Laura Ingalls Wilder, chronicler of American frontier life, dies
On this day in 1957 Laura Ingalls Wilder author of the best-selling Little House series of childrens novels based on her childhood on the American frontier dies at age 90 in Mansfield Missouri.Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born in a log cabin near Pepin Wisconsin on February 7 1867 the second of Charles and Caroline Quiner Ingalls four daughters.As a child she lived with her family in Indian Territory in Kansas as well as in farming communities in Minnesota and Iowa.In the late 1870s the Ingalls moved to Dakota Territory settling in present-day De Smet South Dakota.
Laura Ingalls worked as a school teacher in the area starting in her teens and in 1885 married Almanzo Wilder a local homesteader 10 years her senior.In 1886 the couple had a daughter their only other child a son died shortly after his birth in 1889.In 1894 after several years of drought in South Dakota the Wilders traveled by covered wagon to Mansfield Missouri in the Ozarks where they established a farm.Years later Laura Ingalls Wilder began contributing essays to local newspapers.
In 1932 Wilder then in her 60s published her first novel Little House in the Big Woods an autobiographical account of pioneer life in Wisconsin.The book became a success and she went on to publish seven more novels based on her experiences growing up on the American frontier in the 1870s and 1880s.These books including Little House on the Prairie (1935) On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937) and The Long Winter (1940) chronicled the joys and hardships (including illnesses crop failures blizzards fires and grasshopper plagues) that Wilder and her family experienced.
A ninth novel The First Four Years (1971) was published posthumously as were several other books based on Wilders journals and letters.Wilders daughter Rose Wilder Lane an author and journalist is believed to have helped edit her mothers books although the exact extent of her collaboration is unknown.The Little House books have been translated into dozens of languages and continue to be read by legions of fans.
The books also inspired a hit TV series Little House on the Prairie which originally aired from 1974 to 1982 and starred Melissa Gilbert as the plucky Laura and Michael Landon as her father Charles.After Laura Ingalls Wilder died in 1957 her longtime Missouri home Rocky Ridge Farm became a museum.
