transcontinental railroad

Yet another juvenile tries and fails: Laura Ingalls Wilder by Emma Carlson Berne, Abdo Publishing Company, copyrighted 2008 but already available; maybe they should have taken the extra couple of months to do a little primary research?

Just a few examples: Incorrect land information is given for Henry Quiner and Charles Ingalls in Pepin, both buying and selling. Peter Ingalls didn't rent a farm in "another part of Wisconsin" in 1874. Of personal interest to me was the statement that Charles Ingalls "purchased his land near Walnut Grove from Anders Haraldsen." The name can only have come from the booklet Penny Linsenmayer and I wrote (uncited), only Haraldsen had relinquished his claim in 1872 and he was not in Redwood County when Charles arrived and filed on the same land as his preemption claim. Then there's the incorrect Burr Oak information followed by the incorrect De Smet information. No understanding of the Homestead Act. The same old, same old about Laura's teaching career.

Anyway, the whole book is like that, one little incorrect niggle after another. A new one for me was the often repeated mention of the "new transcontinental railroad" and the little towns which had sprung up along it. It "went through Walnut Grove and was eventually going to run all the way to California, but right now (1879) the lines were being laid in Dakota Territory." I guess this is as opposed to the "old" transcontinental railroad which reached California in 1869.

The Chicago & NorthWestern Railroad (never mentioned in Berne's book) reached Brookings County, Dakota Territory, in 1879, and Deadwood, South Dakota in 1890. It was not part of the Union Pacific. It wasn't until 1906 that the the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul reached Rapid City, South Dakota, and began to expand west. In 1909, it reached..... Seattle.

Save your money.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:41 AM