when laura was twenty-three
The latest issue of Pepin Notes, the newsletter from the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, Inc., Pepin, Wisconsin, contains a transcription of a 1933 letter Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote to a teacher and fan of Little House in the Big Woods.

Laura wrote that after leaving the Big Woods, she never went to Pepin again as a child, but "...when I was twenty-three years old I went back from South Dakota and took my little girl to the town of Pepin." (Do you think Almanzo went, too?) A note in the newsletter adds that Laura, Almanzo, and Rose were living in Spring Valley, Minnesota, when Laura was 23. Laura had relatives in the area, so it's not hard to imagine the Wilders paying a visit. The Pepin newsletter also points out that Peter Ingalls, Perley Wilder, and Joseph Carpenter began their Mississippi River journey in the sailing craft Edith on October 1 of that year - another possible reason for a visit.

According to the De Smet News, the Wilders left De Smet on May 30, 1890. An earlier article reported that "Wilder and Ingalls" (that would be Laura and her cousin Peter) had sold their sheep on May 10 (see The First Four Years).

You know what's sad? The first Old Settler's Day in De Smet was held on June 10. It's a shame that Laura and Almanzo weren't there to attend.
- posted by pioneergirl at 6:25 PM