A reader wrote in with a comment on this post (about Eliza Jane and Laura’s portrayal of her) that was so thorough and extensive I thought it deserved front-page notice.
I, too, have thought about this for many years, but here is my take on it. Every family has a difficult aunt or uncle or cousin or sibling. Some people are just difficult. Every family has someone you dread seeing at Thanksgiving and Christmas and pray you don’t get stuck next to them at the dinner table. It may not be that they are bad, or evil or even that you don’t respect them or trust them, they are just difficult.
Look at the history of both families. If I’m not mistaken, both are direct descendants of Mayflower Pilgrims. I don’t have time to page through all of Deb Houdek’s work on the geneaology right now, but I believe I remember seeing that some time ago. So you’ve got two families who descend from people who are willing to take on tremendous risk and hardship to live out what they believe. If Eliza Jane inherited that backbone, that would be something that would both make you respect and trust her highly, and something that would make you not want to sit next to her at Thanksgiving dinner.
Now take a look at Rose. Rose is famous for having had a highly successful career at a time when most women didn’t. She was a founder of the Libertarian movement and a friend of Ayn Rand. She is also notable for having divorced at a time when most women didn’t. This is another strong-willed, out-spoken woman cut from the same cloth as Eliza Jane. They were two of a kind. This is also a woman who built a house on her parents farm, for her parents, against their will. It was the very latest style in Connecticut, I’m sure, but it wasn’t their style. They lived in it for a while, then quietly moved back into their own house and abandoned it. Rose used it when she was home.
Lastly, take a look at Laura. She is hardly a shrinking violet herself. What kind of a woman would slap an Indian in the Dakota territories in the 1880’s? She’s lucky to have walked away from that alive, but I think perhaps the reason was first, that the Indians were so startled and second, that they recognized her fierce bravery and respected it. It is notable to that Almanzo and Laura competed with each other all their years in Missouri to see who could make the most money off their part of the farm, Laura with her chickens and eggs, Almanzo with the dairy cows. That is how Laura came to be a writer: by writing about her success as a farm wife in the Missouri Ruralist.
My take on it is that poor Almanzo, who was no coward himself but seems to have been a gentle soul, first was bossed around by his sister, then he married someone rather like his sister, and then he had a daughter perhaps even more out-spoken than his sister. The relationship between he and Laura seems to have been affectionate, based on her letters while she was visiting Rose in San Francisco, but I would imagine she could be a bit sharp when riled too. Understand that I’m saying this with a great deal of affection for Laura, but with an understanding too that she was human, and all humans have flaws. I would also note too that Laura had a fierce loyalty toward people she loved. This is most notable in that she fell for Cap Garland first (I’ve read this elsewhere, but you can also see it in the way she describes him), but when Almanzo came courting her and Cap courted Mary Power, she kept it to herself. Later, when Mary rejects Cap, Laura decides to stick with Almanzo anyway. She was too loyal to both Mary and Almanzo to risk hurting someone. But what I find rather sad was that when Rose was interviewing him late in life, he told her that his life had been mostly a disappointment to him. What a sad thing to say to your daughter. But he’d intended to be a prosperous and well respected farmer like his father, and weather, poor soil, bad economies, poor health and lack of sons had all been against him having any success.
I find it interesting to note that for three generations in Laura’s family, no boys survived early infancy. Her only brother died at five months, her only son died at three weeks and her only grandson, Rose’s son, died in infancy too. It makes me wonder if there was a lethal gene on the Y chromosome in that family. Ma had a brother, but that was the last male in the family to survive to adulthood. I guess we’ll never know, since the family died out.
I just went back and reread the discussion of Eliza Jane and the Ingalls women on the original post and it literally gave me goosebumps. Definitely worth revisiting, all…this is the kind of speculation and detail that gives a whole new meaning to every reread.
Thanks for your comment. I think it holds a lot of value and I enjoyed reading your thoughts on Eliza Jane.
I did want to comment on the baby boy part. This is so frequently asked by people, so much speculation on why the boys died and the girls lived, but I really don’t think it amounts to anything more than coincidence. All three boys died of different causes (Freddie was a healthy baby for nine months and died of an illness, we’re not sure what happened to Laura’s baby but he did live for a couple weeks and his death appears to have been a surprise to them, and Rose’s was stillborn, so it seems unlikely that something genetic caused such different deaths). Also, Ma actually had three brothers, all of whom survived to adulthood, but if it were something on the Y chromosome that would have caused those three babies to die, it wouldn’t have come from Ma anyway so that would be irrelevant, it would have come from Pa, and he not only survived to adulthood himself but also had four brothers who did, and his brothers also had no problem producing sons who lived to adulthood and there are still many male surviving descendants of those brothers alive and well today.
I really believe there was nothing wrong with Freddie but that he simply contracted an illness, perhaps a virus going around or a waterborne disease, and became dehydrated — something that could have been easily prevented today. (Laura writes of him in Pioneer Girl as a normal healthy baby until just before he died, when she says he was very sick and then he died; cause of death on his death certificate is diarrhea.) Rose only had the one pregnancy so we have no way of knowing if an infant girl would have survived or not, and with Laura only having two pregnancies, again it really seems to just be coincidental in an era where infant mortality rates were much higher than they are today that it was the boy who died. If these women had had several sons, all of whom died, and several daughters, all of whom lived, I think there might be a case for a genetic cause, but as it is, there really isn’t any evidence to suggest it.
This makes me really want to read the copy of A Wilder in the West, Bill Anderson’s book about Eliza, that I bought in Walnut Grove last month. (And am still kicking myself for not asking him to sign it when I had the chance.)
Rebecca, thanks for shedding light on the baby boy situation! I have had friends ask me that, too.
As long as we’re discussing details, is there any evidence that the incident with the Indians in The First Four Years is even true? My impression is that it’s one of the truly fictional parts of the novel. It’s pretty stereotypical, for one thing, and then something about the way the Indian leader turns back as they’re leaving and sees Laura with her skirts blowing in the wind makes me think that LIW was very consciously writing a “heroine of the frontier” kind of scene rather than from experience. Plus I’ve never seen anything in the biographies to indicate that it really happened.
I’ve always thought it was interesting that Rose, who was so close to her aunt, would let the parts stay in the book without redeeming her by having someone notice how hard she was working on her claim or something, etc.
I do think EJ might have been the person in the family you don’t want to sit by.
I remember the comment at Laurapolooza that Perley’s son said that Laura and Almanzo were cold not seeming to forgive him for losing the Wilders’ money, so I could believe it. But why Laura and Almanzo sent Rose to live with EJ is something I don’t get….
Sandra, Deb A. Houdeck Rule’s genealogy charts are NOT all correct. I have contacted her regarding this but she has done nothing to correct any of her mistakes. Please do not rely solely on her listing, if you are needing exact facts. There are too many mistakes throughout, and she has “made-up” names. Such as, Lansford and Laura’s daughter Polly is listed in their family Bible as Poly Melona, as her given name, with 1 “l”, and she remamed her Pauline, which is totally incorrect. I understand that Polly is a nick name for Pauline or Paula, but their daughter was NOT Pauline, but simply Poly Melona Ingalls Quiner. There are others, not to go into great detail. — In my research and work, I list each and every finding, and then list the “PRIMARY SOURCE”, with is more relyable. If you need any genealogy research, please ask, and I’ll forward it to you.–Just wish all my research was up on the internet, but I don’t have time to do that yet.
By the way, did you all forget HENRY INGALLS? He was Lansford and Laura’s 2nd child/2nd son, who was listed in their family Bible as “OUR BABE”, but we found a record of his death in township records for Cuba, listing him as HENRY INGALLS. He was a year older than Pa, and he too was born and died after a week! Looks like each generation had a son that did not survive.