An Obscure Laura Site

On this day in 1911...

2/18/1911 – Laura launches her professional writing career as a columnist and later as the Home Editor for the Missouri Ruralist. She works for the newspaper through the mid-1920s.

One hundred and ten years later...

I never imagined I’d actually get to visit any of the Little House sites, but in 2015 now having been to Pepin, Walnut Grove, De Smet, Burr Oak, and Spring Valley all in 2015, it shouldn’t be surprising that in 2018 I finally made it to Rocky Ridge, in Mansfield Missouri! Rocky Ridge is where Laura’s writing career began, and ended up being the place where she lived the longest and eventually died in February of 1957.  We also went to  Independence, KS, incidentally, on that same trip, when I realized how close we would get to it - after Rocky Ridge and before Texas - for Joe’s turf conference.

Three years later, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I am now making my family go to the Wilder Florida home site as well.

I should probably back up here. With Covid 2020 being the weirdest year anyone alive can remember, we decided in November to buy an RV for our annual treks during spring break. Not only did it seem like a good year to travel, but a good time to take stock and look around at the world we now live in.  We’d always said we’d get a camper and drive around the country when we were old, but we felt so repressed by all the stay at home orders last spring and just talked about it some more. We realized we should do this with the kids, because they love traveling too, so why wait? 

The area in Florida we are headed for is in the panhandle, and I’m excited to see what it’s like there.  The Almanzo Wilders spent about a year homesteading near Westville, FL after suffering several losses in De Smet and a year recouping in Spring Valley. They hoped the weather in Florida would be good for Manly’s health after suffering from a debilitating bout of diphtheria; it was anything but. His health didn’t improve, and Laura disliked the swampy forests and slow, muddy rivers.  She wrote about her time there:... “we went to live in the piney woods of Florida, where the trees always murmur, where the butterflies are enormous, where plants that eat insects grow in moist places, where alligators inhabit the slowly moving waters of the rivers. But at the time and at that place a Yankee woman was more of a curiosity than these...”

A yankee in Florida is no longer a curiosity, but it sounds as if at that time Laura stuck out like a sore thumb. She was used to the plains with their hot winds, open prairie, and clear lakes. Florida must be just the opposite, and I can imagine her hesitation, being from Michigan, where a swampy area is generally considered to be a bad spot to live, let alone farm. 

We are only just starting out on this Laura trip as I write. For our first night we stayed at a hotel in Plymouth, Indiana.  Pool was closed and I didn’t have a great night’s sleep  I always forget that it takes a few days to unwind and get in trip mode.  Next morning we got a spectacular family picture outside the Minnie Winnie, got coffee at Mac-D’s, and took off. 

We drove a solid 4-5 hours the second day and stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Kentucky, where the pool was open and we all went in!

Next morning, that’s right, to another McDonalds for coffee to go with our RV breakfast. We only had to drive about 3.5 hours to get to Birmingham, AL, for nights 3 and 4. We will stay at Oak Park Mountain Campground, about 15 minutes from our friends, the Halls. Can’t wait to visit with them!

Day 5: De Smet

Last fall, I signed up for and completed an online class through Missouri State University called "Laura Ingalls Wilder: Exploring Her Work and Life, The Early Years."  Though the class was free, the content of the course and its format were incredible. I knew from the description that I would enjoy it, and I did, even receiving an "official" certificate upon completion; however, I was looking most forward to the second part of the class.

And two days after I returned from my trip, that second part started.  Honestly, I thought maybe when I got home I'd be kinda sick of Laura. Actually I kinda hoped. And then there was this: my obsession with Laura sometimes seems...well, I'm ashamed to say it, but kinda silly; I mean, after all, she's just one person who led an interesting life in a world full of people who lead interesting lives. And I still can't completely pinpoint why she interests me so much. I really think we have so much in common - love of family, faith, education, and writing in particular, as well as savoring life's simple pleasures. I don't even have an interest in prairie life or pioneer history - or so I thought. This trip changed that. The second half of the class combined with this trip compounded it. I mean, starting the part of the class that focused on her life in De Smet just after returning from De Smet...that is just too cool!  

Back home now I'm rereading By the Shores of Silver Lake and discussing it with the class, and the images I've had stored in my head since I was a LITTLE GIRL are completely gone because I have ACTUALLY SEEN THE TOWN WHERE SHE LIVED AND THE HOUSE SHE LIVED IN from BTSOSL. I drove the same road into town that Pa's wagon followed, and I walked into the surveyors' house that the Ingalls lives in that first winter in De Smet.

Looking back on the trip with some perspective now, it has a dream like quality. That second day in De Smet was the most organized, because we had an actual, legitimate tour of Laura's homes, not just their sites or replicas. The surveyor's house had been lugged in from the frontier and plunked down right next to an old Victorian home that was now the museum entrance and gift shop here we began our tour. Our tour guide, Diane, led us to the back of the shop to an addition that houses the good stuff - items belonging to the Ingalls family! We were not allowed to take pictures (except they said a few were okay with no flash) and the items were all in glass cases. There was a section for each member of the family, housing handkerchiefs, books, jewelry, and numerous other personal items. One in particular stood out: Laura's nightgown. I couldn't get over thinking how horrified Laura would be by that display, being so private a person. 

The museum curators had recently obtained a dresser that belonged to Grace (Dow) Ingalls and they were quite excited about it. The really neat thing there for kids was a little log cabin station with dark colored Lincoln logs for kids to make their own log cabin. Another station had construction paper, a stapler, and a model to copy and make their own 50-50 tablet to look like the ones Laura used to write the LH books. Best of all, some of her original  manuscripts were on display there on those 50-50 tablets, just as she had written them 80 years ago! We bought some things at the gift shop and Diane told us to take our time, as we were the only people in our group. 

There was so much to see there but we pressed on Diane took us through the Surveyor’s house (BTSOSL) which was right next door to the museum, and that was fantabulous. It was a small house by today’s standards, as I expected, but I could see how Laura would see it as large compared to all the other houses she’d lived in. Diane spoke for awhile to us inside the house while we imagined Mary sitting by the warm stove with Grace in her lap, or Laura sewing, or Ma cooking.

The Bouchie aka Brewster school that Laura had taught her five pupils in in These Happy Golden Years had its own replica on the museum property as well. It was closed, but we dutifully got our picture outside of it!

Normally the tour guide walks people from there to Ma and Pa’s final home - their large two story house on 3rd street- but it bein March and a bit cold and windy, we drove and met Diane there. Luckily, we could go inside it! I found out, after taking a few pictures, that cameras were not allowed.   (Whoops). I do not regret, however, the pictures I have of the living room with Ma and Mary’s rocking chairs and Pa’s replica fiddle, which the kids were allowed to pick up and play. Cute. Ma’s dishes were impeccably kept on her kitchen shelves and Mary’s room just as orderly, and filled with her beads, letters, and other crafts she made lovingly with her Braille work and delicate fingers. Ma and Mary lived a long time