come fly with me

Last week, fellow Laura Ingalls Wilder researcher Rebecca Webb emailed me and shared a fantastic aerial photograph of Charles Ingalls' former preemption claim north of Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Of course, it's easy to use googlemaps or bing or terraserver or your map-site-of-choice and view/download satellite photos. Why is this one so exciting?

It's from 1938.

Rebecca's photo came from the John R. Borchert Map Library at the Meredith Wilson Library (University of Minnesota Libraries) in Minneapolis. It's also available at the Farm Service Agency of the United States Department of Agriculture in Redwood Falls and the Rural Development Office in Marshall. I've uploaded a copy of the 1938 photo of the Walnut Grove area - the same as Rebecca's photo, this one is from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources HERE. The Ingalls preemption claim only (dugout and Wonderful House site, NW 18-109-39) is shown above. CLICK HERE to see the quarter section in biggie view with greater detail.

Photographs such as this were taken beginning in 1938 in connection with the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and were used to make geological survey maps. The Aerial Photography Field Office (APFO) in Salt Lake City, Utah, is in charge of the photographs for the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS). They are used to track changes in the land over the years, which is exactly what interests "Little House" researchers about them. Redwood County was photographed in 1938, 1955, 1962, 1968, 1974, 1978, 1984, 1996, and annually beginning in 2002.

I am now taking back what I said in my April 28 blog about the location of the tableland. Obviously, I've been obsesing over this for a while now; site photos soon. Because the Plum Creek area is so heavily wooded today, it's hard to known what-was-what back in Laura's day. Although the 1938 photograph was taken fifty years after the Ingallses lived there, the fact that there were a heck of a lot fewer trees seventy years ago makes it easier to see real landmarks and swear you can pick out others.

Remember that the Harold Gordon family moved to the farm in 1947, the same year Garth Williams visited. According to a 1998 article in Laura's Plum Creek Newsletter (Volume 2, Number 2), published by the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove, Williams went to the newspaper office to ask where Charles Ingalls' land was, and nobody knew. But Walter Swoffer, born in Walnut Grove in 1888, remembered playing in a dugout on the Gordon farm as a boy, and the Gordon farm turned out to be the preemption claim site.

Do you see the footbridge? Is that the one Garth Williams photographed? Do you see a ford (or another bridge) across the creek? Paths? Was that the path that went to the barn east of the dugout? Do you see wider bit of the creek that suggests it's the swimming hole? Hmm, is that the big rock? What about THE TABLELAND? That's got to be it in the area covered in trees today; no wonder nobody can see it. And it happens to be right where Laura located it on her map.

Comparing Laura's drawings to current and past photographs, I'm now curious about something else: the site of The Wonderful House. The Gordons have always said that they didn't know for sure where it stood, but suspected that it was located halfway between the current farmhouse (built prior to 1938) and the dugout site because there had been a fenced area with a corncrib in that area. (Is it on the 1938 photo?) An old outbuilding west of the existing barn was torn down in 1991 and found to have been built with square nails, but it showed no evidence of having ever been part of a house.

Laura remembered that The Wonderful House was protected by the creek and a firebreak, which suggests that perhaps it was really located in the vicinity of the parking area today. Or perhaps it across the creek yet again, and located in the area north of the obvious bridge.

Waiting for the photographs that will answer those questions...
- posted by pioneergirl at 7:41 PM

 
one thing leads to another

...I'm not going to regale you with horror stories about all the terrible texts I encountered while sampling the electronic titles available for children and teens; about the insipid, clumsily illustrated picture books or the promising reminiscence on Laura Ingalls Wilder turned jaw-dropping rant, which concluded that Laura's daughter Rose could never have ghost-written the Little House books because she wasn't moral or happy enough ("Rose was not a Little House person"). It would be too easy, and take too long. - Christine Hepperman, "Reading in the Virtual Forest," The Horn Book Magazine, November 2000

Today, I was pointed to THIS online article with Little House on the Prairie reference (see above), but I couldn't quite place the e-book it referred to.

A little googling and it turns out that the e-book in question is Dan L. White's Laura Ingalls' Friends Remember Her. I'd never bothered to download it (you can also buy a printed copy), because I mistakenly assumed that the e-book was the same as the silver-covered 1992 booklet once sold at the Laura Ingalls Wilder / Rose Wilder Lane Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri, titled Laura's Friends Remember, by Dan L. White and Robert F. White.

The original 40-page booklet contained reminiscences by Nava Austin, Erman and Peggy Dennis, Emogene Fuge, Neta Seal, Anna Gutschke, and Carl Hartley. These are included in the 172-page e-book - which is undated but must have been written shortly after William Holtz's Ghost in the Little House was released. There are additional chapters about the Wilders' move to the Ozarks, what made Laura's books so happy, Laura's thoughts on country life, "Did Rose Write Laura's Books?", Laura's thoughts on home and family, and Laura's lonely Little House. It's the authorship chapter that Hepperman found so unsettling.

You can purchase White's e-book for $9 from Ashley Preston Publishing HERE, or read most of the Rose chapter (and others) online for free at googlebooks HERE to see if you're interested. Although White doesn't use footnotes or give any sources for his information, his opinions are interesting (even though I disagree with him about Rose!), and Laura Ingalls' Friends Remember Her does contain written memories about the Wilders that you simply aren't going to find anywhere else.
- posted by pioneergirl at 8:49 PM

 
poor adam; he didn't have these

If you don't want to wear your heart on your sleeve, why not wear your favorite "Little House on the Prairie" saying or expression on your t-shirt?! The possibilities are endless...

And remember those "days of the week" panties from when you were young? Why not have a "Pioneer Couture" set made with Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, Mend on Wednesday, Churn on Thursday, Clean on Friday, Bake on Saturday, and Rest on Sunday on them?

Don't forget the red catch-stitching!
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:15 PM

 
for the love of.... this guy

If you've visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, you've no doubt seen the photos, information, and "stuff" belonging to the real Johnny Johnson and donated to the museum by his family. John Halvorson Johnson was born in Norway in 1861 and came to America in 1874, settling first near Tracy, Minnesota. He was the son of Christina and Halvor Johnson.

The Ingalls family lived on their Plum Creek preemption claim (the dugout and "wonderful house" site) from May 1874 until early July 1876 when Charles Ingalls both made final proof and sold the land. Taking the grasshoppers into consideration, the best possible "real-life meets fictional" grazing would have been in the fall of 1874.

Wilder writes that there were twenty-five cattle in the herd, but haven't you ever wondered who all those cattle belonged to? And what their grazing territory was as opposed to what area of the farm was planted in wheat? Note that Wilder never says that they had to herd the cattle across the creek, nor do they have to take Spot across the creek to put her in the barn when they first drive her from the herd.

The only book neighbors were the Nelsons, but the "neighborhood herd" of cattle in the On the Banks of Plum Creek manuscript were said to belong to Mr. Nelson and a Mr. Peterson, who one can guess might have been edited out so as not to make it sound like Swedish Mr. and Mrs. Peterson of Big Woods cookie fame had trailed the Ingallses to Minnesota. There is only brief mention of the herd boy and an "old, spotted cow" that belonged to the Ingallses in Pioneer Girl. There were Plum Creek neighbors on every available quarter section, but fewer than you might imagine since only ever other section was available for homesteading at the time.

Eleck Nelson became a prosperous stock buyer and shipper of cattle, sheep, and hogs, and the herd of cattle most likely belonged to him. Nelson had already been in North Hero Township over four years when the Ingallses arrived. But Johnny Johnson? Where did he live and when might he have worked for Mr. Nelson?

Halvor and Christina Johnson (and Johnny) were living in Redwood Falls at the time of the 1875 Minnesota state census, taken in May. By 1880, they were all living on a farm in Johnsonville Township, about six miles north of the preemption claim site. Johnny married Petra Halverson in 1881, and they moved to Dakota Territory the following year. Were these Johnsons related to Turis Johnson, the un-mentioned closest neighbor to the east?

There's no real proof that this Johnny Johnson was the "Little House" herd boy, but he definitely was a contemporary of Laura's and it's nice that his descendants donated so many interesting items to the Walnut Grove museum. The display is a popular one with tourists, especially those who enjoyed Mitch Vogel's portrayal of Johnny Johnson on television's Little House on the Prairie.

Just remember that Laura's first real crush was Big Jerry.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:35 PM

 
ingalls family letters go online
The Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin, is putting letters by family members of Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder online! See them in color HERE.

I've spent the past week in Madison and its environs, and the Wisconsin Historical Society is definitely a place to linger if you're serious about LIW research. Curious about Charles Ingalls and the Civil War? Plan to spend days with their Civil War collection, and then change your airline reservations so you can stay longer .
- posted by pioneergirl at 3:26 PM

 
stand on the griz print. now smile.

Rose Wilder Lane wasn't the only child to have problems with her mother. So today, I give you Ginny, who I refrained from posting University of Montana student center "fam cam" shots of for the past four years.

Congratulations, Ginny, for graduating with highest honors!
- posted by pioneergirl at 4:20 PM

 
i poke badgers with sticks

Over seventy years ago, Laura Ingalls Wilder writes about poking badgers with sticks and it's not the least bit funny. But Eddie Izzard - who is a huge "Little House on the Prairie" fan, btw - flubs a line and pokes badgers with spoons instead of sticks and suddenly it's a freaking byword.

Okay, so I don't really know if Izzard is a LH fan (I know that I'm a huge Eddie Izzard fan), but he does share his birthday with LIW. If you haven't heard the "I poked a badger with a spoon" line, it's from his 1999 Dress to Kill dvd, in reference to Catholicism and original sin.
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:40 PM