And then imagine, just for a moment, that you are reading about your own family.

That’s how it was for young Beth Ingalls, who was asked by her high school classmates if she was related to Laura Ingalls. Beth had never read the Little House books, but she went home and asked her grandfather. “Oh, sure,” he replied. “Laura is my cousin.”

Hiram Leroy Ingalls, Beth’s grandfather, was indeed Laura’s first cousin. His father Hiram Lemuel Ingalls was Charles’ (Pa’s) younger brother. That makes the Grandma and Grandpa of the Big Woods Beth’s great-great-grandparents.

Beth read the books after discovering the family connection, but it wasn’t until about fifteen years ago that she really began to devote herself to learning more about her family history. “My Great-Grandpa Hiram was in the Civil War and played the bugle,” Beth relates. “We had his Civil War rifle hanging on our wall for many years.” The rifle is now in the possession of one of Beth’s cousins.

“Waves of sadness came over me as I walked through the cemetery last summer because I wished I had known them personally, not just heard the stories about them,” reminisced Beth.

Click here to see the graves of many Ingalls family members, buried in the Orange Cemetery in Burnett County, Wisconsin. Beth’s uncle, Bill Ingalls, had the newer stones placed on the previously unmarked graves.

Beth Ingalls-Leisses and Dorothy Ebert

In recent years, Beth has diligently worked to share her family’s legacy with others. Clothed in prairie attire and accompanied by her able assistant Dorothy Ebert, Beth presents to schools and other groups and organizations, showing pictures of the Ingalls family, talking about pioneer life and demonstrating the use of period items, and also displaying her collection of autographs and photos from the stars of the “Little House on the Prairie” television series, the Disney miniseries, and the musical.

One of Beth’s most exciting moments occurred last October when she went to the Guthrie Theater to see the Little House musical, and was escorted backstage after the show to meet Melissa Gilbert and the rest of the cast, who reportedly were as eager and excited to meet with Beth as she was with them.

Beth does not charge for local presentations in the Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, area, and is even willing to travel within reason (reimbursement of travel expenses is appreciated). Beth explains, “I do this to keep children interested in her books and to know that there really was a Laura. I always explain to the children how I’m related and their eyes get big and the whole room grows silent… then I have their attention for the next hour.”

Beth enjoys asking the children at her presentations what they would do with this chamberpot. After giving answers such as bake beans in it, or use it as a gravy bowl, the children are horrified to learn its real purpose.

This June, Laura Ingalls Wilder will be inducted into the “Walk of Fame” in Shenandoah, Iowa; a plaque in her honor will be placed on the sidewalk alongside other famous Iowans. Beth Ingalls-Leisses has been invited to participate on Laura’s behalf. “I really feel honored to be doing this and hope that I represent the Ingalls family in the manner it deserves.”

Beth has come a long way from the young girl who had never read the Little House books and had no idea she was related to their author. There are many Ingalls descendants still living today, and there are many people spreading their love of Laura Ingalls Wilder to others around them. But Beth is unique in that she is both, making her a real treasure in the Little House world.

When I first checked into viewing the Laura Ingalls Wilder Collection several years ago, I was told that an appointment had to be made to view these precious items. So this was not something we could do on the spur of the moment. Or so I thought. When I called, I was told that we could come anytime and they could show it to us and that there is no cost (as it states on their website).

So we found ourselves heading to Detroit on a Friday not very long ago. It is about an hour’s drive from our home and with the help of Isabelle, our GPS navigator, we found it easily. After a little bit of wandering, we found the Burton Historical Collection room which houses the Laura Ingalls Wilder Collection. We only had to wait a few anxious moments for an archivist to arrive and put his white gloves on. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Collection includes the manuscripts for The Long Winter and These Happy Golden Years and also contains some letters and photographs.

I read each of the letters, which gave me a little insight into Laura’s life at the time (1948-1949). Most of the correspondence was from Laura to Mr. Ralph Ulveling, who was the Director of the Detroit Public Library system at the time. He had obviously written to her regarding an invitation to be at the opening of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Branch Library, also in Detroit (opened on May 12, 1949). Laura responds by telling him that although she wishes that she could be there, she is not able to because Almanzo had been sick (he was 92 years old at the time) and she could not leave him alone at Rocky Ridge. She also writes regarding her donation of the manuscripts and some photographs and drawings. She also offers to donate the reader and history that she studied in Little Town on the Prairie, however, those items are not included in the collection. There are also letters that she had written to others that must have been donated to the library.

The archivist told us that Laura’s collection was the most popular that they have. He recently had a homeschooling group visit and also a group of Mennonites had come in. I was happy to find out that it was so well known and it is always good to hear that there are young people interested in learning more about Laura.

Of course, I was most interested in the manuscripts. At first, the archivist brought out only the The Long Winter. As if I would be satisfied with seeing only one! He quickly realized that I would want to see them both and retrieved the manuscript for These Happy Golden Years as well. It is an awesome feeling to be able to see the orange school tablets and read a little bit of the stories in Laura’s own handwriting. To have them sitting there right in front of me – “in person!” I would have read both books all the way through, however, I’m not sure that the archivist wanted to stand there and turn each page for me. So I had to be content to read only the first page of each notebook. I really wanted to touch them, just to be able to, for one second, put one finger on something that had been in Laura’s own hands.

My husband told me that he would have created a distraction so that I could sneak a little touch, but no, that wouldn’t have been right. But then again…

Some sites consist of a cemetery where a Little House character or close Ingalls/Wilder relative is buried. Others are signified by historical markers or feature a building or piece of property that fits somehow into the Little House story. If I tried to tell you about them all, I’d be sure to leave some out.

These sites may not be significant enough to merit traveling to or even fitting into your vacation, but they are varied enough geographically that you may live near enough to one to take a local road trip.

I recently came across the blog “At Home with the Farmer’s Wife” and greatly enjoyed Suzanne Kathro’s story about her personal Wilder-related road trip to Elgin, Illinois, where Charles Ingalls (Pa) lived as a teenager. The cemetery pictured in Suzanne’s post is .8 miles north of McDonald Road on Corron Road in Elgin, and Suzanne informed me that the owners of the home actually allow school field trips to the property.

This article from the Chicago area’s Daily Herald published last fall contains some interior shots of the cemetery, including the grave of little Eliza Ann Ingalls (the daughter of “Grandpa’s” brother James, and therefore Pa’s first cousin), as well as further information about the Ingalls’ time in Kane County. However, two points in the article require clarification.

First, the article implies that Wilder researchers have been largely oblivious to the Kane County connection until now. Not true. Donald Zochert devoted three pages of his 1976 biography, Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, to the Ingalls’ time in Illinois; his book has been one of the most well-known and widely-read Laura Ingalls Wilder biographies for over thirty years. Additionally, Louisiana historian John Bass of the Ingalls-Wilder-Lane Historic Alliance has been working for years towards placement of a historical marker at this location denoting its Little House connection.

The article also states that Charles Ingalls lived in Kane County for ten years. This may be true; Ms. Schmitz may have access to primary source information that I am unaware of. But the best information I have at this time indicates that Landsford Ingalls (Pa’s father, the “Grandpa” of Little House in the Big Woods) settled in Kane County around 1848 (when Pa would have been about 12 years old). Landsford purchased 80 acres in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, in 1854, so it is likely that the family would have moved about this time, having spent only six, not ten, years in Illinois. I will gladly amend this statement if provided with research that indicates otherwise.

Although the connections in your neighborhood may be tenuous at best, it doesn’t hurt to do a bit of searching to see what kind of Little House adventure you might have right in your own backyard! And if you do visit one of these lesser-known sites, please tell us about it. We’d love to share in your experience, and we’ll begin adding these places to our A-Z until we eventually have them all.

But even I didn’t think I could possibly find a way to link a trip to Walt Disney World in Florida with Laura Ingalls Wilder…until recently.

On a recent vacation to Orlando, while reading The Wilder Family Story, I discovered that Almanzo’s older sister Alice, a beloved character in Farmer Boy, had lived in Georgiana, Florida, from around 1887 until her death in 1892. A little research uncovered that Georgiana was near Cape Canaveral which is only 40 or so short miles from Orlando. That was a fascinating fact but I didn’t think much of it until my husband asked if we were going to go there and look for Alice’s grave. Now I don’t know about you but grave hunting isn’t exactly on my normal itinerary for a vacation. However, the idea was intriguing. Plus, I would never turn down an opportunity to drag my husband on a LIW trip. He gets a little more into it each time we visit a site, which fits into my evil plan to turn him into a “Laura” fan.

Thanks to the Internet, I soon had the exact location of Alice’s grave and directions to get there – ROAD TRIP! Georgiana, Florida, doesn’t really exist as a town anymore even though you can find its name on a map. It probably used to be a bustling community but all that’s left now is the historic Methodist church, where Alice and her husband worshipped and daughter Myrtle was married in 1902, and the graveyard across the street. Still, you can get a sense of how it must have been in Alice’s time. Perched on the shore of the Indian River with plenty of citrus orchards for work, it probably was a pleasant place to live. Apparently the Florida heat and humidity didn’t agree with Alice though. She and Albert moved to Florida to improve his health, which worked for him but her health declined and Alice died in Florida in February 1892 at the age of 39. Laura and Almanzo were living in a completely different part of Florida at that time but I would like to believe that they were able to take a train to Georgiana to visit with Alice before she died.

The graveyard is a short walk down the road from the church. No one has been buried there for over 50 years and, according to the Internet, it’s quite haunted, but no spirits materialized to disturb our visit.

Alice’s headstone, which reads Alice M. Baldwin, was easy to find and there was something momentous about standing in front of her grave. She felt like a real person to me, rather than just a secondary character in a book. I wished I’d brought flowers and it bothered me that there probably weren’t a lot of people around who even knew the story of the young woman buried there. I felt so strongly about the flower issue that we actually came back the next day to lay a bouquet at the site and to take more pictures. We hope to return on a future visit to try to determine where Alice and Albert lived in Georgiana.

All in all it was an unlikely “Laura” trip but a very special one. It isn’t every day you get to do something so out of the ordinary. If you’re going to be in the Orlando area, I would recommend a side trip to Georgiana to anyone that wants to dig a little deeper into the lives of Laura and her extended family.