Laura and Almanzo Wilder had a fresh start with 40 acres on Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri, a place that Laura Ingalls Wilder lived in for 62 years. But until she became a best-selling author, life was a constant struggle to make ends meet for Wilder. She and her husband always had second or even third jobs. Their daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, compared their poverty and disappointments to “horrors in a dream.”
Video Features
Clip | The letter from NY that changed Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life
Clip | Roxane Gay and others on racist “Little House” depictions
Clip | The word that Laura refused to say in her wedding vows
Clip | Until she was an author, money was a struggle for Wilder
Clip | The secret mother-daughter collaboration on “Little House”
Clip | Disaster was looming when the Ingalls moved to Minnesota
Clip | How the logs of the “Little House” cabin were stolen
Written Features
The subtle libertarian politics of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books
What should be done about racist depictions in the “Little House” books?
8 Interesting facts about Laura Ingalls Wilder
What’s it like to attend “Laurapalooza,” the conference for Laura Ingalls Wilder superfans (“bonnetheads”)?
A “Little House” adulthood: How the books changed when I grew up
In promoting the “myth of white self-sufficiency,” the “Little House” books rewrite history
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s famous gingerbread recipe
Laura Ingalls Wilder biographical timeline
Favorite quotes from the “Little House” books
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 1916 column for Thanksgiving reminds us to “just be glad that we are alive”
10 of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s most inspiring quotes
127 songs are mentioned in the “Little House” books. This playlist presents many of them.
A Laura Ingalls Wilder suggested reading list
Quizzes & Games
How well do you know the life and work of Laura Ingalls Wilder? Test your knowledge with this beginner quiz.
How well do you know the life and work of Laura Ingalls Wilder? Test your knowledge with this advanced quiz.
How well do you know the life and work of Laura Ingalls Wilder? Test your knowledge with this expert quiz.
Join the Laura Ingalls Wilder #ShareYourShelfieContest
Play Laura Ingalls Wilder bingo
TRANSCRIPT
(gentle music) - [Narrator] In 1894, the Wilders get their fresh start.
They buy 40 acres with a one-room cabin and call it Rocky Ridge Farm.
Laura had a clear vision of what it could become.
- [Tess Voiceover] 'Everything we needed to build it was on the land, good oak beams and boards, stones for the foundations in the fireplace.
The house would have large windows looking west across a brook over the gentle valleys and wooded hills that hid the town.
The kitchen would be big enough to hold a wood stove for winter, and in the parlor, big bookcases filled with books and a hanging lamp to read them by on winter evenings by the fireplace.'
- [Narrator] Laura Ingalls Wilder would live in Mansfield, Missouri for the next 62 years, but until she became a best-selling author, life was a constant struggle to make ends meet.
The couple always had second and third jobs.
Laura raised chickens and took in boarders.
Almanzo tended to the apple orchard and delivered kerosene.
Their young daughter Rose picked huckleberries to sell, and remembered her childhood none too fondly.
- [Voiceover Actor] 'No one knew what went on in my mind.
Because I loved my parents, I would not let them suspect that I was suffering.
I concealed from them how much I felt their poverty, their struggles and disappointments.
These filled my life, magnified like horrors in a dream.'
- [Narrator] In the spring of 1902, Laura receives word that her father is dying.
(bell ringing) She travels back to De Smet to see him one last time.
- It must've been a really heartbreaking loss for her, because she always identified strongly with her father.
They loved each other.
She always referred to her earliest memories of him carrying her, you know, and singing to her, and gazing at her, and I think she felt a security and a closeness with him that she never felt with anybody else.