jigging grandma
"She was left a widow with three small children, her husband having been killed in felling a tree, and the Indians fed them through that winter, somewhere in the Big Woods. The widow later married again, and I think is the Grandma who danced a jig at the Sugaring-off party...."

Although the above sounds like something you'd read on a message board today, it was written by Rose Wilder Lane in the 1960s. She was writing about her ancestors from Little House in the Big Woods, and she went on to say: "...the 'wild' Uncle George would be a Quiner and perhaps owned land there later. I think my grandfather owned his place but I don't know; never asked." [article in Elementary English, March 1964]

Every time I read the above statements, it makes me realize how little Rose obviously knew about her own family, and how much is known about them today. It also makes me think about all those names and dates in the "Little House" books that Laura got wrong. I'm sure she never guessed that there would someday be people (like me!) dissecting her every sentence and researching every person, place, or thing she wrote about.

I'm reading the "Little House" books again right now, not searching for questions to be answered, but to once again remember why I fell in love with the books in the first place. If Rose had read Little House in the Big Woods a bit more carefully, she could have figured out Grandma's name!
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:46 AM