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Prairie Tale: A Memoir

Posted on by Beyond Little House

prairietaleMelissa Gilbert, of Little House on the Prairie television and musical fame, has just announced the publication of her new book, Prairie Tale:  A Memoir, which will be released on June 9, 2009.

The autobiography chronicles Melissa’s years on the Little House set, including the personal struggles she faced during those years, and continues on to share her life after Little House.

“I am writing this book to share the story of my life,” Melissa says. “Simply put, I have been very blessed but I have also been through difficult struggles and painful tragedies. My hope is that people with similar life experiences will find comfort in my story by realizing they are not alone.”

The book is available now for pre-order, but please note that its intended audience is adults only.  Melissa comments that it “is pretty no holds barred” and is not suitable for readers under 18.

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The Simple Things

Posted on by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The little white daisies with their hearts of gold grew thickly along the path where we walked to Sunday school. Father and sister and I used to walk the 2 1/2 miles every Sunday morning. The horses had worked hard all the week and must rest this one day and Mother would rather stay at home with baby brother so with Father and Sister Mary I walked to the church thru the beauties of the sunny spring Sunday. I have forgotten what I was taught on those days also. I was only a little girl, you know. But I can still plainly see the grass and the trees and the path winding ahead, flecked with sunshine and shadow and the beautiful golden-hearted daisies scattered all along the way.

Ah well! That was years ago and there have been so many changes since then that it would seem such simple things should be forgotten, but at the long last, I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.

Note: The above excerpt was taken from Laura’s article “A Bouquet of Wild Flowers,” published in the Missouri Ruralist on July 20, 1917.
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Camping at the Ingalls Homestead

Posted on by Jonni Craven

To my mind there’s nothing better than spending a day at the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet – unless it’s spending the night. Yes, you heard me right, you can spend the night on the Ingalls’ land, allowing you to get a small peek into what it must have been like to live on the prairie in the 1880s, but with the added benefits of plumbing and electricity.


The Ingalls Homestead offers camping opportunities on their land;  there is space for your RV (with hookups) or tent. But the best news is that if, like me, you don’t have a tent or RV, you can still spend the night by renting one of their covered wagons or an air-conditioned bunkhouse.

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The four covered wagons are wagon2set in a slight curve on a lovely stretch of land just below the visitor center. It’s as if you’ve been on the trail all day and have just set up camp for the night.


There are two sizes of wagons – large and small, the main difference being that the large wagon can accommodate 2 more than the small.


The interior of each wagon isn’t roomy but I was pleasantly surprised at the comfort. You enter through a small dutch door on one end. There are benches along the side of the wagon and a “large” shelf bed at the other end. They’ll tell you that the bed sleeps two but it would have to be two children or a couple on their honeymoon (that REALLY liked each other) to be comfortable, in my opinion.


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In the small wagon, a mattress can be put down on the floor between the benches for another sleeping area. The benches double as beds, along with the floor area, in the large wagon.

Each wagon has its own picnic table right outside the door and bathrooms with showers are just steps away. The wagons have electricity and come equipped with a portable fan, all the comforts of home.


There’s a bunkhouse next to the wagons with two sets of bunkbeds, one double bed and something that the Ingalls would have loved on a hot summer night – air conditioning. Now that’s my idea of roughing it.


Once the day crowds have left, the Homestead is yours to explore. Take a sunset stroll along the hill the way Laura and Mary used to. In the mood for a moonlight hike? There’s something magical about walking where Laura walked, under the stars with only the light of the moon – and your flashlight – to guide you. There are other lodging options in De Smet but this has got to be the most unique and one that a LIW fan will probably find hard to turn down.  Spend a night right on the prairie, you won’t be sorry.

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The Spirituality of Laura Ingalls Wilder

Posted on by Rebecca Brammer

One of the questions I’ve often been asked by visitors to my website pertains to Laura’s religious beliefs.  What did Laura believe about God and spirituality?  While this question is impossible to answer in one respect, since Laura is no longer with us to ask, we get a pretty good idea of what Laura’s religious beliefs were from her various writings.

The first source is the Little House books themselves. From reading these books, it is evident that the Ingalls girls were given a religious upbringing. In the early years, prior to moving to Walnut Grove, it doesn’t seem that going to church was part of the Ingalls’ lives due to distance, but the family still observed Sunday as a day of rest, and the girls must have received religious instruction from Ma and Pa as they are familiar with Bible stories and have memorized Scripture verses even before attending church or Sunday School.

In both Walnut Grove and De Smet, the Ingalls family attended the Congregational Church, which is a Protestant denomination where each local congregation is independently run. Interestingly, Congregational churches place much authority in the hands of the people of the church, rather than being primarily run by the minister or officers, making each member responsible for governing his own behaviors under God’s ultimate authority. We see this concept of self-responsibility threaded throughout the Little House series.

Pioneer Girl, Laura’s unpublished autobiography, sheds some more light into Laura’s thoughts about God and religion. Laura writes of a boy who joined their church in Walnut Grove and testified every Wednesday night at prayer meeting:  “It somehow offended my sense of privacy. It seemed to me that the things between one and God should be between him and God like loving ones mother. One didn’t go around saying ‘I love my mother, she has been so good to me.’ One just loved her and did things that she liked one to do.”

Laura also tells in Pioneer Girl of a time when she had to care for an ill neighbor and was lonely for home. “One night while saying my prayers, as I always did before going to bed, this feeling of homesickness and worry was worse than usual, but gradually I had a feeling of a hovering, encompassing Presence of a Power, comforting and sustaining and thought in surprise ‘That is what men call God!’”

From these writings, we learn that Laura followed such spiritual disciplines as prayer, Bible reading, regular church attendance, and Scripture memorization, but also that she experienced God on a deeper personal level, but felt those experiences should remain private.

As adults, Laura and Almanzo were active in the Methodist Episcopal church in Mansfield, there being no Congregational Church there. Almanzo’s family was part of the Methodist church in Spring Valley, and Laura herself had attended the Methodist Sunday School as a child in addition to her own church services, so the Methodist doctrines must have been similar to their own beliefs.

Laura was involved in the Ladies Aid Society at the church, and was an active member of the Interesting Hour club, which was composed of two of the Methodist Sunday School classes. Although the Wilders stopped attending services in their older years, Laura returned to the church after Almanzo’s death.  Well-known to Wilder fans is the list of Bible references Laura left behind, indicating that the Bible served as her tool for handling life issues.

So although Laura’s specific religious beliefs may have varied somewhat from the denominations under which she worshipped, it is clear from the evidence we do have that she practiced spiritual disciplines throughout her life and engaged in a personal private relationship with God. And that is the best answer we can give to the question, “What did Laura believe?”

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Manly Visits the Dentist

Posted on by Cheryl Whitlock

I have always loved Almanzo Wilder, he always seemed to be the most realistic true to life character in the Little House series. One of my favorite stories about Manly is from an article written by William Anderson for the Summer 1986 edition of South Dakota History:  Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane: The Continuing Collaboration. It is an excellent piece and I suggest it to any LIW-RWL fan. I see the book up for auction on Ebay frequently.

In this article, Anderson uses parts of a 1981 interview with Helen “Troub” Boylston. Troub was a good friend of Rose, and stayed at Rocky Ridge Farm in the late 1920s. In this interview, Troub talks about what an excellent “curser” Manly was. A quote from Troub:

“(Manly)…who was the most expert curser that I ever heard in my life!…My Lord! I thought I knew all the words, but he knew more.” Troub also said that Manly used to fuss that with so many women in the house, that he could never use the bathroom to save his life because “there was always some hen on”.

This article came to mind as I was reading some letters between Laura and Rose. I came across this letter dated March 23, 1937, discussing details of a visit to the dentist by Manly. Laura would have been 70; Almanzo would have been 80.  Laura appears to be clarifying details from a previous letter from Manly to Rose concerning a journey from Marshall, Minnesota, to the land office in Yankton, Dakota Territory. As Laura explains in the letter, the journey was made by Manly, Eliza Jane, and Royal in order to file homestead claims near De Smet.

Manly had a bad toothache driving from Yankton to Sioux Falls. Roy stopped the horse where a sign said Dentist upstairs. Manly went up the stairs 2 at a time. A man there, supposed to be the dentist, said he’d pull the tooth. But he didn’t know how and couldn’t get the tooth out. He wouldn’t let go of however he had hold, climbed up on Manly’s shoulders with his knees and jerked Manly around. Finally the tooth came out.

Manly had backed him into a corner and was about to beat him up when the real dentest came in. The man who pulled the tooth was an apprintics, just beginning to learn the trade. So Manly left without paying his bill “cussing them both out” as he went.

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It’s all about Mankato…

Posted on by Amy Lauters

There’s been a lot of behind-the-scenes planning and excitement here at Beyond Little House over the past few weeks, as we work on the scope and schedule for the big summer 2010 conference.

The Department of Mass Communications at Minnesota State University, Mankato, agreed to sponsor the event, and that means participants will get to enjoy the campus and green spaces of Mankato, Minn. (Yes, as my colleague Sandra Hume has pointed out, that Mankato.)

Mankato is located 80 miles southwest of the Twin Cities, which is the closest major airport hub. The city itself is a kind of crossroads in Minnesota history as well as Minnesota geography. Highway 14, which used to bisect (but now slightly bypasses) Mankato, runs from east to west, hooking up with the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River very near Pepin, Wis. It has been named the “Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway” because many of the Upper Midwest Laura sites connect to it.

Pepin is about a two-hour drive east of Mankato; Walnut Grove is about a one-and-a-half hour drive west of Mankato. Mankato itself serves as south central Minnesota’s shopping and commerce hub, and offers a wide variety of restaurants and friendly shopping. For quilters, scrappers and yarn-o-phobes (like me!), Mankato offers several local, small shops, including Mary Lue’s Yarn and Ewe and River City Quilts, that take advantage of locally produced wool from the Fairbault Woolen Mills, about 45 minutes from Mankato.

The city claims another connection to Little House history, however. The conflicts with the Dakota Sioux in Minnesota, which are referred to in LHOP as the “Minnesota massacres,” took place just west of Mankato, near New Ulm, Minn. An estimated 400 to 800 settlers were killed. More than a thousand American Indian people were taken into custody at the end of the troubles, and all were slated to be hanged. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln, inclined to mercy, had to be persuaded that at least some of those in custody should be executed as an example to other tribes. Thirty-eight native people met their deaths by hanging–in the town square in the Blue Earth County seat, Mankato.

Today, the site of what is still the country’s largest mass execution in history is marked by a large sculpted buffalo and 38 pines, planted in honor of those lives lost. The small area has been named “Reconciliation Park.”

North of Mankato in St. Peter, Minn., the North American Treaty Site Museum offers visitors a look at the very spot where treaties between the United States and the Dakota were negotiated and signed. It’s well worth the visit.

Mankato also claims another famous literary resident: Maud Hart Lovelace, the author of the Betsy-Tacy series of books for children. She and her best friend, Francis “Bick” Kenney, grew up across the street from each other on Center Street in Mankato, in homes that have now been lovingly restored and kept by the Betsy-Tacy Society.

I’m personally excited to be hosting you all here. As plans move forward, I’ll update you. But please let us know if there are activities or speakers you’d like to see us include on the LauraPalooza 2010 schedule! Use the comments section below.

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Just Go On and Forget It

Posted on by Laura Ingalls Wilder

There had been a little misunderstanding and consequent bad feeling in an organization to which I belong. It has been causing quite a little tempest in a teapot as such things always do, even tho they should not break out where they have more room for mischief. I was surprised to hear one of the parties in the controversy say: “I wish we might all go on and forget it. That’s the only thing to do — just go on and forget it.”

Another person who has been a strong partisan on the other side said to me the same day: “What’s the use of chewing the rag forever? It is much better to let it all drop and work together. There is no time to keep hashing things over and stirring up trouble.” How long can any quarrel last when the parties to it begin to talk in that way?

Our common danger, a common cause and the work we are doing together is making us appreciate one another more and understand the littleness of petty jealousies and disagreements. The big things of life are crowding out the little unpleasant differences….

….We will feel differently toward one another than ever before when we have had time to realize these things and if there has been any friction or misunderstanding, we will surely “just go on and forget it.”

Note: The above excerpts were taken from Laura’s article “We Must Not Be Small Now,” published in the Missouri Ruralist on April 20, 1918.
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Rocky Ridge: A Dream Come True

Posted on by Laura Welser

I’ve loved Laura ever since I was eleven, when my sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Lazarus, started reading the Little House books to our class. It was love at first read and I was hooked. I checked the books out of the school library and read them all. I slowly collected the series and it is one of the few possessions that I still have from my childhood. I’ve read them over and over. I know my experience is similar to that of so many other “lovers of Laura.”

I knew there were homesites to visit, but it was something that wasn’t really possible when I was growing up. When I was 17, just out of high school and the only one left at home, my parents and I, along with my aunt, uncle and their four kids, rented a motor home and took a road trip to South Dakota. Our destinations were Mt. Rushmore, the Black Hills and the Badlands, but during the entire trip my mind was on De Smet. Could we possibly stop there? I was a Daddy’s girl and he was willing to drive a bit out of the way to go through De Smet. Problem was, by the time we got to the town it was evening and my aunt and uncle weren’t happy about the detour. I hopped out of the motor home and took a couple of pictures with my Polaroid, in my glory if only for a moment.

Fast-forward 29 years. My son was competing nationally for SkillsUSA and it was taking place in Kansas City, Missouri. As I started planning our trip, the wheels started turning. Hmm, Kansas City was only a four-hour drive from Mansfield, where Laura lived for the majority of her adult life. We could do it, couldn’t we? We don’t get to travel very often as our business pretty much dominates our lives. I have to take every opportunity that I can. My husband and daughter, ever supportive of my obsession, were okay with the side trip so I made my plans.

We arrived in Mansfield in the evening, but it was still light so we drove out to Rocky Ridge just to see it. I still couldn’t believe we were actually there. How long I had waited for that moment. We sat in the car just looking up at the white farmhouse that until then I’d seen only in photos. I knew I couldn’t say a word or I would start crying. So many emotions! I had read about Rocky Ridge and had long imagined coming here, but never really thought it would happen.

The next morning couldn’t come soon enough for me. I was up way before my husband and daughter, ready to go and waiting (they weren’t even awake yet!). My daughter laughed and told me I was like a child on Christmas morning. That’s exactly how I felt. My dream of going Rocky Ridge was actually coming true!

We toured the house first. As I wandered through, almost in a daze, I kept thinking, “She was here! These were her things. She touched this.” I could picture her working in her kitchen, getting supper ready. I imagined her and Almanzo sitting near the fireplace reading in the evening after their chores were done. I stood on the porch and thought of Laura standing on that very spot. Similar thoughts just kept rolling through my mind and I welled with emotion. I think I would have taken more in had I not been so enamored of her “presence.”

Next was the museum next door. Her dress. She was so little! Pa’s fiddle. I could imagine him playing it. The lap desk, lovingly made by Almanzo, where Laura had carried the family’s $100 in savings on the long wagon ride from De Smet to Missouri in 1894. I could go on and on. I tried to read everything. I should have absorbed more but it was just so much for my heart to take in.

After visiting the museum, the next logical thing to do was to walk the trail to the Rock House, where Laura and Almanzo had lived for a time while their daughter, Rose, took over the farmhouse, and where she wrote the bulk of the Little House books. It didn’t matter that it was hot . It didn’t matter that my knee was still healing from an injury. “I came this far and I may never do this again. I’m walking the trail!” I said. Who wouldn’t?

I thought of all of the times that Laura or Rose made this journey back and forth between the two houses. It was a walk, all right. My knee was hurting, but as I walked pn I didn’t feel even a tinge of regret.

I fell in love with the Rock House. I want to live there! (I know that I’m not the only one who feels this way. Maybe we could all take turns …) One thing stayed with me that I wonder about — why did Rose give her father dishes with pink flowers? That’s what we were told by our tour guide. Is it true?

My husband ended up jogging back down the trail for the car to pick up my daughter and me at the Rock House. He was saving us the long walk back, but I still wish I had gone back the same way I’d come.

On to the gift shop, of course. We spent a good amount of time there too. I did not want to leave Rocky Ridge — I felt such a connection to Laura. And so we lingered in the area. We couldn’t leave without going to the cemetery and spending a bit of time the town of Mansfield itself. Again, I was imagining them just being there. Our time went by too quickly and we had to leave. I think I left a part of myself there.

Since then I’ve said many times: “If I never get to see another homesite or go back to Rocky Ridge, I can still die happy.” I wasn’t lying. But yet, the bug had bitten me…

To top off my dream come true, my son won his competition, even competing against more than 40 other students from across the country, most of them more experienced in his field. That week couldn’t possibly have been any better.

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Heartbreaking News: The Economy Brings Down LIW Lodging

Posted on by Sandra Hume

Last summer I had the pleasure of lodging at the Historic Anderson House in Wabasha, Minnesota. It’s just over the Mississippi River from Wisconsin and a lovely place to stay during a Pepin visit.

Today, I called to finalize plans for my upcoming Little House trip this summer. I was all set to tell my always-skeptical daughter about this wonderful old homey inn that lent out cats to overnight visitors if they wanted them. I fully expected to dedicate my next blog post to this charming and unique lodging choice for LIW trips to Pepin.

But although the web site indicates nothing is amiss, the voice mail recording delivered some chilling news: due to current economic conditions, the inn had no choice but to close its doors.

I’m so numb I don’t know what else to say.

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From Pillar to Post

Posted on by Rebecca Brammer

Having moved several times in the last few years, I well understand Ma’s dismay in These Happy Golden Years when Pa starts talking about wanting to go West again. “I was so tired of being dragged from pillar to post, and I thought we were settled here,” she says in Chapter 16.

But I have very good reason to put my foot down now and refuse to ever move again. You see, every timshepherdesse I move, it seems I have a “Little House” mishap.

First it was the china shepherdess.

“She had traveled from the Big Woods all the way to Indian Territory, and all the way to Plum Creek in Minnesota, and there she stood smiling. She was not broken. She was not nicked nor even scratched. She was the same little shepherdess, smiling the same smile.” On the Banks of Plum Creek, Chapter 17.

Mine didn’t even cross state lines but I’m afraid I can’t say the same. Look at that nick in her bonnet!!

But it’s okay. After all, I have two other shepherdesses, and they’re in perfect condition.

On the next move, I took extra precautions. I wrapped my “Little House” things up as well as I could, and announced that those boxes were not going on the moving truck. I would move them myself.

But someone else helping with the move decided he’d “do me a favor” and bring along some of the boxes in his car. And every single thing we moved arrived safe and sound… except my Haviland china (which I have because it’s the same china Laura owned), some of which was shattered into bits. Just how this occurred I have yet to find out, but it’s okay too. Because I’ve since realized that Haviland wasn’t a perfect match to Laura’s anyway.

Quite recently, I moved cross-state once more, and this time there was no way anything was happening to my “Little House” collection. Everything was wrapped and double-wrapped, protected, and handled by me alone. Trouble is, I had to put most of my things into storage for a short time while waiting for my new house to become available. So I carefully marked the boxes containing all precious items, and stressed the importance of caution concerning those boxes to my father who was assisting with the move.

The day I arrived at the new house with the moving truck, I discovered my father there hauling in the last of my items from storage. He looked at me, took a deep breath, and said, “There’s been a little accident.”

“An accident?” I questioned. “What do you mean?”

“I’m just sick about it!” he declared, which wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. “It was with your antique books.”

A knot formed in my stomach as I awaited further information. “The box flew off the back of the truck, the lid popped off, and they scattered onto the street,” he continued. Then he gulped. “And some lady ran over some of them with her car. She helped me pick them up… I think we found them all, but I’m afraid some of them got pretty beat up.”

What are the chances, I ask you?  For strapped down boxes to fly out of the truckbed in the first place, and then to be run over by a car?  And of all the boxes he moved, it had to be THAT box? It couldn’t have been bedding, or towels, or clothes. (At least it wasn’t dishes!)  No. It had to be Little House things.

lhbooksHe took me in to survey the damage. I have to admit, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it. Pa’s big green animal book had lost its front cover, and Mother, Home and Heaven (a gift to Laura from Almanzo) had a large crease down its front and several torn pages, but everything else was unharmed. I was so relieved. My dad was still quite upset about it, being an antique collector himself and knowing how he’d feel if it were his treasures, but I kept assuring him all was well. Those two books aren’t at all difficult to replace, and besides, my big green animal book was brown and I’d been wanting to buy a green one anyway. This gave me the perfect excuse!

You see, after hearing the words “accident” and “antique books” paired together, the only thing on my mind was the autographed-by-Laura copy of These Happy Golden Years I had so reluctantly placed in that tub, only because there was no safer place to put it.  It had been snugly sandwiched in the bottom and hadn’t even left the tub. It was safe, and that’s all I cared about.

But I’m sure you will understand now when I tell you I have no intention of ever moving again.  It’s just too big of a risk. My “Little House” collection must be protected at all costs.

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