little glass boxes

On the shelf above the books there was room for Mary's and Laura's and Carrie's little glass boxes. Each box had frosted flowers on its side and colored flowers on the lid. The three made that shelf all bright and gay. - By the Shores of Silver Lake, Chapter 29, "The Shanty on the Claim"

Laura Ingalls Wilder doesn't tell us where the "little glass boxes" came from, but logistics tells us that they must have dated from Walnut Grove or earlier. There are pictures of Laura's glass box in William Anderson's Laura Ingalls Wilder Country.

My little glass box came from the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet! Don't you just love it?? It's about the size of, hmmm, a calling card (I measured; it's roughly 2 x 3 x 1.5 inches tall), and has beveled glass sides, with a glass bottom and lid. The lid has a portrait of Laura on it (several different images to choose from when I was there), and the glass inside has written text like a manuscript or diary, so you see it through the lid. It was made by Mary Hunt; you can read about them on her blog HERE. The photo Mary took is better than mine - another reason to visit.

I used to collect little trinket boxes, and on my dresser, I have a display cabinet full of them. I doubt I'll put this one in it, though; mostly I want to hold it in my hand and fondle it. I'm thinking I'll put it on the desk in here, and keep my calling cards in it.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:09 PM

 
tribute to the early day teachers
All De Smet folks are proud of their public school, and with good reason. Many may not know that you also had a good school some sixty years ago, one of the best small-town schools in the state. De Smet was one of the first to offer work beyond the 8th grade. For some time only two years of high school, to be sure, however, the essentials of education were so thoroughly instilled in the pupils that many were able to secure a 1st grade teacher's certificate upon finishing and those who entered state college were put into the sophomore year. This high standard was the direct result of our good fortune in having teachers of exceptional ability in even those early times.

In looking back over our school days we all can recall some one or two teachers who influenced our lives more than all others, teachers who gave us something more than bare facts out of textbooks, whose personalities were an inspiration to us, whose precepts pointed us to ever widening horizons of thought, to higher ideals of life.

I wish to pay a tribute of appreciation to three such outstanding teachers in the De Smet schools in the 1880s and early 1890s: Miss Minnie M. Barrows, Miss Elgetha Masters, and Professor V.S.L. Owen.

Personally, I did not come under the direct influence of either Miss Barrrows or Miss Masters, as my brother did, but I know of the splendid work they did.

Miss Barrows, a teacher of superior ability, devoted many years to the Primary grades. She was also a wonderful disciplinarian. Besides class work, she trained the children to sing. Never have I heard little children sing better, nor seen them put on more perfectly trained public programs. Her pupils worshipped her and all their lives have held her memory sacred in their hearts.

These well disciplined children were passed on to Miss masters where it is so necessary to give patient drillwork to secure a firm foundation of essentials. Her careful, conscientious instruction, as well as her gentle gracious personality did much to form character and secure for her a lasting place in the memories of her pupils.

Then as Principal of the school there was B.S.L. Owen, another inspirational teacher who taught us more than was found in the textbooks. I recall particularly in English, how besides the rudiments of grammar, we were given special training in sentence analysis so that we might read and write with understanding. How in all subjects we were required to stand erect by our desk when called upon to recite, to give our answers in complete, correct sentences, in a distinct voice - a fine training for public speaking. How in writing out themes, not only must we use good English, but stress was laid on the ethics of procuring our information; we must so digest the subject matter than we could write it in our own words and not just copy from some book. Honesty in all things was his slogan. It was not only wrong to cheat in exams but also wrong to help someone else cheat. He gave lectures on good citizenship, on respect for the rights of others. Mr. Owen was a builder of character as well as a teacher. Such teachers are rare and should be held in the highest esteem.

We were so glad he could be with us, the first class to graduate from High School in 1889; Alma and David Davies, Florette Bonney, daughter of the Congregational minister, and myself. I was also glad to receive a letter from him last winter about the time he wrote to DE Smet folks. He is 93 years old now, but his letter indicates his mind is still young and active. His wife, also, is still living at the age of 90.

It might be appropriate at this point to recall to your minds that Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was the first to put De Smet on the map, got all her literary training from Mr. Owen. In one of her later books I think she mentions that he was the one to find in her theme literary merit and urged her to make something of it. Today her books on early days in De Smet rate as modern classics for children. I have exchanged several letters with her during the last year. She is 84 years old now, still living at her farmhouse near Mansfield, Missouri. Her husband died last fall. She told me she never had any training in writing after she left De Smet. She began by writing articles about the farm for farm papers. She is the only one left of her family except her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, living somewhere in the east. I am one of the few who can say I knew them when, but all De Smet will want to join me in this tribute to the first one to bring literary honor to the Old Home Town.

--Written by Neva Whaley Harding (1872-1977), early resident of De Smet Township. A handwritten copy of this tribute is on display at the Laura Ingalls Wilder / Rose Wilder Lane Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:26 PM

 
write what you know

It must be the end of the month, because I spent an hour this afternoon filing articles and papers, and reshelving books. I like to pile things up around me as I work.

One of the articles I stopped to read as I was filing was Amy Lauter's "From Her Own Point of View: Rediscovering Rose Wilder Lane, Literary Journalist" (American Journalism, Winter 2007). Last year, Lauters published The Rediscovered Writings of Rose Wilder Lane, Literary Jouralist, which contains transcriptions of nineteen stories and articles that aren't ones people are usually familiar with. I was glad to see that there was only one (darn, I was so close!) that I hadn't seen in print before: "We Go to a Wedding" from Woman's Day magazine. At least I'd already gotten the typescript copy from Herbert Hoover. (Because, of course, these things are a contest of sorts, you know.)

Lauters article in American Journalism is an interesting companion piece. One thing that jumped out at me was this: "...Like many journalists of her day, [Rose] learned the work on the job." The first "writing" job Lauters mentions is Rose's stint at the Kansas City Post in 1910, perhaps because she was relying on resources from Herbert Hoover Library, and the earliest articles they have by Rose date from this period.

Actually, Rose had written for the San Francisco Call prior to her marriage, and while she was living with Bessie Beatty, who was also writing for the Call. Beatty, a Los Angeles native less than a year older than Rose, had started college in 1903, but left school her senior year to take a job with the Los Angeles Herald. Mainly a writer for the "Society" page, Beatty wrote about opera and theater, and she often performed herself on the stage. In 1906, Beatty took an assignment to cover a mine strike in Nevada, and she remained there a year, sending back stories which were published the following year as Who's Who in Nevada. She never graduated from college.

Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, was impressed by Beatty's writing style and hired her as a reporter. In 1908, she left the Bulletin to work on the rival San Francisco Call.

In early 1908, the Call had started printing a Saturday supplement called the Junior Call, and Rose Wilder had a number of articles appear in it. The more-experienced Bessie Beatty was no longer a part of the "junior staff," and I got the impression from my research that the junior staff wasn't just learning by doing, but that they were receiving instruction from others. Indeed, Bessie has been called Rose's mentor in more than one scholarly publication, but usually in connection with their later time together when Rose worked as Beatty's assistant at the Bulletin.

Many of Rose's early stories are about telegraph operators and telegraphy, which makes sense, since the old adage has always been to "write what you know."

I've provided links to some of the early Rose Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane articles on my bibliography. These have been scanned by the Library of Congress.

How interesting to see the "Rose Wilder" byline the month before her marriage to Gillette Lane, then her "Rose Wilder Lane" byline afterwards! [Btw, the bit of article shown above is from November 22, 1908.]
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:21 PM

 
break a leg, melissa
Latest news from variety.com -- a nice article about Melissa Gilbert playing "Ma" in the Guthrie Theater premiere of the musical "Little House on the Prairie," based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:07 PM

 
frontier woman

Grace Wayne was a young girl playing on her grandfather's boat on the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers when Carrie Ingalls was a baby living near Pepin. Grace was a teacher near Sioux Falls when Carrie was working for the Leader in De Smet. Grace married Shiloh Fairchild and moved with her husband to a claim near Huron, then west to a horse-and-cattle homestead in Stanley (later Haakon) County, along the stagecoach route between Fort Pierre and the Black Hills. The area was sparsely-settled at the time; just north was the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Some of the horses Mr. Fairchild sold had been strays that wandered away from the reservation.

Grace had ten children in almost as many years, and she worked hard at keeping body and soul together while making sure her children had a better life than she did. Meanwhile, Carrie was a bachelor girl, working in stores in De Smet or for various newspapers. She also took extended trips: to Mansfield for several months to visit sister Laura Ingalls Wilder, to Colorado for several years to seek relief from asthma, and on multiple trips to western Dakota, where she decided to file on a preemption claim of her own.

Carrie Ingalls' claim was a mile south of Grace and Shiloh Fairchild's.

In that day and place, many settlers didn't stay long, and through the years, Grace watched them come and go. Even Carrie didn't hold onto her claim long past final proof. Carrie had gone there with a number of other Kingsbury County friends as both an adventure and as a way to acquire land to be sold at a profit. Despite having a husband who was ill-suited to homesteading, Grace Fairchild stayed on the claim long enough to raise her children, ditch her husband, and accumulate 1440 acres of her own.

Grace Fairchild also kept a diary.

Late in her life, Grace organized her papers, and historian Walker Wyman used them to write Frontier Woman: The Life of a Woman Homesteader on the Dakota Frontier, published first in 1972. Although Wyman's book doesn't mention Carrie Ingalls by name, he does mention people and places certainly known by Carrie: the Morrisons, Cooledges, the Sheltons, and the nearby towns of Elbon and Top Bar.

Grace Fairchild's diaries and papers are in the South Dakota State Archives in Pierre. Two guesses as to who is mentioned in those papers that Wyman didn't include in Frontier Woman.
- posted by pioneergirl at 5:53 PM

 
quill cottage
All of June, Miss Sandy at Quill Cottage is hosting a Laura Ingalls Wilder Blog-a-Thon and Art Swap. Check it out; I'll be both blogging and crafting along...
- posted by pioneergirl at 8:08 AM

 
the publisher brothers

Daughter Ginny is spending the summer working for the Bellingham Herald, which is the newspaper Jake Hopp would have most likely worked for if he had continued in the publishing business after settling in the area. So far, I've been unable to convince Ginny that she needs to suggest a story about the Hoppses and Sanfords. It was hard enough to get her to agree to go take more photographs of the Hopp and Sanford houses, even though she's living only a few blocks away.

At least other people aren't opposed to writing an article about Jake Hopp and his publisher brothers. For several years, Noel Bourasaw has been researching the Hopp brothers in Washington State. His latest article is HERE.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:25 PM

 
why ida did the housework
In the Missouri Rualist article from yesterday, Laura Ingalls Wilder told us that "Mrs. Brown was queer" because she sat writing at her desk all day, leaving the housework undone until adopted daughter Ida came home from school to do it.

Of course, Ida was happy to do the work, because it turned out that Mrs. Brown was writing to make money to buy a new winter outfit for Ida.

Below are three stanzas of a twelve-stanza poem written by Mrs. Reverend Brown, titled "Farewell to the Pioneers!"

To call the wandering exile back across the gulf of years,
To welcome him, from near and far, with gladsome song and cheers,
Back to the home he loved so well, when he and home were young;
That home of memory's rainbow tints, the home his heart has sung--
Another claimed the graceful muse, fit for so grateful task,
And but the graver, sadder one is left for me to ask.

Sun gilded, treasure-laden streams are lost in sea at last;
These golden, richly freighted days are merging in the past.
The hours are speeding on, and ye must to the mandate bow;
The hands that grasped in greeting then, must grasp in parting now.
I know ye're brave, old friends, as when ye clave those trees apart;
Aye, well y'eve beaten back the waves that welled up from each heart.

Each has left, soul-filled, every feast, not one glad moment lost;
But now, ye'll know, if we do not, the conflict it has cost,
For ye must part; and while these scenes are swiftly flying past,
An under current whispers, too, that this must be the last...

- posted by pioneergirl at 9:08 PM

 
the optimistic philosopher
In a 1917 article for the Missouri Ruralist, Laura Ingalls Wilder commented that she could only remember the refrain of a poem entitled If We Only Understood. Below is the entire poem, often attributed to Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), but appearing in a number of publications from 1910 to 1915 as anonymously written.

Could we but draw back the curtain
That surrounds each other's lives,
See the naked heart and spirit,
Know what spur the action drives,
Often we would find it clearer,
Purer than we judge we would--
We would love each other better
If we only understood.

Could we judge all deeds by motives,
See the good and bad within,
Often we would love the sinner
All the while we loathed the sin.
Could we know the powers working
To o'erthrow integrity,
We would judge each other's errors
With more patient charity.

If we knew the care and trials,
Knew the efforts all in vain,
All the bitter disappointment,
Understood the loss and gain.
Would the grim external roughness
Seem, I wonder, just the same?
Would we help where now we hinder?
Would we pity where now we blame?

Ah! we judge each other harshly,
Knowing not life's hidden force;
Knowing not the fount of action
Is less turbid at its source;
Seeing not amid the evil
All the golden strains of good--
Oh, we'd love each other better,
If we only understood.

- posted by pioneergirl at 11:05 AM

 
melissa to tell all
Melissa Gilbert - television's Laura Ingalls, once upon a time - has signed a book deal to write her memoir, due out next year or thereabouts. She will be "telling all" about her years on the Little House on the Prairie set, among other things.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:26 PM

 
peytona and fashion

That's the title of the Currier & Ives print that's framed and hangs over the head of Almanzo Wilder's bed at Rocky Ridge Farm. Four other framed C&I prints are displayed on the wall beside his bed: The Road: Winter, Trotting Cracks at the Forge, A Midnight Race on the Mississippi, and The Lightning Express Train.



The Wilder pictures are calendar pages, probably from a freebie sent to them by the Traveler's Insurance Agency in the 1930s. If you're lucky, you can still find these old calendars for under $100.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:50 PM

 
le cadeau du cheval

Keep watching for additions to the equine Mural Mosaic project of Canadian artist Phil Alain, mural designer Lewis Lavoie, and co-producer Paul Lavoie. Panel 101 of their Le Cadeau du Cheval (the Horse Gift) will feature Prince and Lady, Almanzo Wilder's Morgan horses from the "Little House" books.
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:56 AM

 
couse opera house
Charles Ingalls built the first building on the northwest corner of Calumet and Second, and the Ingalls family lived here after the Surveyors returned to town (see By the Shores of Silver Lake, Chapter 27, "Living in Town"). Pa sold this building to Edward H. Couse, building next on the southeast corner of the same intersection.

Mr. Couse ran a hardware store in Pa's original building until 1886, when Couse built a large brick building on the site. Upstairs was the Grand Opera Hall (44 by 78 feet), the first floor being divided into three rooms: hardware salesroom, heavy-hardware salesroom (stoves, etc.), and a tin shop with an elevator which went from the basement barbershop to the Opera House on the third floor. For a time, some courthouse offices were located in the basement of the Couse building.

Laura Ingalls Wilder mentioned Mr. Couse in The Long Winter, Chapters 9 and 10, but only to place his hardware store on the corner of Second and Main Streets; she passed it when walking home from school. After their marriage, Laura and Almanzo must have visited the Opera House on occasion, as entertainments, meetings, graduation ceremonies, and funerals were often held there.

The young man highlighted in the photograph is Aubrey Sherwood (1894-1997), longtime editor of The De Smet News. It was taken during the senior class play of 1912. Behind the older image is a more recent photograph showing the original tin ceiling of the Opera House, still in place over 100 years later.
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:37 PM

 
ch 5, sk next 2 sts, dc in next st

After being alerted about the Laura Ingalls Wilder crocheted doily featured in the May/June 2008 issue of Piecework magazine, I now have a copy in hand. (I really love the Russian Lace on the cover and I'm planning to start knitting a baby blanket in that pattern this very weekend!)

What is pictured in the magazine is a reproduction of the doily from the Laura Ingalls Wilder / Rose Wilder Lane Home & Museum in Mansfield, Missouri. Apparently the person who made this reproduction - Belinda Carter, a designer for Coats and Clark - photographed the museum doily and created her own pattern and piece. The article has no photograph of the piece crocheted by Laura, which is a reversal of the one Carter made. This isn't uncommon in filet crochet, the main body of which is usually reversible. You're only able to tell front from back of a filet piece if there are no motifs or if a border has been added that's crocheted around the piece instead of back and forth in the manner of filet.

The pattern is called "Java Sparrows with Narcissus in a Table Mat." It originally appeared in Mary Card's 1936 New Book of Filet Crochet; I don't know if the book was part of Laura's collection or if she ever crocheted other patterns it contained.

Mary Card (1861-1914) was an Australian teacher whose early deafness forced her to give up her private school in Melbourne and seek a new career. Card became a lace designer, whose clearly-written crochet patterns and lace charts are as popular today as they were in Laura Ingalls Wilder's time.
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:43 PM

 
serenity

Laura Ingalls Wilder is on page 50.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:51 PM

 
not suitable for wallpaper

In pioneer times, it took almost an hour per day to care for a "modern" up-to-date stove. During a six-day period (I guess you got to rest on Sunday?), one put 292 pounds of coal in the stove, sifted out 27 pounds of ashes, and used 14 pounds of kindling. Twenty minutes were spent sifting ashes, twenty-four minutes were spent laying fires, one hour and forty-eight minutes were spent tending fires, thirty minutes in emptying ashes, fifteen minutes in carrying in coal, and two hours and nine minutes on blacking the stove to keep it from rusting... -Susan Strasser in Never Done: A History of American Housework, 2000

Typically made of plumbago - or graphite - stove blacking was typically sold as a compressed dry cake in a box, or in a tin as a paste polish containing oil, kerosene, or other liquids. It was applied to the iron stove parts with a soft cloth and then brushed to remove residue and bring up the shine.

If you want to make a little bit of stove blacking for yourself, light a cheap candle with a too-long wick. If the air is calm, you'll see the black soot rising from the flame. Tilt a heat-proof glass into the sooty line and watch the lampblack collect on the glass. This is the same stuff that dirtied the inside of lamp chimneys and had to be polished away with a dry cloth.

Once the glass has cooled, you can remove the bit of lampblack and rub it onto the back of a cast iron pan. Rub in with a soft cloth and buff to a shine with a brush. Then imagine spending two hours and nine minutes doing something similar.
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:59 AM

 
back when gas was 19 cents a gallon

"Darn it all! By the time we get a car that can go, we can't afford to buy the gasoline..." - Laura Ingalls Wilder to daughter Rose Wilder Lane
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:33 PM

 
find the little house connection

- posted by pioneergirl at 2:59 AM

 
light for weary wanderers

It was unexpected in April - blizzard winds and two feet of snow. Both Highway 14 and Interstate 29 were closed.

Seeing the Surveyors' House in all that snow, it was easy to imagine the Ingalls family so long ago, sitting cosy and warm inside, a light in the window and Pa playing his fiddle while the wind howled.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:40 PM