i see dead people

Seems like it's been forever that rosebunting and cyberbessie have been collecting "Little House" obituaries, and almost that long that rosebunting has been bugging cyberbessie to put them all online. Daisies because of "pushing up daisies" - get it? (Actually, it's always been called "roses and daisies," but for the life of her, cyberbessie can't remember exactly why...)

Just under the wire for Halloween 2007, take a walk in the De Smet cemetery and check out the daisies. Click on the linked image above or follow the same one on the main page of pioneergirl[dot]com.

Thomas Brown isn't exactly a "Little House" character, but his death was reported in the surviving fragment of the Kingsbury County News published during the Hard Winter.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:07 PM

 
dangers of roller-skating
Fairly soon after the roller-skating rink opened in De Smet, this bit of information appeared in print, and no doubt had more than a few mothers telling their daughters a thing or two:

When roller-skating was first introduced, we looked on it with much favor. We put on skates ourselves, and often accompanied ladies to the hall. They, we and our associates, enjoyed the exercise much. In some respects roller-skating seemed fully equal to skating on ice, in its graceful and complicated movements, and vastly superior in its freedom from the interruptions of snow and rain and wind and cold. We thought it furnished a fine combination of mental relaxation, phusical exercise and social life. We saw in it a cheap and agreeable diversion for the people, free, we supposed, from the temptations which everywhere beset the young.

But Americans overdo many things, in pleasure, work, politics and religion. If the apostolic injunction, "Let your moderation be known unto all men," were one of the Ten Commandments, we should be a nation of breakers of the Decalogue. Roller-skating became "a craze." It was pursued as if it were the purpose of life; every night in the week, several hours at a time, in crowded rinks, with vitilated air and impalpable dust.

That moderately indulged in and duly regulated it would be healthful, and in many ways helpful for those already vigorous, we still believe. But the fruits of the present methods of pursuing the amusement are often evil.

The following, from the Medical Record, written by Julia Townsend Hill, M.D., is worthy of attention:

"Sir: I am very much interested in this subject of roller-skating for girls, especially because I have from thirty to forty girls under my care for physical training and treatment. With the utmost care as to time and amount, I find it unsatisfactory. it seems to bring out any latent predisposition to disease. I have been compelled to forbid those who had the slighest tendency to kidney or heart trouble, in fact, any organic trouble, indulging in the sport. A case of anaemia, the most intractabel one I ever had to deal with, I am sure was caused by skating excessibely." Other physicians give a similar testimony.

All regreations may have their dangers if carried to excess. This new and popular one, like all others, needs to be used more wisely and conscientiously.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:18 PM

 
what will the town girls think?

"Myrta, if you don't keep your hair over your face, you'll be brown as an Indian!"
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:51 AM

 
never a dull moment

In the manuscript for Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder included a story about Almanzo visiting the starch mill in Burke. It was edited out at some point prior to publication, but I was reminded of it when I was going through my Malone files and found an old map that showed the location of the starch mill, saw mill, and blacksmith shop in Burke.

There were more than enough potatoes to fill the bins in the cellar so Father took a load to the starch factory at Burke.

Burke was a little town down the river a few miles. It had a post office, two stores, a blacksmith shop, a wagon shop and the starch factory and a saw mill run by the same water wheel. A little way down the river was a grist mill that ground wheat and rye and buckwheat into flour and corn into cornmeal.

Almanzo went to Burke with Father and the potatoes. He liked to watch the big, steel saw, at the saw mill, cut through the spruce and hemlock, the maple and basswood logs, sawing them into lumber, and into wagon wood and barrel staves.

He liked to watch the potatoes being made into starch; to see the whole potatoes go round and round in the big, tall vat, with the water pouring through it, while the huge, wooden paddles stirred and turned them, rolling them over and over until they were all washed clean and the dirt had settled and washed away through the slatted bottom of the vat.

Then the potatoes were put through the mill that ground them fine, into a great tub, where the water ran and kept the mass stirring. The parings rose to the top and were floated off by the water.

Then the potato pulp was run into another great tub where it was washed by the running water, until the pulp rose and the starch settled to the bottom.

When the starch had all settled, the water and pulp was drawn off, the wet starch was cut into slabs and sent, on a small track, into the dry kiln. There the slabs were spread on a floor that had rather wide cracks. As the starch dried it broke into pieces and fell through the cracks on to the next floor with smaller cracks. As it became fully dry it sifted through these into a tight floor beneath. From there it was barreled for shipment. The barrels were large and when filled weighed 600 pounds.

Almanzo always thought what a huge starch pudding a barrelful would make.

If he tired of the starch factory and the saw mill, Almanzo could always be happy at the blacksmith shop, watching the blacksmith shoe horses or sharpen plows. It was fun to watch the sparks fly as he beat a hot iron on the forge.

There was never a dull moment waiting for Father at Burke.

- posted by pioneergirl at 1:45 AM

 
stocking stuffer

Since stockings come in pairs, I bought two copies of this book: one to keep and one to share.

The Prairie Girl's Guide to Life is one of those books that I'm happy to see got written. It speaks to my inner prairie girl in a way that no other LIW-inspired craft book has done so far.

Long before I cared that the "Little House" books were about real people and real places, I fell in love with them because of all the day-to-day pioneer activities they included, from baking sourdough biscuits to braiding a straw hat. The "Little House" books made me want to own a kerosene lantern and learn to knit. They made me want to make candles and collect buttons, sew a quilt and write with a dip pen.

Forty years later, I may obsess over real people and real places, but I'm still a prairie girl to the core. Thank you, Jennifer Worick.
- posted by pioneergirl at 4:13 AM

 
first time's the charm
The following "Little House" characters (among others) are only mentioned by name in one chapter of one "Little House" book each. Three points for each character you can match to the proper book (Little House in the Big Woods through These Happy Golden Years only):

Albert, Alfred, Annie, Mr. Barclay, May Bird, John Carroll, Mr. Case, Mrs. Clancy, Father De Smet, El Manzoor, Mr. Ely, Frank Hawthorn, Mr. Hopp, Mr. Hunter, Mrs. Johnson, Jonas Lane, Lizzie, Aunt Lotty, Louizy, Mr. Mead, Anna Nelson, Bill O'Dowd, Old Johnny, Clyde Perry, Tay Pay Pryor, Mr. Ritchie, Soldat du Chene, Dr. Tan, Mr. Tower, Aaron Webb, Mr. Weed, Arthur Whiting, Jim Woodworth
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:45 AM

 
o'brien's mentor
That title came to me as the subject of an email, and my first thought was that it was the title of an English country dance. My second thought was that it had something to do with Star Trek.

The tangent of late has been to try to get rid of some of the red on my LIW/RWL bibliography. Over thirty articles were mined this month, but at least two dozen were added that I don't have copies of. Darn.

It took a while to track down Rose Wilder Lane's articles from World Traveler magazine. It took a tangent to the April 31, 1930, issue of Time magazine article to figure it out:

Martin's Mentor

Crowell Publishing Co. employes found an announcement on their bulletin board one morning last week, which read: "The Company has sold The Mentor to the World Traveler Magazine Corp. - George R. Martin, publisher. They will assume the publishing of The Mentor, beginning with the June 1930 issue. We have become convinced that The Mentor will have a much better opportunity if handled by a publisher equipped to take care of the smaller units. Here we are fully and thoroughly geared up to handle large units and it has become difficult to give The Mentor the necessary small unit attention. We feel that Mr. Martin and his organization are equipped to continue The Mentor successfully."

Although Crowell had owned The Mentor since 1920, it was not until last autumn that it was resolved to dress the magazine up and try to make it sell. Founded in 1913, the earliest known Mentor was a weekly. Each issue was devoted to one particular cultural subject- art, travel, letters. Foliowise, it also contained several loose-leaf rotogravure art reproductions. Then it became a semimonthly, then a monthly. Last September it fell into the capable hands of Hugh Anthony Leamy, a onetime associate editor of Collier's.

Editor Leamy decided to keep his editorial matter— essays, fiction, humor— consistent with the oldtime Mentor, but to deck out the material with capable, sometimes racy, illustration. Although the magazine's circulation reached 85,000, it became apparent that it would never pull in harness with its whopping big Crowell team-mates —Woman's Home Companion, Collier's, The Country Home (onetime Farm & Fireside), The American Magazine — whose combined circulation is over 8,500,000.

To World Traveler, the Mentor went lock, stock & barrel— with the exception of Editor Leamy. Henceforth he will work for Hearst's American Weekly, Sunday supplement whose circulation is greater than that of any other periodically printed matter (over 6,000,000).

Publisher Martin contemplates fusing his old magazine with his new, placing the amalgam under the direction of World Traveler's Editor Charles P. Norcross, now junketing in the Orient. Because World Traveler has about one-fourth of its stablemate's distribution, and because when two magazines combine one inevitably swallows the other, publishers guessed that the ever-mutating Mentor would be the one to endure.

All this means is that World Traveler magazine is often filed under Mentor. But the fun doesn't stop there.

The articles listed in some references as being by Rose Wilder Lane are attributed to Frederick O'Brien in other places, and to both as authors in yet others.
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:25 PM

 
i ought to be in pictures
What do Denzel Washington, Sharon Stone, Kevin Costner, and Jodie Foster all have in common? They read old newspapers on microfilm, of course. Each of these actors has starred in a movie in which they go to the library and research something on microfilm.

Spanning more than 50 years of cinematic history, movie images of people using microfilm range from Oscar-winning performances to schlocky horror films. Characters in movies turn to microfilm when they need to look for an obituary, find information about a haunted house, or simply track down an obscure person, place, or event.

Who knew microfilm was so glamorous?
- posted by pioneergirl at 3:01 AM

 
quite interesting

In Episode 8, Series A of the brilliant television show QI, a question was asked about Charles Burgess Fry, the 1913 world longjump champion who could leap backwards from the floor to a mantlepiece: "What position was he offered after the first World War?"

The answer, of course, is that he was offered the position of King of Albania. When Fry declined, Ahmet Zogoli, later changed to Ahmet Zogu, became king. Zogu was known as King Zog I.

It's not often that one hears the name "King Zog of Albania" on television. Or that you know also know something quite interesting about King Zog: that he once asked Rose Wilder Lane to marry him.
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:59 AM

 
look it up

Inside, too, the schoolhouse was bright and shining. The walls of new lumber were clean and smelled fresh. Sunshine streamed in from the eastern windows. Across the whole end of the room was a clean, new blackboard. Before it stood the teacher's desk, a boughten desk, smoothly varnished. It gleamed honey-colored in the sunlight, and on its flat top lay a large Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. -These Happy Golden Years, Chapter 18, "The Perry School"

Today is Dictionary Day, named in honor of the famous American wordsmith, Noah Webster (1758-1843). Webster first published his "blue back" speller, the standard speller for generations of Americans, followed by his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), so popular that the name "Webster's" became synonymous with dictionary. Although highly respected, the cost of a dictionary was astronomical for the times at $15 to $20, and the book sold poorly.

Following Webster's death, Charles and George Merriam purchased the large stock of unsold and expensive Webster's dictionaries, plus they purchased the right to publish any revisions. Their new, shorter 1847 edition, at $6.00, was an immediate success. Building on Noah Webster's original idea that the American nation needed a dictionary that reflected its distinctive use of the English language, C. & G. Merriam (later Merriam-Webster's) has been setting the standards for American English for the past 150 years.

The 1847 edition was followed by a revised edition in 1864, overhauling Noah Webster's dictionary, and the first to be known as unabridged. Subsequent editions were published in 1856, 1859, 1864, 1875, 1879, and 1882. In the early 1880s, the school board ordered four copies of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary; an 1882 edition sat on Mr. Owen's desk, and was used by Laura Ingalls.
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:36 AM

 
"to a girl"
In Dorothy Thompson & Rose Wilder Lane: Forty Years of Friendship (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), William Holtz includes a letter from Dorothy to Rose, dated August 13, 1921. In it, Dorothy writes that she is "off to meet Beatrice Sorchan" for a walking trip in the Bavarian Alps (page 15). Sorchan had been Thompson's assistant, and is described with the following lines: "Thou art so very sweet and fair / With such a heaven in thine eyes, / It almost seems an overcare / To ask thee to be good or wise..."

William Holtz even sent a query to American Notes & Queries magazine, asking for help identifying the above lines. He must have received no responses, since he included an endnote in Forty Years of Friendship that he was unable to identify them.

The verse is part of a poem usually credited to "Anonymous" but actually written by sisters Elizabeth Anna Hart and Merella Bute Smedley in the 1860s. The first part is "Lovers." The second part is "To a Girl," copied below. I wonder if Thompson ever used the second verse to describe Rose?

Thou art so very sweet and fair,
With such a heaven in thine eyes,
It almost seems an overcare
To ask thee to be good or wise:

As if a little bird were blam'd
Because its song unthinking flows;
As if a rose should be asham'd
Of being nothing but a rose.

Alas! why have we souls at all?
Why has each life a higher goal?
May not a thing as pure and small
As thou art -- be excused a soul?

If there were only birds and flowers,
How beautiful the world would be!
Or could we spend our happy hours,
And live like them, how blest were we!

Alas! but life is but a breath,
And every breath with danger rife,
And every breath leads on to death,
And after death -- the real life!

- posted by pioneergirl at 11:32 AM

 
$242.96 plus shipping and handling
Which is how much I will spend getting caught up buying published juvenile biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder. That's quite a lot of money for books that will probably only serve no other purpose than to (1) make me mad, and (2) perpetuate a whole lot of myths.

Every blessed LIW biographer these days seems to bow to the holy trinity (Anderson, Miller, and Zochert) along with the lesser Little House gods (Romines and Holtz) as the gospel for all things Laura. Those who feel like they're doing real research (Pamela Smith Hill* and her adult bio comes to mind), also use the "Pioneer Girl" manuscript and letters from Herbert Hoover library.

While a primary source can reflect the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer of history, it doesn't necessarily mean that these sources are historically accurate.

Hmmm, how to go about annotating "Pioneer Girl" without copyright infringement?

*re: Pamela Smith Hill, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life (Pierre, South Dakota: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2007) --- I'd actually recommend that a person interested in LIW take a look at this one, especially if they haven't seen the HH letters. You get more meat from "Pioneer Girl" in Zochert, though (albeit without benefit of Hill's hundred or so "LIW, 'Pioneer Girl,' Folder X" footnotes to let you know that's what you're reading). Imho, it would have been nices if Hill hadn't relied on Hines for Ruralist articles and titles, and if she hadn't totally lost steam in the last fourth of the book.
- posted by pioneergirl at 3:42 PM

 
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

 
happy halloween

Nothin' says lovin' like somethin' from the coven...
- posted by pioneergirl at 5:26 PM

 
i read banned books

September 29 through October 6 is Banned Books Week this year. Celebrate by reading, purchasing, and sharing Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie.

And go here: http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.htm for other suggestions.

As Almanzo Wilder said in The Long Winter (Chapter 25, "Free and Independent"), "Anyway, this is a free country and I'm free and independent. I do as I please."
- posted by pioneergirl at 3:36 AM

 
behind curtain number one

All one needs to decorate the shanty in a boo-boo-Bouchie theme this Halloween; click HERE for the big picture.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:59 PM