miss wilder

This photo was found in the Edith Garland Dupre Library Special Collections Department of the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. It is identified simply as "Miss Wilder."

The question was asked: Could this be Rose Wilder?

I don't think so, but I've been known to be wrong before. The woman in the photo is wearing eyeglasses. On first glance, there was something about the mouth and chin that reminded me of Rose, but I got over it.

Perhaps it's a photo of one of Perley Wilder's daughters?
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:26 AM

 
clear to new ulm
Tonight's reading material: The Great Sioux Uprising: Rebellion on the Plains, August-September 1862, by Terry Keenan (Cambridge, Massachusetts: De Capo Press, 2003).

From the handwritten manuscript for On the Banks of Plum Creek:

One day they found large, gray rock. It was high enough that Laura had to scramble and pull herself up with her hands to get to the top. On top it was flat and quite smooth, wide enough for Laura and Mary to run side by side and long enough so they could race its length. It was a wonderful place to play.

Still farther back on the prairie there was a shallow, square sunken place in the ground. The ground was rough and uneven around the edges as if there had been piles of something there. At one end of the sunken place was a pile of scattered rocks. Grass grew over everything nearly hiding the rocks as though grass had grown there for years. It was a strange looking place.

Pa went with Laura and Mary to look at it. He dug a little way into some of the rough places and then stood quietly looking at it. He was so still that Laura and Mary were quiet too for what seemed like a long time.

Back at the house, Pa described the place to Ma. "It must be what Nelson was telling me about," he told her.

"Nelson said there were the ruins of a house, on the place, where people had lived before the Indians came raiding through. The house had been burned and no one knew what became of the people who had lived in it, but anyway they never came back."

Oh!" Ma exclaimed, "the Minnesota massacres. Did the Indians go right through here?"

"Yes! Clear to New Ulm," Pa said.

And at last Laura thought she knew what a massacre was. It was burning houses and driving people away so they never came back. But she had Mary did not play by the ruined, grass grown cellar and tumbled chimney of the burned house. They liked better to play on the big boulder.

- posted by pioneergirl at 8:02 PM