walter ogden
Just as the Masters family messes up the real-life hard winter story, Walter Ogden messes up the real-life surveyors' house story. If, as Charles Ingalls wrote, Walter Ogden lived with the Ingalls family in the surveyors' house during the winter of 1879-1880, you have to wonder how his presence affected the lives of the Ingallses that winter.

For example, if Mr. and Mrs. Boast stayed with Ma and the girls while Pa went to file on his claim (February 1880), was Walter Ogden there, too? Was it not okay for only Ogden to stay with them, hence Mr. and Mrs. Boast moving in? Did the fact that there was a Mrs. Boast present make it okay for Mr. Boast to be there at night? It doesn't seem as if Ogden would have accompanied Pa to the land office because he had filed on his own claim in October 1879.

And what about those cosy evenings of music and song by the stove? In reality, there was another person there, unless Ogden bowed out and spent his evenings in the room with the surveyors' tools. Is this where he usually slept, or did he sleep in the main room on the floor in front of the stove? At any rate, he was obviously there for almost everything: meals, songs, the first church service, Christmas.

Laura Ingalls Wilder included Walter Ogden in Pioneer Girl, so all is not guesswork:

We moved at once into the surveyors' house and made everything snug for the winter. Pa had laid in a supply of provisions and simple medicines to last the winter and at the last minute a man named Walter Ogden wanted to stay with us. He was taking care of several yoke of oxen for a man whose homestead was several miles to the east and had intended to stay there by himself, but didn't like the loneliness and if Pa would give him permission to keep the oxen in the old company shanty-stable and would board him, he would come and stay with us.

It seemed that it might be wise to have another man around, so Pa told him to come and he moved the cattle and hay to feed them and just got them nicely settled before the first snow.

You can read on to find that now only does Ogden board with the family, he plays checkers with Pa, he goes with Mr. Boast to get the sled out of the snow (not Pa), and he receives a tablet of shaving papers as a Christmas gift (made by Laura and Carrie). Interesting that while Mr. Boast is always referred to as Mr., Laura always refers to Walter Ogden by his first name.

Was Walter Ogden musical? Did he sing bass like Pa, or join in as tenor? Did Laura and Carrie dance in front of him? With him? He was 25 and unmarried that winter. He married in 1882. Guess what his first daughter was named? Grace.
- posted by pioneergirl at 3:59 PM