myth #3
...a young lawyer name Alfred Thomas came in and stayed and kept on staying for no reason that I could see, until I was afraid Pa and I would be late. At last he asked Pa if he were going to the meeting and to my surprise Pa said "No!" Then he asked me if I were going and I thinking if Pa didn't go of course I wouldn't said "No!" too... So Mr Thomas went away alone and then Pa laughed at me and said all Mr. Thomas had come for was to take me... I had refused my first offer of an escort...

Do you believe that? It's in the handwritten Pioneer Girl. It's also in Donald Zochert's biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Supposedly Mr. Thomas wanted to take Laura to one of the literaries in De Smet.

Yes, there was an Alfred Thomas in De Smet. He moved there in April 1883 with his wife and two children. They had two more children. Alfred was not a lawyer; he started an abstract business and later sold insurance. He was on the school board. He was born in 1851, so he was 6 years older than Almanzo Wilder and 16 years older than Laura Ingalls.

Alfred Thomas did, however, have a younger brother who lived in De Smet for a while, and this brother was a lawyer. He came from law school in Wisconsin to go into the land business with Alfred, but returned shortly to Wisconsin to be married; and he didn't return. And no, I'm not going to tell you his name.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:59 AM