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Missouri Women
In History
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Ingalls Wilder won international fame as the author from 1932
until 1943 of eight "Little House"
books for children depicting frontier
family life. Her warm and lively stories
recorded for all children an enduring
picture of early life in the Midwest
and Great Plains.
Born February 7, 1867, near Pepin,
Wisconsin, young Laura moved with
her family to Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa
and South Dakota. She taught in rural
schools near De Smet, South Dakota, and there at the age of 18 she married
Almanzo Wilder. To them was born an only daughter in 1886. A series of
misfortunes caused them to move in 1894 to the "land of the big red apple" in
the Missouri Ozarks. With them they carried a $100 bill in a lap desk, Laura's
savings from long hours of work as a seamstress. The 55-day, covered-wagon
journey ended at Mansfield, Missouri. There they selected 40 acres of land for
a home site. Just before the deal was closed, they discovered that the $100 bill,
the only money for a down payment, was missing. After a few agonizing days,
the bill, which had slipped into a desk crack, was recovered. Within a year the
Wilders moved from a log cabin on the farm to the two-room frame home built
by Almanzo from native wood. Gradually the home was enlarged and the farm
expanded to 200 acres. After the daughter Rose Wilder Lane won fame as an
author, she encouraged her mother, then more than 60 years old, to write down
stories which Laura had told her as a child. The resulting books, illustrated by
Helen Sewell and Mildred Boyle and published by Harper & Brothers, gained
worldwide popularity. Henry C. Haskell, Kansas City Star editor, said of her
books, "There is no conscious nostalgia in their writing, only the sensitivity of
one who had miraculously never lost her capacity to recreate the scenes she
had known in her girlhood as if they had occurred yesterday." Garth Williams
illustrated a new, uniform edition of the series, published in 1953 by Harper
& Row.
In 1942 Laura received the Harry Harman Award from the Pacific Northwest Library Association and in 1943 the New York Herald Spring Book Festival
Award. She was the first recipient, in 1955, of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award,
established by the Children's Services Division of the American Library Association. The award, named for her, is given every five years to an outstanding
author of children's books. Libraries are named for her in Detroit, Michigan;
Pomona, California; and Mansfield. Plaques mark the settings of her books
at Pepin; De Smet; Independence, Kansas; Walnut Grove, Minnesota; and
Franklin Count), New York. Four years after her death in 1957, the Laura
Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum was opened to the public at Mansfield.
Object Description
| Title | Missouri Historical Review, Volume 63 Issue 3, April 1969 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Month | April |
| Year | 1969 |
| Publisher | The State Historical Society of Missouri |
| Publisher-Electronic | The State Historical Society of Missouri |
| Rights | Copyright The State Historical Society of Missouri, 2008 |
| ISSN | 0026-6581 |