The forty acres of land needed work; it was rocky and covered by timber and brush. But Laura loved the new land. She was sure it could be transformed into a beautiful home. Not long after the Wilders moved into the log cabin that stood on their own hilltop, Laura named the place Rocky Ridge Farm.

  Laura and Rose cleaned the empty cabin and made it homelike with the belongings they had brought from De Smet. The cabin reminded Laura of her log home in the big woods of Wisconsin when she was a little girl.

  When they were settled, Laura sent Rose down the road to the Mansfield school. Already, at the age of seven, Rose showed signs of loving words and stories and ideas, just as Laura had. She read all the books she could find and quickly became a top scholar at school.

  Laura helped Manly clear their land. She enjoyed working in the woods, pulling one end of the crosscut saw as they cleared space for fields and pastures. Together Laura and Manly carefully planted four hundred little apple trees on their land.

  Slowly Rocky Ridge became a farm. Cattle grazed on the hills. Corn grew in the cleared fields. The fruit trees started bearing. Laura and Manly shipped apples and pears and grapes and berries for city people to enjoy.

  Laura worked hard, but she knew that hard work never hurt anyone. She tended the vegetable garden, churned butter, baked bread, and raised chickens. She sewed Manly’s shirts and made dresses for herself and Rose. From sunrise to sunset each day, Laura was busy.

  When chores were finished, Laura found time for fun. She and Rose played in the creek behind the cabin. They tamed wild birds and animals. Rose’s school friends came to explore the woods that covered much of Rocky Ridge Farm.

  On Sundays Manly took the family buggy riding. Laura packed picnic lunches, and they ate under the tall trees. In the evenings at home, Laura read aloud to Manly and Rose from The Youth’s Companion. Rose borrowed books from the school library, and Laura read them by the light of the kerosene lamp. While Laura read, Manly made popcorn for a treat.

  After a few years of living on the farm and then in a little house in Mansfield, Laura drew plans for a new farmhouse. She believed that a house in the country should be built from materials from the land. Manly cut down huge oak trees from Rocky Ridge. He hauled them to the sawmill and brought back great timbers and boards for building. He and Laura collected stones from the fields for the foundation and fireplace.

  Laura wanted wide, broad windows of clear glass so that she could look out onto the fields and woods. She planned three porches so she could always find a cool place on hot days. She loved to read, so a corner of the parlor was set aside for a little library. Laura loved fires crackling on a hearth, so a mammoth rock fireplace was planned for one end of the parlor.

  The house on Rocky Ridge was started in 1896. Slowly but steadily, Laura saw her house expand. Rooms and improvements were added until finally there were ten rooms. It took nearly seventeen years to finish the house. When it was done, people from all around the countryside called the Wilder house one of the prettiest places in the Ozarks. Rocky Ridge Farm grew too. Laura and Manly saved money and continued to buy more land until they owned nearly two hundred acres.

  In 1903 Rose finished high school. After graduation, Rose learned telegraphy at the railroad depot in Mansfield. Tapping out messages on the telegraph key was the fastest means of communication in America, and it was one of the few jobs open to women. Soon Rose was offered a telegraphy job in Kansas City.

  Rose was seventeen when she left home to work. Women all over were becoming “career girls,” and Rose was eager to live and work in Kansas City. Her first job paid her sixty dollars a month, which was enough to support herself. Laura sometimes worried about Rose living so far from Rocky Ridge. Rose reminded her that she could board the train and arrive home in less than a day.

  Laura marveled at the modern times she lived in. Fast trains, telephones, automobiles, and electric lights were all common in the town of Mansfield and were even spreading to the countryside. Laura knew that the time would come when people would forget what covered wagons were. But she would never forget the covered-wagon trips with Pa and Ma and her sisters, nor the journey with Manly and Rose to Rocky Ridge Farm.

  Chapter Seven

  Writing in Orange-Covered Tablets

  AFTER LIVING FOR MANY YEARS on Rocky Ridge Farm, Laura thought that no one worked harder than a farmer’s wife. She knew the waiting and hoping for good crops. She also knew what it was like to work from sunrise to sunset. She churned butter, canned fruits and vegetables, tended chickens, and helped Manly when he needed her.

  Rose suggested that Laura and Manly sell the farm and move to a city. Laura reminded Rose how much she and Manly loved the land. They decided to stay on Rocky Ridge Farm.

  “We who live in quiet places,” Laura wrote, “have the opportunity to think our own thoughts and live our own lives.”

  In 1911 Laura was surprised when a newspaper editor contacted her. He knew about the success of Rocky Ridge Farm and wanted Laura to write about it for the Missouri Ruralist. The Ruralist was a weekly paper for farm families published in St. Louis and read all over Missouri.

  Laura accepted the job, and she made time in her busy days to write. In her articles, she shared her experiences of running the farm with Manly. She also gave tips on raising chickens and interviewed her neighbors about their farms in the Ozarks.

  Laura proudly sent Rose her columns from the Missouri Ruralist. Rose had moved to California, where she married Gillette Lane. She joined her husband in selling real estate near San Francisco. Then, in 1914, Rose started her own career as a writer. She became a popular newspaper reporter for the San Francisco Bulletin.

  In 1915 Laura received an invitation from Rose she could not resist. Rose told her of the great world’s fair in San Francisco and begged her mother to visit. Manly urged Laura to go; he would stay home to tend the farm. So Lau
ra made her longest trip west, all by railroad. Seeing Rose’s smiling face at the San Francisco train station was the beginning of two of the most exciting months in Laura’s life.

  In San Francisco Laura waded in the Pacific Ocean. She rode cable cars up and down the streets of the hilly city. She tried the food in Chinese and Italian restaurants. For days she wandered through the wonders of the world’s fair.

  Laura loved the fireworks and fountains and exhibits from foreign lands. She was amazed to see the flying machines and to be able to watch a moving picture at a theater built for four thousand people. But she was homesick for Manly when she toured the farming exhibits at the fair. She wrote him letters all about modern milking machines, canning factories, and food exhibits.

  Then Laura got a writing assignment. The Missouri Ruralist asked her to write stories about the fair. Rose worked with Laura on her articles for the Ruralist. Laura was glad to have her help. “I do the housework so that she will have time to help me,” Laura told Manly. Finally Laura returned to Rocky Ridge. For ten more years she published articles in newspapers and magazines.

  In 1925 Rose came back to Rocky Ridge to spend time with Laura and Manly. She was now a famous author. Rose had traveled throughout Europe as a reporter. Her books and magazine stories were read all across America. But Rose had never forgotten the stories Laura told of life as a pioneer girl. She encouraged Laura to write down her memories.

  Laura sat at her desk and opened an orange-covered tablet of paper. She wrote page after page of stories of her life with Pa and Ma and Mary and Carrie and Grace. Laura’s memories slipped back to life in the big woods, to the prairies, to Plum Creek, and to De Smet. Suddenly Laura realized, “To my surprise, I have discovered that I have led a very interesting life.”

  Laura shared the stories in the orange tablets with Rose. Rose said, “Put some meat on the bones!” Rose wanted Laura to add details, write descriptions of the people and places she mentioned, and tell additional stories.

  So Laura wrote and rewrote, emphasizing stories that her father had told her. Laura’s manuscript became Little House in the Big Woods, the story of her first memories of log cabin life in Wisconsin. Then Rose showed Laura’s writings to an editor at Harper & Brothers, a large publishing company in New York. The children’s department decided to publish the first book written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. When the book was published in 1932, Laura was sixty-five years old.

  Little House in the Big Woods was immediately popular with the children who read it. Teachers and librarians and parents liked the book too. Grandparents were pleased that Laura had written of frontier life so that modern children could know how they had lived.

  “I thought that would end it,” Laura said when her first book was published. “But what do you think? Children who read them wrote to me, begging for more. I was amazed!”

  Laura decided to respond to the children who wanted more stories. She wrote a second book, but not about herself. She filled more orange-covered tablets with stories of a boy who loved horses and who grew up on a big farm in New York State. It was Manly’s story, and Laura called the book Farmer Boy.

  Still, the requests for more books arrived. Laura spent hours at her desk, remembering and writing. “I went as far back in my memory as I could and left my mind there,” Laura explained. It brought “out of the dimness of the past things that were beyond my ordinary remembrance.” Laura’s third book was published in 1935. It was Little House on the Prairie, the adventure story of her family’s life on the Kansas prairie.

  Letters kept pouring in to Laura from her readers. When Manly brought her the piles of letters from the mailbox, they all seemed to say, “What happened next? Please tell us more!” Laura smiled and kept on writing. She was reminded of the days long ago when she had begged Pa for just one more story and just one more song on his fiddle.

  Chapter Eight

  The Children’s Favorite

  IN 1937 Laura turned seventy. She was a pretty lady with snow-white hair and snapping blue eyes. That year her fourth book, On the Banks of Plum Creek, was published.

  Manly was just as surprised as Laura was that children liked the stories of their lives so much. But he left the writing to Laura and kept busy on the farm. He tended the garden, split wood for the cookstove, and raised goats as a hobby. Laura’s books earned enough money so that it was no longer necessary to farm Rocky Ridge.

  There were no horses left on Rocky Ridge Farm. Manly drove a shiny new Chrysler instead. But Laura and Manly never stopped missing the days of horses and buggies.

  Laura and Manly were always a little homesick for prairie country, so in 1938 they drove to South Dakota to visit their old friends and relatives. They were surprised to see that De Smet was a pretty little modern town instead of the pioneer settlement they remembered. Pa and Ma and Mary had died, but Grace lived nearby with her husband. After they visited with Grace, Laura and Manly drove farther west to visit Carrie in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

  At home on Rocky Ridge, Laura was constantly busy with the writing of her books. In 1939 By the Shores of Silver Lake appeared. It told of Laura’s family’s move to Dakota Territory. In 1940 The Long Winter was published. In that book, Laura wrote of the blizzard winter of 1880–81, and how the Ingalls family and the Wilder boys survived it.

  When describing children’s letters to her, Laura told Rose they “all seem wildly interested and want to know how, when and where Laura met Almanzo and about their getting married.” She included the story of her first buggy ride with Manly in Little Town on the Prairie, which was published just before America entered World War II in 1941.

  In 1943 These Happy Golden Years, the story of Laura’s teaching and her happy wedding, was published. Laura was seventy-six when she completed her eighth book. Although the letters continued to pour in, asking for more tales of Laura and Almanzo, Laura was finished.

  But Laura could hardly stop writing, because every day as many as fifty letters arrived from readers. Laura answered each one. A fourth-grade class wrote, hoping that the Little House stories were true. Laura replied: “You ask if Laura was a real person. She was. I was the Laura you have been reading about. The books are true stories about me and my parents and sisters. Things happened to them just as I have told in the books.”

  Children wanted to know what became of the characters Laura had written of. She wrote, “Pa and Ma lived for a while on their homestead and then moved into town, where Pa did carpentry. After Mary graduated from the College for the Blind, she lived at home. She was always cheerful and busy with her work, her books, and music. Carrie worked for The De Smet News for a while after finishing high school, and then she married a mine owner and moved to the Black Hills. Grace married a farmer and lived a few miles outside of De Smet.”

  Laura sent Pa’s fiddle back to South Dakota to be displayed in the museum near the state capitol building in Pierre. She enjoyed getting letters from children who saw the fiddle and went on to see where she had lived in De Smet. People who recalled Laura’s family gladly showed visitors where Pa’s homestead was, and they pointed out old buildings on Main Street that Laura had described in her books.

  The Little House books were so popular that Harper & Brothers decided to publish new editions with illustrations by Garth Williams. In 1947 he arrived at Rocky Ridge to meet Laura and Almanzo. He studied their old photographs and visited the sites of the books. It took six years to complete his illustrations.

  In 1949 Laura received a great honor. A library in Detroit, Michigan, was named for her. She and Manly were proud and pleased. But later that year ninety-two-year old Manly became ill. On October 23, 1949, Manly died at Rocky Ridge. He and Laura had been married for sixty-four years. Laura continued to live on the farm she and Manly had built. Although she missed Manly, her life was full of happy memories.

  The letters still came, full of love for Laura and her books. When Laura turned eighty-four in 1951, nearly a thousand birthday cards were delivered
to her. Children came knocking at Laura’s door, shyly asking to meet her. “I cannot bear to disappoint a child,” Laura said. She autographed their books, showed them through her home, and told them about Almanzo, Mary, Pa and Ma, and other people from her stories.

  The children of Mansfield loved Laura’s books too. They knew their favorite author lived in the white house on the hill a mile from town. They saw her in church and walking down the street in Mansfield when she did her errands.

  Down the road from Laura’s house lived two young boys who became Laura’s faithful friends. They brought her mail, helped her with chores, and spent hours just visiting her. The boys often sat wide-eyed as Laura told them stories, just as Pa had once done. At Christmastime Laura gave them copies of her books. She loved them, just as she loved all the children around the world who read her books.

  And children everywhere loved her back.

  Afterword

  LAURA INGALLS WILDER lived on happily at Rocky Ridge Farm. On February 10, 1957, three days after her ninetieth birthday, she died. After Laura’s death her friends and neighbors met with Rose and asked her to preserve Rocky Ridge as a memorial for Little House readers to visit. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum was founded, and later each of Laura’s homesites was restored. Every year thousands of people from all over the world visit.

  Rose continued to be a busy author after Laura died. In addition to her own books, Rose contributed to On the Way Home, published in 1962. It included Laura’s diary of her last covered-wagon trip and Rose’s memories of the first years on Rocky Ridge.

  Rose inherited her family’s love of travel. When she was eighty-one, she planned a trip around the world. Before she left, however, Rose died suddenly on October 30, 1968. She was the last descendant of Pa and Ma Ingalls.