another wilder in the west
I am confused about Laura Wilder Howard (Almanzo's sister) and the time she spent in De Smet in the 1880s. Supposedly Laura Ingalls and Laura Howard worked side-by-side sewing in De Smet.

Laura Wilder had married Harrison Howard in 1874 and they had four children. If Eliza Jane had charge of two of her sister's children for a while (as she wrote in her homestead file), and if Laura Howard was in De Smet without children for a while (when she was living with Eliza Jane and working as a seamstress) - where were the Howard children during this second period of time? Were two of them in De Smet, or all four? Or none? Why was Laura Howard living and working in De Smet when she had four children.... where? Why did she leave Minnesota and (apparently) her children in the first place?

What is most puzzling is that Harrison Howard's headstone inthe cemetery in Spring Valley indicates that he died in 1897, as do death records. Eliza Jane wrote that her sister had "no means of support except their father" in the early 1880s, but what about Harrison Howard? Was the couple separated? Divorced?

Obviously there is more here than meets the eye.
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:16 AM