"you're crazy!" pa said...

"Out with that baby when it is fifteen below." And so it was by the thermometer. "She might have smothered," Ma added. -The First Four Years, "The Second Year"

There was good reason for Ma and Pa to have worried when Laura and Almanzo took baby Rose for a January visit to the Ingallses across town. George and Julia Ingalls were married in 1876; George was Charles Ingalls' brother and Laura's "Uncle George" of Little House in the Big Woods. George and Julia had several children, all of whom died shortly after birth. Their next child lived for a year, but when they took him to visit relatives, he was wrapped so tightly that he smothered. Julia Ingalls lost her mind, and for the rest of her life, she was in and out of the insane asylum, finally dying there in 1910.

Surely Ma and Pa were thinking of their nephew when Laura and Almanzo threw caution to the wind and took Rose to visit their own relatives that winter. Or perhaps the trip in The First Four Years didn't actually take place, but was written as a warning to us all.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:54 AM