1885–1894
Although they could not have known it at the time, Laura and Almanzo had picked a poor time to get married, at least from an economic point of view. Love might carry them a long way, but it could not guarantee financial success. For eighteen years, as a member of a close-knit and loving—but never prosperous—family, Laura had come to understand privation and hardship. Hope and optimism had always won out, but never had the family stayed more than a step or two away from poverty. Because many—if not most—of the people who lived around them on the frontier were in similar straits, it was easier for Laura and Almanzo to accept their own situation. The dream of a better life goaded them on.
Laura later professed not to have wanted to marry a farmer. A farm was a hard place for a woman, she observed in The First Four Years, with so many chores to do and having to keep house, assist with the harvest, and cook for threshing crews. A farmer never seemed to have enough money, because the storekeepers and businessmen in town controlled the terms of trade. “I don't always want to be poor and work hard while the people in town take it easy and make money off us,” she recalled thinking. But Manly rejected the analogy, countering that farmers alone were truly independent. On a farm a man could be his own boss, and hard work and careful planning would surely bring success. So Laura agreed to go along with him and give farming a fair try.1
In marrying Almanzo, Laura had entered into a partnership with someone who seemed to possess all the necessary prerequisites for becoming a successful farmer. Laura later wrote about her husband's childhood on his parents’ farm in northern New York, five miles from the town of Malone. The fifth of six children (three boys and three girls), he had grown up in a stern but affectionate atmosphere, where the children were inculcated with the same sorts of values and attitudes that were cultivated in the Ingalls household. Considerably better off economically than the Ingalls family, James and Angeline Wilder and their children lived in a comfortable home, surrounded by substantial barns and outbuildings. The parents considered education an important priority, sending their children to Franklin Academy in Malone, which provided what then was the equivalent of a high school education.2
During the early 1870s, however, James Wilder turned his attention westward when hops—one of the farm's main cash crops—failed several years in succession. As often happened in making a decision to move, other family members paved the way. Angeline Wilder's brother, George Day, bought some land near Spring Valley in southeastern Minnesota in December 1870. Shortly thereafter, Laura Ann, the oldest of the six Wilder children, joined her uncle in Spring Valley. Soon afterward, James and Angeline moved west with their younger children, including Almanzo, and bought a farm at the west edge of town.3
The mid-1870s were times of hardship in Minnesota, which suffered the effects of the national economic depression, grasshopper plagues, and poor crops. By 1878, when Almanzo turned twenty-one, making him legally eligible to file on a homestead, economic conditions were improving and railroads were poised to move into Dakota Territory from eastern Minnesota. Spirited discussions no doubt ensued around the Wilder family table regarding prospects in the west. The following year Almanzo joined his brother Royal, who was ten years older, and their sister Eliza Jane, seven years older than Almanzo, and headed toward the newly opened prairies of southern Dakota to seek their fortunes where Dakota Indians had so recently lived. Eliza had taught school in both New York and Minnesota and would continue to do so for a while in Dakota Territory. Meanwhile, like many other women at the time, she decided to file on government land so she could sell it later at a profit.4
Royal, Eliza, and Almanzo drove to eastern Dakota in a wagon during the summer of 1879 at the same time that Chicago and North Western construction crews were moving into the region. Rather than seeking a location in Brookings County, which was already rapidly filling up, the Wilders pushed into Kingsbury County, finding land there not too far from the future town of De Smet. Because they were among the first white people to arrive in the area, they found it possible to locate their claims relatively close to each other. They drove down to the federal land office in Yankton on August 21, 1879, to register their claims and pay the required fees. Almanzo filed for a homestead, paying the normal fourteen-dollar application fee, on the northeast quarter of Section 21 in Township 111 west, Range 56 north. The south edge of his claim lay just a mile north of the town site. He also took out a timber-culture entry by agreeing to plant 10 of the 160 acres in trees.5
The original Timber Culture Act of 1873 had required claimants to set out 40 acres in trees, but the practical difficulty of successfully nurturing that many seedlings quickly became apparent, and Congress sensibly amended the law in 1878 to require only 10 acres to be planted. Almanzo's timber claim was on the southeast quarter of Section 9, its southern boundary a mile north of the northern line of his homestead. In between lay Section 16, set aside under the provisions of the Land Ordinance of 1785 as a source of revenue for the public schools. The Wilders were well aware that the low filing fees required by the government did not make the land free for the taking. Considerable investments of time and money (for seed, machinery, buildings, fences, wells, windmills, and so forth) were required to succeed on the open prairie. Thus, the phrase “free Homesteads” was quite misleading.6
Royal Wilder's homestead, on the southwest quarter of Section 21, adjoined his brother's. Eliza's lay directly south of Royal's, on the northwest quarter of Section 28. Hers was north and west of the De Smet town site. Directly south of her claim was Visscher V. Barnes's homestead, and east of hers was John H. Carroll's, although he later obtained a cancellation and took over the southeast quarter of Section 28, which was also the heart of the new town. After platting it as Carroll's Addition, he sold lots for a handsome profit. Just as Almanzo had done, Eliza and Royal took out tree claims several miles north of town. Hers was half a mile west of Almanzo's, on the southeast quarter of Section 8, and Royal's was half a mile north of hers, on the southeast corner of Section 5.7
Few pioneers around De Smet managed to get to Yankton to file on their claims before the Wilders. Two who did were James McKee, who obtained a tree claim four miles north of the future town on July 28, 1879, and Robert Boast, who took out a homestead entry two miles east of De Smet the same day. Neither Eliza, who continued teaching school before obtaining title to her quarter-sections, nor Royal, who stayed around long enough to obtain title to both of his properties, remained in the area permanently.8
Almanzo and Laura, his somewhat reluctant helper, were determined to make farming successful and devoted all of their energy to the task. Much as Laura worried about the “arithmetic of farming” and disliked the drudgery associated with it, she did enjoy their horses, and she reveled in the freedom of the open spaces and the beautiful countryside. Manly had proved up on the homestead a year before they got married and slightly more than five years after filing his claim. Meanwhile, he was trying to get the trees on the tree claim to grow; by living on it they would have an easier time watering and caring for them.9
Unlike Laura's father, Almanzo did not hesitate to borrow money to purchase machinery or to take out mortgages on his property. Credit constituted the lifeblood of the agricultural economy. Lacking it, many—if not most—farmers could not have gotten started. Even with it, they often were forced out of business anyway, unable to pay their creditors. It took a while for Laura to discover that Almanzo had placed a five-hundred-dollar mortgage on their house when he had built it. Each time he returned from town with another piece of machinery bought on installments, she could do another exercise in the arithmetic of farming. In The First Four Years, she wrote that a sulky breaking plow bought in 1885 had cost them five hundred dollars, half as down payment, the remainder due in a year's time. The following year a new McCormick binder for harvesting wheat cost them two hundred dollars, half to be paid when the grain was threshed and the other half due within a year's time at 8 percent interest. They also obtained a mowing machine and a hay rake on time payments. They also bought a seeder and a new wagon. They needed to pay for coal to heat their house, seed grain for planting, and medical bills when they got sick. For Laura and Almanzo, success in farming would depend as much on how they managed their debts as on how they managed their crops and livestock. And, of course, much depended on the weather and on the prices they were able to obtain for their output.10
Laura's childhood experiences had taught her the vital importance of a woman's labor on the farm. So despite her love for her new house—with its kitchen/dining/living room, its bulging pantry, and its carpeted bedroom—Laura spent much of her time outdoors assisting Almanzo. There was plenty of work to do inside: cooking, baking, washing, ironing, sewing, mending, sweeping, and churning. Outside she could help with plowing and butchering, and she could hold the grain sacks while Almanzo shoveled wheat into them. Laura may have looked small, but she was energetic, and she never shied away from hard physical labor and outdoor work. During the early years of her marriage, she later said in an interview, “I learned to do all kinds of farm work with machinery. I have ridden the binder, driving six horses. And I could ride. I do not wish to appear conceited, but I broke my own ponies to ride. Of course they were not bad but they were broncos.”11
There was always time for fun as well as work. On Sundays the young couple hitched their horses to the buggy and traveled around the countryside, just as they had done during their courtship. Or they saddled up the ponies, Trixy and Fly, and galloped around. This was a happy, carefree time for them, when they could take their minds off their work and their debts and not worry about the future. Although Laura did not write about it in The First Four Years, they sometimes visited friends in De Smet or invited visitors to the farm. Concerts and church socials may have drawn them into town, too, from time to time, and they were able to exchange visits with Laura's parents and sisters.12
Migration into the area declined after 1886, and De Smet's population stabilized. Most of the land within a reasonable distance of the railroad had been taken up by then, so prospective homesteaders went farther west to look for government land on which to enter claims. Activity in town, if anything, picked up, however. The two weekly newspapers carried stories and notices about ice-cream socials, church suppers, oyster feeds, dances, picnics, sociables, and various entertainments and performances. After it opened up in August 1884 the roller rink became the site of many activities, including skating, bicycle races, dances, concerts, and dramatic performances. Until a better place could be found for them, traveling theatrical troupes, choral groups, visiting lecturers, and other entertainers had to be satisfied to perform at the rink, in the school, or at a church.13
Amateur baseball also gained a popular following. Large scores were the norm. The De Smet Clippers played a team from nearby Nordland in August 1883. Three years later a group of locals called the White Stockings defeated Lake Preston, while the Clippers took their lumps, losing to teams from other towns. Almanzo displayed little interest in playing baseball or any other games, but he and Laura may have stopped to watch a contest now and then. Nor do we know whether they observed practice drills of the new militia unit—Company E of the Dakota National Guard—or attended Memorial Day exercises, political rallies, temperance meetings, hook-and-ladder team contests, band concerts, or other performances.14
The dedication of the Couse Opera House on November 11, 1886, rated as one of the town's most memorable social events. Occupying the entire second floor of Edward H. Couse's new double-wide brick store building, the large hall quickly became the center of all kinds of community activities: dances, suppers, concerts, theatrical performances, lectures, political rallies, school graduations, Memorial Day services, and Christmas parties. In later years, even basketball games were played there and movies shown. Couse's hardware store was on the first floor. The Civil War veteran from New York had steadily built up his business after purchasing Charles Ingalls's store building in 1880. In six years’ time he was ready to expand his operation, moving onto the adjoining lot, and, as a public service, filling a need for civic-minded residents: providing the town with a community hall.
Wanting to make the dedication of his new store and opera house memorable, Couse scheduled a supper, various entertainments, speeches, a dance, and—to top it off—a wedding. He offered to give the first couple to volunteer to get married at his grand opening a new cookstove and a set of pots and pans. In short order several couples stepped forward to take advantage of the opportunity, but the storekeeper stuck by his original offer and accepted only the first volunteers. Had Couse decided to build a year earlier, one wonders whether Laura and Almanzo would have considered volunteering.15
The Couse Block and Opera House, although it was the most imposing new structure built on Calumet Avenue in 1886, was not the only impressive building to be erected in town that year. Catercorner across the intersection of Calumet and Second Street, on a lot he had purchased from Laura's father, John H. Carroll built a two-story brick edifice for the First National Bank, successor to the Bank of De Smet. Meanwhile, a block down the street, Thomas H. Ruth erected a new structure for the Kingsbury County Bank. Also part of the building boom that year was Gilbert and Morrison's roller mill. New construction in 1886 added up to fifty thousand dollars’ worth of investment.16
Another sign of the town's vitality and go-getting spirit was the growth of several fraternal organizations, which were proliferating all over the United States during the late nineteenth century. In addition to Civil War veterans enrolled in the Grand Army of the Republic, most of the town's businessmen and professionals joined one or more local chapters of the Masons, the Odd Fellows, or the Ancient Order of United Workmen. Many of their wives, in turn, actively participated in the temperance movement. The liquor question generated much political controversy in De Smet throughout the 1880s. The Women's Christian Temperance Union got an early start in Kingsbury County; men and women alike involved themselves in continual rounds of temperance meetings, lectures, rallies, and picnics. However, sporadic attempts to establish a literary society on a permanent basis ultimately failed. A cornet band and a community orchestra were dependent on the enthusiasm of the participants and the energy of the leadership. At the end of the decade, De Smet celebrated its first Old Settlers’ Day, making it among the first towns in the region to establish the tradition. Since the first settlers had arrived on the scene only a decade earlier, many of the “old” settlers—including Laura Wilder—were still only in their twenties.17
None of the activities mentioned above merited a mention when Laura later wrote about her and Almanzo's first four years of marriage. Nor did she refer to any church activities, although religion had been an important part of family life when she was growing up and would continue to be later. We can presume that Laura and Almanzo drove into town at least now and then to attend religious services or other kinds of special events.
For the time being, however, the types of activities and diversions that earlier had occupied so much of Laura's attention hardly mattered. As a married women, she bore new responsibilities and assumed new roles. No longer was she merely a helper or a secondary player, albeit an important one. Instead, she acted as a full partner, as responsible as Manly for making important decisions and securing their economic success. Although judgments like this are necessarily inferential, it would seem that, far more than in most marriages at the time, husband and wife talked with each other, agreed upon goals, and negotiated between themselves about how best to accomplish them.
No longer was Laura a schoolgirl or even a schoolteacher. About the time that she finished up with her teaching duties, Genevieve Masters, her old adversary, was just entering upon hers. Had Laura read the local newspaper, she would have discovered that her former schoolmate taught several different country schools, beginning in 1885, including a term or two at the Wilkins school, one of the three at which Laura had taught. In September 1886, Genevieve took a train to Pierre to begin attending Pierre University, a tiny Presbyterian institution that was only a couple of years old. Schoolgirl pranks and jealousies no longer occupied Laura's attention, however, nor would she have to suffer the anxieties and the strains of teaching school anymore. Now she was an adult; the role she had taken on demanded it. Backing her husband, contributing to the support of the household, and raising a family: these were her new tasks, dictated by the culture in which she lived and fully accepted by her.18
Laura soon discovered that she was pregnant, with the baby due in December. This was a time of wonder for her—and hope. Their crops were in the ground, the countryside was blooming, and Laura and Almanzo looked expectantly toward the future. She later wrote that the idea for their child's name came from the wild roses that bloomed on the prairie in June. “It will be a girl,” she recalled saying to Almanzo, “and we will call her Rose.”19
Laura had just turned nineteen and Almanzo twenty-nine. They celebrated their birthdays together on the Sunday that came in between with a large birthday cake for the two of them. With adequate moisture present in the spring of 1886, the wheat and the oats that Almanzo had planted looked promising. If they got a decent crop, they would be able to pay a substantial part of their debts. Many farmers around the county were predicting that the wheat crop would be the best one yet. Some of them did, in fact, manage to get theirs harvested. In other places, however, hot winds blew up dust from the fields. Then, unfortunately for the Wilders, a hailstorm flattened their wheat field in about twenty minutes. Luckily, Almanzo had already harvested the oats, but the loss of the wheat was a major setback for the young couple.20
After starting on their tree claim two and a half miles north of town, they decided now to move to the homestead south of the school section, because they would be able to arrange a mortgage on the property if they were living on it. They figured that they were going to need more cash to pay their other debts and to get ready for spring planting the following year. The new place was not as comfortable as the one on the tree claim. The house was a jerry-built structure, with a new room added onto the original claim shanty, which was converted into use for storage. The twelve-by-sixteen-foot addition served as a combination living room, kitchen, and bedroom. As Laura described it in The First Four Years, “The house wasn't so bad.” At least they were closer to town, and when the baby arrived it would be easier to trade visits with her family.21
Laura's mother and Mrs. Power, the mother of Laura's former school chum Mary, arrived on December 6 to assist with the delivery. They also called a doctor from town, and he administered something to deaden the pain. Caroline stayed for several days, and a neighbor girl came over later to help for a few more, but after that Laura and Almanzo were left on their own to cope with the new adventure of raising a child. Just as they had planned, they named their baby “Rose.” Arriving just before Christmas, Laura said, she “was a grand present.” Now she was more than a bride and a homemaker; she was a mother, and her maternal instincts came to the fore.22
Unfortunately, the evidence for these years is scant, and the relationships among the three Wilders are somewhat obscure. But there is every reason to believe that both parents were happy in their new situation and that they were determined to provide for their child as best they possibly could, just as their parents had. Grace Ingalls provided some insights into Rose's disposition and early development in a diary she kept sporadically for several years, beginning on January 12, 1887, just five weeks after Rose's birth. Her first entry noted that Rose was just beginning to smile. Two months later, after a visit from Laura, she described her sister putting her new baby in short dresses. “Rose is a big fat baby now but just as pretty,” Grace wrote. A year later, after Rose came into town to live for a while with her grandparents when Laura and Almanzo were sick with diphtheria, she observed, “She is the best girl I ever saw. She can now say a good many words such as gramma and grampa and bread and butter and cracker.”23
Rose inherited some of her mother's independence and feistiness. Relentlessly curious, by the time she was two she had become, in Laura's words, “an earnest, busy little girl with her picture books and letter blocks.” She could be oblivious to danger and often more than a little mischievous. She liked to stand in a tub under a pump spout and let water run over her face, or roll around in the dust just like one of their horses, or enter a barn stall and kick a horse lying on its side. She could be a worry and a bother, but mostly she was a joy.24
Rose's presence helped compensate for the worries that farm life brought. With little to show for their efforts during their first year as a married couple, Laura and Almanzo looked forward to making up for it in 1887. At Christmastime, Almanzo made an extravagant purchase in town of a clock as a present for both of them. The timepiece could stand as a symbol of a more civilized and prosperous way of life. Once again, at year's start their prospects looked promising. In late July the De Smet Leader pronounced that there was nothing for farmers to complain about and that on the whole crops were above average. It was good weather for harvesting, the paper reported in August, and a few weeks later it was commenting on thick stacks of grain in the fields.25
At haying time, Laura helped Almanzo drive the mowing machine. In their area, dry conditions kept grain yields lower than elsewhere, and wheat prices drifted down to only about fifty cents a bushel. In the end, it was not such a bad year for them. They were able to pay interest on their loans and pay off some of their smaller notes, but they still carried big mortgages on the homestead and on the house on the tree claim. Bad luck showed its face again one Sunday in late July when Laura and Almanzo went for a ride and returned to discover that their barn had burned down, along with the hay and the grain stored in it. A local paragraph in the Leader indicated that the fire's origins were unknown.26
Then disaster struck again when Laura and Almanzo both contracted diphtheria in early 1888. The disease posed a chronic health hazard in the vicinity during these years. The newspaper cited a number of cases, including the deaths of an eleven year old in November 1885 and of a seven year old in May 1887. At the time of the first-mentioned case, the town put a temporary ban on public gatherings to try to stop the spread of the disease. Laura came down with it first, and then Almanzo contracted it while taking care of her. In the meantime, Laura's mother came from De Smet and took Rose home with her to keep her safe. Royal Wilder, still a bachelor, came to stay with Laura and Almanzo and nurse them back to health.27
The house where Rose stayed during this period of time was not the one on her grandparents’ homestead southeast of town but a new one that Charles Ingalls had recently built on Third Street in town. The family moved into it just before Christmas in 1887. It was not a large house—just two rooms on the first floor and one above it—but it was comfortable, and in later years they would add onto it. Charles and Caroline had decided to quit farming and move into town. Thereafter, he earned money by carpentering and doing odd jobs. He was a genial sort and had many friends, serving at various times as justice of the peace, town clerk, deputy sheriff, street commissioner, and school-board member. Grace, who was then ten years old, described Rose in her diary as well behaved during the time that she stayed with them and noted that she quickly picked up new words to add to her vocabulary. In addition, she learned how to walk while living with her aunts and grandparents. Grace noted that the diphtheria epidemic closed her school for a time and that a boy in town died from the disease.28
Laura recovered completely from her bout with the disease, but Almanzo was not as lucky. Because he wanted to return to work as quickly as possible, he disregarded the doctor's orders to take it easy for a while and suffered a relapse. “A slight stroke of paralysis,” the doctor called it, “from overexertion too soon after the diphtheria.” Afterward, Almanzo walked with a limp and operated at less than full strength. It was a severe blow both to him personally, for he had always been such a vigorous outdoorsman, and to the young family, whose financial fortunes depended heavily upon his ability to handle heavy physical labor.29
Medical bills depleted the family's meager resources, leaving them with no funds until the next harvest. With drought conditions growing steadily worse, with crop yields so unpredictable, and with the prices they received for them drifting steadily downward, the arithmetic of farming was becoming more and more problematical. Almanzo's feeble condition now precluded their trying to work both of their quarter-sections of land, but then the farmer renting their tree claim decided to leave and someone offered to buy their homestead. He proposed assuming their eight-hundred-dollar mortgage on the property and paying them two hundred dollars in addition for title to it. Laura and Almanzo accepted the offer and prepared to move back to their tree claim.30
They decided at the same time to go into partnership with Laura's cousin Peter Ingalls, who had been working as a hired man for a nearby farmer. With grain prospects as poor as they were, they decided to try raising sheep and bought a hundred Shropshires from the farmer for whom Peter had been working. Peter came to live with the Wilders and helped Almanzo with the chores and other work around the farm. Every day Peter drove the sheep out to graze on the adjacent school section, being careful, Laura later wrote, to herd them “away from the grass that would be mowed for hay.” Once again, crop prospects appeared to be favorable at the beginning of the growing season, but hot winds eventually burned up their wheat and left them little to show for the year's effort. Laura and Peter helped Almanzo cut and stack what hay was left. After three years of farming, the Wilders possessed half ownership of a hundred sheep, a few horses and cows, barns to shelter the animals, half as much land as they had started with (with their tree claim yet to be proved up on), some machinery, and a snug little house. Not the stuff of dreams, but Almanzo, even in his debilitated state of health, was willing to keep trying, and so was Laura, at least for another year.31
The growing season of 1889 turned out to be the worst one yet. The Wilders’ crops, like those of most of their neighbors, burned up again in the hot winds. It should have been a joyous time in Dakota Territory, as the political wheels were spinning and South Dakota finally gained admission as a state. Celebrations in Huron, Pierre, and elsewhere did much to elevate people's spirits, but casting a pall over the festivities that year were abnormally high temperatures, a devastating drought, poor crops, and, in some places, conditions verging on starvation. The last territorial governor and the first to be elected to that position for the new state of South Dakota, Arthur C. Mellette, took it upon himself to travel to Chicago to solicit contributions of food and supplies to provide relief for the destitute citizenry in the most ravaged places. For his efforts he was condemned in various quarters for damaging Dakota's reputation and discouraging people from moving there.32
In response to their worsening situation, many farmers organized themselves politically. As early as the 1870s, Midwestern farmers had used local Grange organizations to back political candidates working to regulate railroad rates and practices. Southern Dakota Territory had been so little developed at the time that the Grangers remained weak and inactive there. But by the 1880s, when the next round of agrarian agitation erupted, Dakota farmers were ready to act. A Farmers Shipping Association was incorporated in De Smet in October 1884 to enable farmers to bypass the commercial elevators by cooperatively receiving and shipping their own grain. When their first elevator burned at the hands of an incendiary two years later, they quickly rebuilt and resumed operations. Started in 1880 by Milton George, editor of the Western Rural, a Chicago farm journal, the Farmers’ Alliance spread a message of farmer solidarity and developed more advanced proposals for improving farm conditions. The Dakota Territorial Alliance was organized in Huron in December 1884, demanding higher farm prices, fairer taxation, railroad regulation, and the creation of a commission to regulate grain warehouses and investigate grading practices. Local units soon were established to carry on grassroots organization, including a Kingsbury County affiliate. Robert Boast was one of the De Smet residents attending a conference in Huron in June 1890 in which Farmers’ Alliance representatives took the lead in establishing an Independent Party whose candidates would speak for the farmers’ cause. Two years later this organization evolved into the South Dakota Populist Party. Kingsbury County wasted no time in 1890 in organizing its own Independent group and holding its own county convention to select nominees for office.33
If Laura and Almanzo participated in this agitation, it is unrecorded. Almanzo may not even have had any crops during these years to bring to the farmers’ elevator. The First Four Years remains completely silent about farmers groups and political agitation. The story that Laura told centered on a single family's struggle against the elements and other adversities. Whether Laura simply forgot the circumstances or consciously chose not to talk about politics, or whether she figured that these details would simply clutter her story, cannot be known. The Boasts were close friends of the Ingalls family, and Robert Boast's attendance at the Huron convention suggests that the idea of a farmers’ party might have been of interest to the Wilders. In any case, the spare story related in The First Four Years needs to be understood for what it is: a bare-bones depiction that emerged against the backdrop of a dramatic economic and political crisis.
Focusing on their own family's situation was only natural for the Wilders. During the summer of 1889 they were expecting their second child. Rose was two and full of energy. Grace wrote in her diary that the child was “large for her age with golden hair and large blue eyes.” She could be a bother sometimes, but she added spice to her parents’ lives. Laura apparently had expected her first child to be a girl; perhaps this time she wanted a boy, to balance things out. In the heat of an exceptionally warm day in early August, Laura delivered her second child—a boy. Grace wrote in her diary that “he looked just like Manly.”34
But something was wrong with the baby; in less than two weeks’ time he lay dead, of convulsions, without even a name. The family buried him in the cemetery southwest of town, and afterward they never talked about it. “I know nothing about him,” Rose wrote at the age of seventy-nine, “because my mother wanted nothing said about it; I think she never stopped grieving and it was her way to be silent, and want silence about any unhappy subject.” Perhaps there were times when Almanzo's and Laura's thoughts turned to their lost boy, but if Rose is correct about Laura's insistence on imposing silence, deep grief and heartache remained repressed, unspoken, and bottled up inside of them. Laura's reaction to this event—the most grievous tragedy of her life—was deeply revealing about her. Her own mother had taught her well the habits of restraint, self-control, and fortitude. There would always be a dark, secret side to Laura that outsiders were unable to penetrate, a side that even those closest to her never fully fathomed.35
Two weeks later disaster struck again, this time inadvertently caused by Rose. She was helping her mother fire the cookstove for the evening meal. In an instant, while Laura stepped out of the kitchen, Rose dropped some burning hay on the floor, and in seconds the house went up in flames. Laura was still too weak to effectively fight the fire, and Almanzo and Peter came in too late from the fields to extinguish it. Only some furniture, a few clothes and dishes, and their wedding silver were salvaged.36
It was a terrible blow, coming directly after the death of their child. Events seemed to be conspiring against them. But Almanzo and Peter set about building a new two-room shanty near the site of the old one, a place that could get them through the winter at least. Meanwhile, the four of them were able to stay with a nearby farmer, who offered them the use of his house in return for Laura's cooking meals for him. Within a few weeks’ time they were resettled in their new shanty, waiting for cold weather to set in and considering what to do next.37
By mid-November their decision was made. They would leave South Dakota and return to Spring Valley to stay with Almanzo's parents for a while and decide their next course of action. They drove into town to inform Laura's parents about their plan. At Christmastime, James and Angeline Wilder traveled to De Smet by train to visit them and Royal, and further decisions about the move probably were made then. With the arrival of spring, Laura and Almanzo sold their enlarged flock of sheep for five hundred dollars, which was a neat profit both for them and for Peter. The money allowed Almanzo to convert their tree claim into a preemption purchase; he paid government land officials at Watertown two hundred dollars for the quarter-section and signed the final papers on April 17, 1890.38
In filling out the required forms, Almanzo indicated that their one-story frame house had dimensions of fourteen by twenty-four feet with a seven-by-twelve-foot addition. The barn was eighteen by twenty-four feet. There were also a sheep shed and a granary, two wells, ten acres planted in trees, and sixty-five acres under cultivation. The implements he owned included a binder, a mower, a plow, a wagon, and a sulky corn plow. He also listed himself as owning nine horses, five head of cattle, and seventy-five sheep, and he stated that in the two seasons that he had raised crops on the property he had put in wheat, oats, corn, and flax. Almanzo readied a covered wagon for their journey to Minnesota; they would need room for Peter, too. Laura sorted through their things, deciding what they should take along. Once their affairs were in order, they all said their good-byes to friends and loved ones and prepared to leave. By early June, Laura, Almanzo, and Rose, along with Peter Ingalls, were on their way.39
If any doubts lingered in Laura's and Almanzo's minds about their decision to leave South Dakota, they likely were quashed by what they saw around them as they traveled: barren fields, destitute families, and radicalized politics. But, as always, hope lingered in the minds of many people for a decent return on their investments the next time around. Crops were looking rather good in places, and farmers would soon be getting ready for the harvest. But Grace wrote in her diary before they left about a sandstorm that blew and blew. “Hard time” socials to brighten people's moods were held often that year in De Smet and surrounding towns, and the county board arranged to issue warrants to purchase seed grain for destitute farmers who were unable to obtain it otherwise.40
In Spring Valley a warm welcome greeted them when they arrived at the Wilder farm. Although not immune from the kinds of problems plaguing South Dakota at the time, southeastern Minnesota had fared better. Spring Valley, which was two or three times the size of De Smet, was a visibly prosperous town of around fifteen hundred people, with forty or fifty businesses and a number of brick commercial blocks. There were at least five general merchandise or grocery stores, three hardware stores, two meat markets, two drugstores, six stores carrying men's and women's clothing and footwear, and a variety of other businesses. In addition, the town boasted nine churches, including the Methodist Episcopal church, which the Wilders attended. Enhancing Spring Valley's prospects was a second railroad line that had been extended to it in 1890.41
A wide variety of entertainment provided diversion, including traveling theatrical shows, vocal performances, orchestral music, dances, circuses, and other attractions. It is unlikely, however, that Laura and Almanzo became much involved in the community during their year and a half in Spring Valley. Their main concern now was to nurse Almanzo back to health and to figure out a way to make a living. Escape from the harsh Dakota and Minnesota winters might offer a better prospect for his recovery. An idea for a new place to locate emerged from a trip down the Mississippi River taken by Peter Ingalls, Almanzo's younger brother, Perley, and Laura's cousin Joe Carpenter. Perley was twenty-one, just a year younger than Almanzo had been when he had traveled west to Dakota Territory with Royal and Eliza in 1879. But Perley's direction now was southward, as he and the other two were lured by promotional literature extolling Florida's climate and industry. Other adventuresome young men had taken boat trips down the Mississippi, and they decided to try it, too, beginning their odyssey in early October 1890. When they arrived in Cairo, Illinois, they changed course, traveling up the Ohio River and then up the Tennessee in their small sailing craft, which they had dubbed the Edith. From Decatur, Alabama, they traveled overland to the small village of Westville, located in the middle of the Florida Panhandle, about seventy-five miles northeast of Pensacola.42
Although easy fortunes did not await them when they arrived, Peter Ingalls decided to remain and settled down on a piece of land near Westville, planning to try his luck as a farmer. He later married a woman named Mary McGowin, and they eventually had six children. Letters from Peter describing Florida's balmy climate, which might speed Almanzo's recovery, were all the stimulus that he and Laura needed to decide to give Florida a try themselves. By early 1891 they were seriously planning to move. In March they auctioned off about eight horses, harnesses, and other items, in preparation for taking their leave. It was not until October 5, however, that Laura, Almanzo, and Rose boarded a train at Spring Valley and headed southeast for Florida. They took some household goods and one team with them to help them get started.43
Moving to the piney woods of Florida was an act of faith for Laura and Almanzo, for they had little solid information about the area. Had they realized what they were going to find once they arrived, they probably never would have made the move in the first place. Their primary consideration in going was Almanzo's health, but the hot, moist climate near the Gulf Coast and along the Choctawhatchee River turned out to be more debilitating for Laura than it was energizing for Almanzo. Once, while helping Peter plant some corn, she clutched an umbrella to ward off the hot sun. He finally told her to go back to the house. The entire atmosphere in the South seemed foreign and strange to Laura. “We went to live in the piney woods of Florida,” she later recalled, “where the trees always murmur, where the butterflies are enormous, where plants that eat insects grow in moist places, and alligators inhabit the slowly moving waters of the rivers. But at that time and in that place, a Yankee woman was more of a curiosity than any of these.”44
Even stranger than the climate were the people. From the beginning, Laura felt out of place, considering her new neighbors to be ill-educated and ill-mannered. The local women, for their part, regarded her as a haughty “up-North” person—not one of them. In 1922 Rose captured some of her mother's alienation and fear in a prize-winning short story titled “Innocence”: “‘Here we are, in the piney woods!’ said father. The white road went curving between straight, tall gray trees that had no branches. Far overhead their green-black tops whispered breathlessly, without stopping, telling something terrifying. The gray trunks stood still in a gray light; they knew, but they were silent, and the pale ground looked up at them. A smell of dampness and of wet paintbrushes was in the air.”45 This was a far cry indeed from the vast, treeless spaciousness and the clear, clean sunshine of the South Dakota prairies!
Southern women, in Rose's story, went barefoot and dipped snuff. Snakes slithered through the forest, the piney woods whispered, enveloping everything in their shadows, and the air was thick and moldy, suffused with strange smells. Unable to relate in any meaningful way to the people living around her, Laura found compensation in her family. To the degree that Rose's story accurately portrayed the relationship between her and her mother, they were extremely close and the relationship was full of love. “For mother was not really grown-up, like father,” Rose wrote, “she liked to sing and dress dolls and play games with toes.” But if the mother showered love and affection on her daughter, who at the age of five was growing increasingly aware of the world around her, she was also protective of Rose and concerned about the environment into which they had taken her. “Innocence” suggests how closely Laura watched over and supervised her only child and how strictly she disciplined her, aiming to instill in her the habit of self-control. When she spanked Rose once in order to get her message across, the surprised girl yelled in terror and amazement. In Rose's story, her mother paddled her several times, telling her, “Now come in this house, and eat, and don't let me hear another word out of you!” This is how Rose characterized her mother's disciplinary approach:
Mama was always advanced for her time. She told me once that she made up her mind before I was born that she wouldn't whip me; she did not believe in breaking a child's will. She had to change back to “Spare the rod and spoil the child” before I can remember, because I told a lie. And if she warned me to keep my dress clean or not lose my hair ribbon or something like that, or I'd get a spanking, then she had to keep her word. But she never actually spanked me for not being diligent.46
Laura was sufficiently fearful living in Florida that she decided to carry a revolver in her dress.47 Obviously feeling out of place, she started talking about home almost as soon as they arrived. The family's short stay in Westville indicates that it did not take them long to realize their mistake. Agricultural possibilities in the scrubby pine region were not too promising. So in a few months’ time the decision was made to leave, and in August 1892, less than a year after departing Spring Valley, they boarded a northbound train and headed home to De Smet. After staying for a while with Laura's parents in their Third Street house, the Wilders moved into a little house about a block away.
In the meantime Royal Wilder had gone back to Spring Valley to live, setting up in the grocery and notions business. In 1893 he married Electa Averill Hutchinson, a widow; they had one child, born the following year. Eliza Wilder, after leaving De Smet, had moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a clerk in the Department of Interior. She also was married in 1893, to a two-time widower with six children, Thomas Jefferson Thayer, who was eighteen years older. He had relocated earlier from Spring Valley to Crowley, Louisiana, and Eliza made her home there with him; they had a son the following year.48
Laura's sisters remained in De Smet. Mary had graduated from the school for the blind in Vinton in 1889 and now spent her days doing handwork and household chores. Knowing exactly where everything was in the house, she swept floors, dusted furniture, made beds, and took care of the houseplants. After dinner she helped with the dishes. She enjoyed teaching Rose how to knit, crochet, and sew and even taught her to read some braille. On Sundays, Mary played the organ, and the family gathered around to sing hymns. Carrie continued to work at the newspaper office as a typesetter while she learned the printing trade. Grace was still going to school. At fifteen, she was the same age that Laura had been when she had taken her first teaching job ten years earlier. So the family was together again, but the happy, generally carefree days of childhood had given way, for Laura, to concerns about her husband's health and the family's economic survival.49
Rose later remembered her grandmother being “a real sweet, patient old lady, with brown hair parted in the middle and a shell comb standing up from the knot in back.” Caroline Ingalls was not much of a talker, but she was a pleasant woman. Charles continued to do some carpentry work and took on other odd jobs around town. What Rose remembered about him were his bright blue eyes, long beard, and patched shoes.50
South Dakota continued to lie under the spell of drought and low farm prices. Things grew worse in 1893 when financial panic struck, plunging the United States into its worst economic depression up until that time. The Florida interlude had done little to improve Almanzo's health. The idea of trying to farm a quarter-section of land now apparently seemed to be out of the question. Instead, he took what jobs he could find, painting and carpentering and the like. Laura, meantime, went to work for a dressmaker for a dollar a day. Money was scarce, but frugal as she was, Laura managed to begin putting money away that could provide them with a stake for a new start.
Rose was a smart child and displayed signs of precociousness. She started school in De Smet a year early, after she was given an exemption by a sympathetic school board. Writing fascinated her so much that she developed writer's cramp and had to drop out temporarily. In the meantime, she stayed with her grandparents, watched over by her grandmother and Mary. Years later, in trying to recapture what those times had been like, Rose always seemed to think of summer. Responding to one letter writer, she reminisced, “I hope ice cream still tastes as good to De Smet youngsters as it did to me in the hot summers.”51
Little money was available for ice cream in the Wilder household, so any taste of it must have seemed especially delightful. Rose later wrote about the house that they lived in. In the spring, violets grew all around it on the low, wet land. “We had no furniture because it had been chattel-mortgaged,” Rose recalled. “In the whole big house there was only a cookstove and a big box for a table, Papa's and Mama's trunks, and their big bed and my little bed lying on the bare floors. At night there was lamplight only in the kitchen. The blank window seemed to stare at us, and through the empty rooms there were breathings and crawlings and creakings in the dark. And the wind had a different sound around that house, it sounded mean and jeering.”52
Then someone from De Smet journeyed to southern Missouri to check out rumors about the area's wonderful fruit-growing opportunities. He brought back promotional literature and samples of apples grown there, and Laura and Almanzo were intrigued. Perhaps Missouri was the place they had been searching for.