"which do you like best, aunt lotty?"

In Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods (Chapter 10, "Summertime"), Laura's and Mary's "Aunt Lotty" comes to visit. Where Lotty comes from is not said, but Charlotte Holbrook never lived in Pepin County, Wisconsin, but grew up in Jefferson County, over 200 miles away. If she was visiting her half-siblings in Pepin and Pierce Counties, how did she get there? Were her parents visiting as well?

Ma's father, Henry Quiner, died in 1845; Ma's mother married Frederick Holbrook four years later. Charlotte Elizabeth Holbrook was their only child together, born in January 1854. In the published Little House in the Big Woods, Laura doesn't tell us how old Lotty is when she visits, but in the manuscript, she is said to be "twelve years old."

Lotty was twelve the year before Laura was born.

Did an older Lotty actually visit the family prior to her marriage in 1874 and the Ingallses move to Minnesota? Was her visit a convenient plot device, a timely weighing in on the Great Hair Color debate that was still unsettled when Laura herself was twelve? Did Lotty know about the publication of Big Woods, and did any of her children or grandchildren get in touch with Laura about the story?

William Anderson's Laura's Album (HarperCollins, 1998) includes a photograph of Lotty as a young girl. The photograph above is of Lotty, taken many decades later.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:12 PM