from burke to burr oak
I spent an hour drafting the Farmer Boy house today, down to the last piece of siding in its proper place, two-point perspective and all. I was rusty. Then I scanned and reduced the drawing to 200 pixels wide, which made me realize that I could have skipped the drafting part.

Franklin County, Malone, Burke -- this is the "Little House" part of the world I've researched the least. I realized as I was trying to write about The Real Farmer Boy that I was pretty much limited to what is available in published booklets by William Anderson and Dorothy Smith.

So I've decided to move on to Burr Oak, since I spent years researching that area! If you have an older version of the Anderson booklet about Burr Oak, here's the reason something was edited out that doesn't appear in later editions:

Early booklets say that Hamlin Garland wrote his short story "My First Christmas Tree" about a tree service in the Burr Oak schoolhouse in 1876, when Laura Ingalls was living there. Only Garland was talking about the Burr Oak school in Osage County (it stood in a bur oak grove, hence the name), not Winneshiek County -- meaning Garland's story had no connection to the year the Ingalls family spent in Burr Oak, even though Hamlin Garland's family did live in Burr Oak (Winneshiek County) for a while, too.
- posted by pioneergirl at 8:06 PM