Christmas

Christmas. The festival of the Christian church, observed annually on the 25th day of December, in memory of the birth of Christ, often celebrated by a particular church service. — Webster, 1882

The teachers of De Smet schools are making preparations for some sort of public jollification Christmas night. Who wouldn’t be a boy again? – De Smet Leader, December 15, 1883.

     
In December 2024, I counted down to Christmas on my pioneergirl Facebook page by taking a look at Laura’s Christmases through the years. Here are those posts:

     
🔔 LAURA’S FIRST CHRISTMAS — Baby Laura Ingalls was ten months old at Christmastime in 1867, and living in a log cabin in the Big Woods of Wisconsin north of Pepin with Ma & Pa and sister Mary. Caroline Ingalls celebrated her 29th birthday a couple of weeks before Christmas, and Charles Ingalls would be 32 in January, sharing a birthday with Mary, who would turn three. It’s hard to think of the Ingallses being so young!! Laura would have probably been crawling at this point, babbling, aware of her surroundings, and able to recognize the people and pets in her life.

We don’t know how or if the Ingallses celebrated Christmas that year, but they should have been well-settled in their log cabin, Pa having – in the fall of 1863 – jointly purchased a quarter section (at $2.09 per acre) with his brother-in-law, Henry Quiner. That meant that Uncle Henry and Aunt Polly and cousins Louisa, Charley, James, and Charlotte (who was a few months younger than Laura) were living maybe a quarter mile to the north.

At this time, Grandma & Grandpa Ingalls didn’t live a long way through the woods to the north as Wilder wrote about in Little House in the Big Woods, but on a farm Lansford had purchased in 1863, less than a mile southwest of Charles & Caroline. Peter & Eliza Ingalls were probably living with Grandma & Grandpa, with the cousins Alice, Ella, and Peter. Aunt Ruby and Uncle George rounded out the household.

Lydia had married Joseph Stouff and they (and Lydia’s son, Isaac Clough) were living in Pierce County, and Lydia was pregnant with their first child. Docia had married August Waldvogel and they were also in Pierce County. Cousin Lena was a year old. Martha & Charles Carpenter and four children were living near Stockholm.

When Uncle James returned from the War, Grandpa sold him half the farm. James had gotten married the year before Laura was born, and Uncle James & Aunt Sarah had a son, Samuel, a few months older than Laura. Uncle Hiram had married Sarah Woodward in October 1867, and Laura’s cousin Laura was born… a month later? Did I leave anyone out?

I can’t imagine that this was anything but the happiest of Christmases for the extended Ingalls family. They seem to all be settled fairly close to one another after leaving Jefferson County during the Civil War, and there were lots of cousins to play with!

🫣 Edited to add: It may not have been as jolly a Christmas as I was thinking. I forgot about the November 1 & 6, 1867 quit-claim deeds whereby Charles and Henry sold halves of their jointly-purchased quarter section to each other. This allowed them to act independently of each other when selling their land, which they would both do the following spring. Were they already talking about leaving the Big Woods? And if so, where were they thinking about moving?

Another thing to note is that there was an election (for governor and other state officers) on November 7, and while Henry Quiner voted in Pepin Township, Charles Ingalls didn’t, nor did Lansford, Peter, or James Ingalls.

🔔 LAURA’S SECOND CHRISTMAS — Where were the Ingallses living for Christmas 1868? I hope one of you knows, because I sure don’t.

April 28, 1868, Charles Ingalls and Henry Quiner each sold their 80 acres of land in Pepin County to Gustaf Gustafson for $1012.50. In Charles’s case, he was paid $100 in cash and Gustafson would pay the balance under terms not spelled out in the mortgage document; I don’t know if Henry had a similar arrangement. The first thing Charles and Henry did was pay off the mortgage they’d taken out when purchasing the land five years earlier.

Now they were free to pick up and go… wherever they wanted. But they didn’t; they hung around… somewhere in Pierce and/or Pepin counties. Did they rent their farms back from Gustafson for a while? Move in with relatives?

Exactly a month later, on May 28, 1868, both Charles and Henry purchased land in Chariton County, Missouri, sight-unseen, from Adamantine Johnson (the landowner who lived in St. Louis) via his agent (and brother-in-law), Robert Cabell. Johnson had purchased neighboring land the previous year from its owner living in Massachusetts for about half what he charged Charles and Henry for their parcels. What in the world made them decide to leave Wisconsin? Old worn out land in Pepin County? Sense of adventure?

Charles and Henry each put a dollar down and agreed to the terms of five promissory notes for their purchases: the first payment was $50, due in two years; $100 due in three years; $150 due in four years; $250 due in five years; and $350 due in six years (the total being $900), plus 10% interest per year, with Charles and Henry each paying all property taxes or assessments imposed by local authorities. My guess is that Charles was enamored more by “no money going out for two years” than Missouri as a final stopping place. Also of interest is that the deeds show that Charles was living in Pierce County at time of purchase, but Henry was living in Pepin County.

In June, Lansford sold his Pepin land for $1200, but James held onto what his father had sold him for a few more years. What did Grandpa do? In September, he filed on an honest-to-goodness 80 acre homestead in Pierce County. At the ripe old age of 55, Grandpa didn’t go to the land office at St. Croix Falls, saying it was too far for him to travel, so he filed his intent in district court in Ellsworth, saving himself 50 miles. Lansford moved to the land in October, building a one-and-a-half story log cabin, 22 x 35 feet, with board floors and shingle roof. Yes, this is the “Dance at Grandpa’s” cabin. He also dug a well, built a barn and set out fruit trees. Did Charles help in the construction of the cabin? Your guess is as good as mine.

October 1, Thomas Quiner — age 23 and a bachelor — also purchased land in Chariton County, paying $1200 for a quarter section a mile and a half east of Charles and Henry’s land.

There are some documents that show that the Ingallses were in Pepin County late in the year: a district treasurer’s bond was signed by Charles Ingalls as a township school treasurer on October 15, and both Charles Ingalls and Tom Quiner (but not Henry) voted in Pepin Township elections on November 3. But that’s all I know. Charles Ingalls didn’t pay real property taxes for the year 1868, nor did he pay personal property taxes.

Where do you think Charles & Caroline, Mary, and Laura were living that Christmas?🎁

Note: I uploaded THIS MAP that I’ve marked to show where various of Laura’s relatives lived.

🔔LAURA’S THIRD CHRISTMAS — Two-year-old Laura spent this Christmas with her family in Kansas Indian Territory. For the first time since Charles and Caroline were married, there were no relatives nearby to celebrate Christmas with, just a few other squatters within the neighborly distance of a few miles away.

There are also a lot of unknowns about the year 1869. When did the Ingallses leave Wisconsin for Missouri? Did Uncle Henry’s family travel with them or not? Did Uncle Tom travel with them or not? How long did the Ingallses hang around in Chariton County before heading to Kansas? Did any of their Missouri neighbors also end up in Montgomery County?

August 26, 1869, Charles and Caroline Ingalls executed a power of attorney on behalf of Lansford Ingalls, giving him power to act in respect to their former property in Pepin County, Wisconsin. The document was filed in Durand, Wisconsin, on December first. Gustaf Gustafson had no doubt failed to make one or more payments, and by December, Henry Quiner had already re-purchased his Pepin farm back from Gustafson.

If you scroll through the tract books on FamilySearch[.]org, it’s sparse pickings as far as 1869 settlement dates go. When the Osage Diminished Reserve was legally opened for settlement, it behooved men to fudge the truth and claim to have settled AFTER July 15, 1870 — even if they had been living on the land much, much earlier. To penalize squatters, the law required that the pre-July-15 settlers pay for their claim on or before July 15, 1871, while those who settled after the 1870 date were given “a year from settlement date” to pay in full. If you were flush with cash, of course, there was no need to lie.

This wasn’t the “Mr. Edwards Meets Santa Claus” Christmas, but if I had to venture a guess as to a neighbor who helped Pa build the cabin and then spent Christmas 1869 with the family, it would be…. Will Flanagan… or maybe his brother-in-law, John Brown. Let the ancestry and newspaper searching begin!

Note: I was going to make this post about Gustaf Gustafson (hence the “God Jul” Santa), but that had nothing to do with Laura’s third Christmas, so I switched gears a couple of hours ago. I told someone the other day that it was like having to go through every bit of research you have every day to come up with Christmas posts, but I’ll stick with it for now.

This one (1869) was a hard one for me to mull over and decide how much to write (precious little, right?), because I’m not 100% convinced that the LHOP wayside cabin on Section 36 was actually where the Ingallses squatted. It’s based on Margaret Clement’s assumption that patent owners = census location, nobody ever took over anyone else’s claim between census time and purchase time, her census map that’s rarely seen the light of day, the lack of anybody showing up as owner of that quarter section until 1881 (because Clement had no clue about school sections, so she missed five previous owners), and the “beautiful hand-dug” well on the quarter section that “had always been there” (at least since the 1920s, you understand). Clement didn’t look at claim files, because pretty much EVERYONE had a well.

Also Note: There are some newspaper clippings uploaded in the comments of the Facebook post

🔔LAURA’S FOURTH CHRISTMAS — Three-year-old Laura Ingalls was still in Kansas Indian Territory, living with her parents and five-year-old sister, Mary, and four-month-old sister, Baby Carrie. This is the famous “Mr. Edwards Meets Santa Claus” Christmas of high water, tin cups, candy canes, heart-shaped cakes, being entertained by Mr. Edwards’ story and not peeking at what Ma was doing at their stockings, whole pennies, and nine sweet potatoes.

There had never been such a Christmas.

The Osage Diminished Reserve lying in Montgomery had been virtually ceded to the squatter settlers by the Chief of the tribe at the beginning of the year 1870, according to the Independence Pioneer (Jan. 1, 1870). It was only a matter of time until it was made legal by treaty.

There were 40 frame buildings (several of them two stories tall) in Independence where only tall prairie grass had waved a few months earlier. In February, Laura and Mary must have accompanied Ma and Pa to town, where they sold their Chariton County land back to Adamantine Johnson for $1080. This didn’t mean that Pa pocketed a dime; based on the payment agreement between Charles Ingalls and Mr. Johnson, Pa’s first payment of $50 was due in May, and he needed to be rid of that obligation so he could concentrate on coming up with cash enough to pay for some land where they’d built their cabin.
One of the men who witnessed the deed was J.H. Pugh, pioneer druggist in Independence: https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/210099 — The drug store was across the street from the Post Office: http://www.pioneergirl.com/blog/archives/13454, where I bet Ma mailed a letter back to the home folks in Wisconsin.
Although the word “homestead” gets bandied around a lot in connection with this time and place (Laura even has Pa talk about their Dakota Territory homestead as a replacement for the “homestead” Uncle Sam took away from them in Indian Territory), while there was indeed homestead land in Kansas, the Diminished Reserve wasn’t ever going to be handed over as “free land” for the settlers. Since the land had to be purchased from the Osage, somebody had to pay them for it, and it wasn’t going to be Uncle Sam; it was going to be the settlers.

The summer of 1870 was busy with negotiations and treaty discussions with the Osage at Drum Creek. Pa was no doubt busy working the land, and Ma was busy being pregnant and giving birth. Although Laura writes about Indian Territory in terms of very, very few people nearby (it’s not like Laura wandered away from home at that age to know who was out there), and because most of the county hadn’t yet been legally surveyed, settlers tended to space themselves at least a half mile from each other in hopes that when the land WAS surveyed, at least some of what they were considering “their” land would be in a square parcel located within a legally-describable quarter section.

The Ingallses were enumerated on the 1870 census in Rutland Township, Montgomery County, along with 7316 other souls in the county (I got that number from the Leavenworth Times; I didn’t count the census names). The Indian census was 3,150 (again, a number from the newspaper). There’s a bit of my Rutland Township census-taker’s route map here: http://www.pioneergirl.com/blog/archives/11841 and info about the census taker here: http://www.pioneergirl.com/blog/archives/12183 – written up mainly because Asa Hairgrove was born in Troup County, Georgia, where I now live. Pa was recorded as having a personal worth of $200; no real property (land) value was recorded for anyone because the Diminished Reserve wasn’t open for legal settlement.

Charles Ingalls doesn’t merit a mention on the 1870 agriculture census in Montgomery County; only farms with more than three acres cultivated from which at least $100 in products had been sold during the year were included.
The census was taken just days before the Osage gathered at Drum Creek to discuss the treaty they would end up signing. Many of the Osage left on their big fall buffalo hunt during treaty negotiations in September. The removal of the Osage happened in stages and took place before Christmas, although Wilder writes about it taking place shortly before the =settlers= too were to be removed from the land.

As Penny Linsenmayer wrote in her 2001 article in Kansas History, the route by which the Osage were led south to Silver Lake in Indian Territory for the winter put them near the southeast corner of Rutland Township where Laura could have seen them, and the party consisted mainly of the remaining Osage who hadn’t gone on the hunt, women, children, and the elderly. Indian camps info HERE.

The ending of Little House on the Prairie was Wilder’s way of having the family leave Indian Territory without having to backtrack to Pepin and not mention Gustaf Gustafson. The Pepin land was legally back in Pa’s “possession” by census time; he is listed on the Pepin County agriculture census as the owner or agent.

Not much about Laura’s actual Christmas and Mr. Edwards in this post; sorry about that! I’ve got butter at room temperature in the kitchen waiting for me to make heart-shaped cakes, and a husband waiting to eat some, so I’m outta here for a couple of hours.

If you aren’t familiar with the painting I’ve included a bit of in the post image, it’s by Gene Boyer for the December 1, 1976 issue of Saturday Evening Post, which included Laura’s “Mr. Edwards Meets Santa Claus” chapter from Little House on the Prairie. Boyer, btw, was hand-picked by Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) to replace him as cover illustrator for the magazine. Boyer’s depiction is totally different than the Helen Sewell, Garth Williams, or television show Ingallses and Mr. Edwards. Don’t you just love it?!

NOTE: More in Facebook post comments.

🔔 LAURA’S FIFTH CHRISTMAS — The year 1871 has the Ingallses leaving Kansas and going back to their old place in the Big Woods to live. Although Little House in the Big Woods is written as a year in the life of the Ingalls family and only describes one Christmas, they spent the years 1871-1873 back in Wisconsin: two Christmases in the Pepin cabin and one with Uncle Peter and Aunt Eliza in Pierce County before moving west.

At the beginning of the year 1871, the Ingallses were still in Indian Territory; the Osage had been moved south to their new reservation and the former Osage Diminished Reserve would be offered for sale at the preemption price of $1.25 per acre after it had been surveyed. Sections 16 and 36 were reserved for the benefit of schools and would be appraised and sold by the State of Kansas at a minimum of $3 per acre (read about it HERE).

Laura celebrated her 4th birthday in February 1871, and the next week, surveyors were hard at work near the Ingalls cabin. This must have been when Pa found out he’d built on a school section, and the SW quarter had been appraised at $3 per acre. Could he have picked up and moved OFF the school section onto cheaper land? Yes, because there was nobody on the SW 35 to the west, or he could have purchased some combination of school / cash land, but he didn’t. They left Kansas and headed back to Wisconsin to the 80 acres Mr. Gustafson hadn’t paid for and Pa still owned.

According to handwritten Pioneer Girl, the Ingallses spent some time living in a vacant cabin somewhere while Pa worked for the owner and they waited for drier traveling weather. One guess is that they went back to Chariton County and Pa worked for Adamantine Johnson, and it makes sense, but there’s no real proof. Wherever they were, this is where Pa traded the tired old horses for new ones before moving on, and Jack was left behind.

They were back in Wisconsin at least by May 8th, when Mary Ingalls registered for the spring term at Barry Corner School. Most of the Pioneer Girl stories from this period are also in Little House in the Big Woods: hunting, trapping, bullet-making, Sukey the cow, paper dolls, and Black Susan.

I don’t know if Christmas 1871 is historically the one described in Little House in the Big Woods; do you? Uncle Peter and Aunt Eliza and the cousins came down from Pierce County, but since Uncle Peter never owned property in Pierce County, it’s impossible to pin their home on a map. Peter & Eliza had six children: Alice (born 1862), Ella (1865), Peter (1866), Lansford (1870), Edith (1872), and Edmond (1880). Laura only mentions her cousins Alice, Ella, Peter, and the baby, “Dolly Varden” in Little House in the Big Woods, and Alice, Ella, and Peter in Pioneer Girl. Even when the Ingallses live with Uncle Peter’s family in 1873 after selling the Pepin land again in October, Laura only mentions Alice, Ella, Peter, and Edith (who she says was called “Dolly Varden”) as her cousins. Poor Lansford.

Laura’s confusion or omission or whatever with the names of her cousins is why I used the picture of the Peter Ingalls family today. Yes, it was taken much later than 1871 because it includes all six children, but I still can’t label the youngest three children in that photo. I just feel like there’s an extra boy and Edmond isn’t in it. Maybe Santa will label it for me for Christmas.

Laura wrote that the cousins all received red yarn mittens and a stick of candy in their stockings for Christmas in Pioneer Girl. The ragdoll, Charlotte, is an extra Christmas present for Laura in Little House in the Big Woods, but in Pioneer Girl, the doll is a given to Laura on her 4th birthday, but in Wisconsin, not in Indian Territory where they were living at time. You know, when Laura had recently seen the Indian baby…

Note: There was some discussion about whether the photo was of Peter’s family or not, but in the Facebook post, John Bass shared that the family photo was/is in possession of Peter’s descendants and has long been identified as the Peter & Eliza Ingalls family, taken in Zumbro Falls. This would mean it’s NOT a photo of Peter’s family from 1871, but slightly later because they didn’t move to Wabasha County until 1873-1874. The photo has an extra child that, though. I blogged about it a couple of times in the past and those are on my Peter/Eliza entry on my website HERE.

🔔 LAURA’S SIXTH CHRISTMAS — We know nothing about Laura’s Christmas in 1872, and have to rely on the stories in Pioneer Girl to fill in the Ingallses’ years back in Wisconsin.

This Christmas, Laura is 5, Mary is 7, and Baby Carrie is 2 years old. Uncle Henry & Aunt Polly are still on the 80 acres just north of Ma & Pa; did the two families spend Christmas together? There were now five Quiner children: Louisa (1860), Charlie (1862), Albert (1864), Charlotte (1867), and George (1871). Aunt Martha & Uncle Charles are still in Stockholm, but they’re the only family left in Pepin County. Laura doesn’t mention the Carpenters in the Little House books, but includes cousins Will, Joe, Lettie, Nannie, Millie, and twin babies in PIONEER GIRL. In 1872, the Carpenter cousins were Will (1861), Joe (1863), Lettie (1864), Millie (1869), Nancy (1870), and Charles, Jr. (1871); cousin Martha had been born in 1868 and died in 1871.

The “Dance at Grandpa’s” sugaring off party supposedly took place in 1872. Was Uncle Henry’s family there? Was Uncle Peter’s? Laura tends to only mention one set of cousins in any given story, even in PIONEER GIRL, but maybe distance and someone needing to be nearby to look after Pa’s livestock while they were gone means Uncle Henry wasn’t at the dance.
Both Henry Quiner and Charles Ingalls paid property taxes on their 80 acres, now valued at $300. They each paid $11.10 in taxes in Feb. 1873. Henry was recorded with $141 in personal property, while Charles was better off as being worth $254. Gustaf Gustafson — if it’s the same man who once owned the Ingalls and Quiner land — now owns the quarter section to the northeast of them.

There are a few other things we know about Laura’s relatives during the year 1872: [1] Aunt Docia cancelled her homestead filing in Pierce County; [2] Town supervisors met at the home of Charles Ingalls in May; [3] Henry and others filed a petition to have a road laid out in his district, also in May; [4] Eliza & Peter’s daughter Edith was born in June, and was the inspiration for the “Dolly Varden” cousin in LHBW, suggesting that maybe the book Christmas was this year, not the previous one.

🔔LAURA’S SEVENTH CHRISTMAS — Christmas 1873 is another one that I don’t have much information about. Have any of you perused the 1873 Pierce County Herald? I haven’t.

Laura was six years old for this Christmas; Mary was 8; and Carrie was 3. The Ingallses probably spent this Christmas living with Uncle Peter & Aunt Eliza and Alice (11), Ella (8), Peter (7), Lansford (3), and Edith (almost 2). As I posted yesterday, the Christmas Laura wrote about in LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS might have been describing this Christmas, not the previous mention. I also forgot to mention that I find it hard to believe that the siblings and cousins wouldn’t be the least bit jealous that Santa left Laura a doll and candy and mittens, when all they got was candy and mittens.

At the start of 1873, the Ingallses were still living in their Pepin cabin. In mid April, though, they sold half their land — mostly the part across County Road CC to the west today — to Pepin store owner Horace Richards for $250. It’s been suggested that the sale was in lieu of a mortgage to Richards, and the Ingallses must have been in debt. The Richards family had moved to Pepin in 1869, and Horace was elected sheriff in 1875, after which he moved to Durand, then Maiden Rock, to run hotels.

On October 16, Horace and Mary Richards sold the SW-SW 27 back to the Ingallses (only Caroline’s name is on the deed) for $250. Less than two weeks later, Charles & Caroline sold their 80 acres to Andrew Anderson for $1000; he paid half in cash and Caroline held the mortgage for the rest, which was paid off in a year. In December, Henry Quiner sold his 80 acres to Oscar Anderson.

In Pioneer Girl, Laura wrote that they moved in with Uncle Peter & Aunt Eliza, but we don’t know if they moved immediately after selling their land on October 28. Peter’s family was likely living with Joseph & Lydia Stouff or on Joseph Stouff’s homestead land in Pierce County, less than two miles from Grandma & Grandpa Ingalls.

I haven’t done much research on who Andrew and Oscar Anderson were. The best place to learn about the Pepin years is in The Village of Pepin at the Time of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Latane and Kulhman, 2004), but they only identify the buyers as “O. Anderson” and “A. Anderson,” the names on the 1876 atlas map. Are these two of the men who are enumerated on the 1880 census in Pepin Township in one family?
Anders Anderson (50)
Victor Anderson (45), Andrew’s brother
Annie Anderson (55), Victor’s wife
Oscar Anderson (19), Victor’s son
Axel Anderson (17), Victor’s son
David Anderson (12), Victor’s son

Oscar Knute Anderson is a well-documented resident; if this is the same man, it implies that he was 12 or 13 when he bought Henry’s land. As you can see from the atlas names, land in Section 27 is still owned by various Andersons in 1930.
There were some other important events that happened in 1873. The Bender crimes in Labette County, Kansas were discovered, and grasshoppers (Rocky Mountain locusts) were first reported near Walnut Grove on June 17, after swarms arrived in Minnesota from the west on June 12th.

In the spring of 1874 “near Walnut Grove” is the next stop for the Ingalls family.

🔔LAURA’S EIGHTH CHRISTMAS — Laura is “going on eight” and it’s the Ingallses’ first Christmas in Walnut Grove. There are three Christmases in On the Banks of Plum Creek, and while the first one mentioned is the “Horses for Christmas” story, that couldn’t have been all there was to Christmas in 1874.

In the spring of that year, Laura’s family and Uncle Peter’s family left Wisconsin and headed across Lake Pepin into Minnesota. It’s likely that this was the crossing Laura remembered and used to describe the one in Little House on the Prairie. Uncle Peter & Aunt Eliza and the cousins settled in Wabasha County, but Charles & Caroline and the girls kept going west to a claim two miles north of Walnut Station, a very new railroad town in southern Redwood County.
“Grasshoppers” had eaten away at the area and laid eggs throughout most of Redwood County in 1873, and surely Pa had some inkling of the problem when he took on a preemption claim he’d soon have to pay cash for. And since it was near the railroad, it would cost him twice the preemption price.

Although living in a dugout stood out in Laura’s mind about this period, Pa’s claim file shows that they settled on the claim on May 28th, and within a month’s time, they were living in a 20×24 house 10 feet high with multiple doors and windows. There was probably no Mr. Hanson (the previous occupant left two years earlier) with whom to trade Pet & Patty for working oxen, but maybe Pa did trade for oxen and bought horses later that year. In the book manuscript, Laura recognizes the “Christmas horses” as those previously owned by a neighbor. Thank goodness LIW didn’t go with that version and burst her readers’ Christmas bubble entirely.

Mr. Anderson had paid the rest of what he owned the Ingallses for the Pepin land by November, and you’d think that if there was enough money for horses, there’s also be enough for a =little= something for Mary and Laura.

In On the Banks of Plum Creek, “Going to Church” doesn’t happen until long after this first Christmas. Actually, Reverend Edwin H. Alden – who had charge of mission work west of Sleepy Eye as well as the pastorage of his home church in Waseca – organized the church on August 23, 1874 at the home of James Kennedy. Charles & Caroline Ingalls were both baptized that day and are listed among the charter members: Mr. and Mrs. Tower, Ensign, Moses, Kennedy, Ingalls, and Steadman.

Sunday Services were held in private homes while the congregation worked towards building a church. On October 1st, the trustees purchased three lots in Block 21 from Elias and Lafayette Bedal. It was reported that because of the grasshoppers, local residents contributed work instead of money towards construction, as there had been no crops to harvest that year. The church (including property) cost about $2000 to complete. It was 26 by 40 feet with a vestibule 14 by 20; the tower was 10 feet square and the spire rose 60 feet. The audience room was 14 feet high, well lit by 6 windows. The pulpit was neat and compact and the walls hard-finished.

Walnut Grove’s Union Congregational Church was dedicated on December 20th, the Sunday before Christmas in 1874. The services were conducted by Rev. L.H. Cobb, Superintendent of the Home Mission Society for Minnesota, assisted by Rev. Alden (appointed pastor for the year) and Rev. David Jenkins (he had recently arrived from London and was a later pastor of the Walnut Grove church), Rev. O.R. Champlin of Sleepy Eye, and Rev. H.C. Simmons of Marshall. All but $555 of the cost of the building had been donated by other churches prior to completion. The congregation was called to raise this amount by subscription before the dedicatory prayer was offered, and the whole amount was raised in pledges from $1 to $100 over the course of the hour.

Although no Christmas tree service or presents were mentioned in area newspapers that I’ve seen, Rev. Alden’s church in Waseca had given him in mid-November over $30 in cash and had donated two large boxes of clothing and other goods for him to distribute to the grasshopper sufferers in Walnut Grove, the railroad transporting the goods free of charge. It’s possible that these gifts were distributed as part of Christmas 1874.

🔔 LAURA’S NINTH CHRISTMAS — It’s no wonder that people love the Christmas tree chapter in On the Banks of Plum Creek. Before Christmas rolls around again, after the one with just horses, eight-year-old Laura has gone through a lot; she almost drowned in the creek and got punished for it; she’s attacked by an “old crab” and slimy bloodsuckers; she had to go to school with a bunch of kids who sound like prairie chickens; and she had to put up with (you know who) Nellie Oleson. A billionteen grasshoppers fell from the sky and ate everything in sight, and Pa had to go back east to find work so they wouldn’t starve over the winter. And worst of all, Ma made Laura give the neighbor’s kid HER ragdoll, only to later discover her – the doll, not the neighbor’s kid – drowned in a freezing puddle. Yeah, it was some year.

Pa eventually came home flush with cash and they all went to town to Mr. Fitch’s store and Pa bought beans and flour and salt and sugar and tea and kerosene, and ribbons and fabric for new dresses, and then they just had to go across the street to Mr. Oleson’s store and Nellie Oleson just happens to prance in wearing a new fur shoulder cape that makes Laura green with envy.

While Laura and Mary are in school, Ma makes them all new dresses and Pa surprises them with a nighttime trip to town that’s so important that they have to take baths and dress up in their Sunday best for it. On the way to town, Pa stops the wagon in the dark so they can listen to the stars singing – I mean, the church bell ringing. I couldn’t find it, but isn’t there a record that shows the date Pa donated to the bell fund, and when the church bell was purchased?

It always bothered me that Carrie isn’t in the Garth Williams Christmas tree illustration; I sure hope Ma and Pa weren’t the type of parents who let their unruly child roam the church and crawl under the tree and play with all the stuff during the sermon and the singing.

I’ve never seen a vintage photo of a Christmas tree with presents hanging on it and piled all around its base, but I can imagine what it looked like and I can’t blame Laura’s mouth for falling open and her eyes from stretching wide to take it all in. It must have been a sight to behold. Laura implies that the presents were donated by Reverend Alden’s church back east, but when you read about Christmas tree services in old newspapers, there’s usually a call for people to bring presents for their own family members a day or two beforehand. Don’t you wonder what Nellie and Willie Oleson were given from that tree that year? Btw, only Mrs. Owens was a church member that year; Mr. Owens was not.

This is a Christmas of plenty after a depressing summer and fall due to the grasshopper destruction. The thing I like most is that the Ingalls girls aren’t all given the same thing, as was the case for earlier Christmases. It’s not a red mittens and candy cane Christmas, or a tin cup and candy and a penny and a cake Christmas. There are some things that all the children receive: a mosquito net bag of candy and a popcorn ball. But the mittens are different colors, the Carrie’s china dog is different from Laura’s china jewel box, and there’s a special present for everyone: Mary’s coat or the book of Bible pictures, Carrie’s doll, and Laura’s fur cape and muff. You can almost hear the rustling paper and squeals of joy and the laughing and talking as you read about it.

I hope this was a real Christmas and not a fictional one, because historically, the year 1875 had been grim, agriculturally speaking. A man living near Walnut Station wrote to the Rochester paper in July that the grasshoppers “arrived in great numbers, lighting upon and destroying the crops in their path. Most all of the small grain is now about ruined. Sometimes they can be seen at quite a distance, and while in the green wheat, they give the appearance of ripe buckwheat. It was quite a sight to see them when they were coming down; it put us in mind of, and looked like, a heavy fall of snow. People fought them several days with ropes and smoke; drove teams through the fields, but most of them have given it up. We had hoped that they would not stay long; that they would leave us a small share, but from all we can see they are going to stay until they finish the whole crop, and still worse; they are depositing their eggs in the ground for the next year’s crop. We do not know the area destroyed by them, but its extent is enough to cause a great deal of privation and suffering. As near as we can learn, it is over one hundred miles from east to west… Business of all kinds is at a standstill, except the hoppers—their business goes lively.”

Right about the time the grasshoppers were having a field day, Charles Ingalls filed on a 160 acre tree claim in Redwood County, about four miles northeast of his preemption claim and also on Plum Creek. The tree claim will be of interest later; it wasn’t a bad move on Pa’s part to have taken on another claim, since the government was extending the time between filing and final proof while crops (or trees) were being destroyed by the grasshoppers.

Wabasha County wasn’t hit by the ‘hoppers that year, and it’s believed that Pa went there to find work near Uncle Peter’s. Peter’s family was enumerated on the 1875 Minnesota state census in Zumbro Falls – the old part of town across the Zumbro River to the south from where it is now. High water repeatedly took out the bridge to Zumbro Falls (and Uncle Peter’s house at least once), so the townsmen mostly moved to the other side of the river.

Laura wrote that she and Mary started school that year. On May 2nd, 1875, Walter and Margaret Breckenridge (they pretty much owned the town lots in Walnut Grove that weren’t owned by the Bedals) sold two lots in Block 20 in Walnut Grove to School District 23, the town school. I haven’t seen a record showing who the first teacher was, but Laura said it was Miss Beadle; and Clementia Bedal, Lafayette Bedal’s wife, taught about fifteen pupils in their home the winter before the Ingallses came to Minnesota, so it’s likely that she continued to teach once the one-room schoolhouse was built.

In July, Charles Ingalls paid $2.76 taxes on personal property worth $268. He didn’t pay real property taxes because he didn’t own any land.

Wilder wrote about shopping at Mr. Fitch’s store. John Fitch purchased Gustave Sunwall’s interest in the store Sunwall ran with John Anderson (both men were from Sweden), and on December 7th, John Fitch and John Anderson purchased lots in Block 10, Walnut Grove, on which to build a new store. William Owens (Mr. Oleson in the books) was originally in business with D.W. Burns, but the partnership was dissolved, and by May of 1875, Owens was in charge.

In the fall of 1875, the Ingallses moved to a rented house in Walnut Grove behind the Congregational church so that Laura and Mary could attend school that fall and winter. On November 1st, Ma gave birth to their fourth child and first son, Charles Frederic. Had the Ingallses already moved back to the claim at Christmas time? If they were in town, the trip TO town for Christmas wasn’t needed.

In the post image, there’s a snippet from a Christmas eve 1875 letter from Charlotte Quiner Holbrook, now a widow, to her daughter Martha Carpenter. In it, she asks, “Did you see Caroline while she was at Peter’s? I wonder when they will get to a stopping place. I shall be glad for their sake; they have had a hard time of it since they left Pepin.” Holbrook goes on to say that Henry was on a farm in Meeker County, Minnesota, and the grasshoppers had stripped them of everything.

📍 LINKS:
South Troy / Zumbro Falls
Locust egg map for various years
A little bit about Pa’s tree claim HERE (scroll down)
Charles Ingalls and the U.S. Public Land Laws
China jewel box
Peter Ingalls
Freddy Ingalls
Letter from Charlotte Holbrook to Martha Carpenter

🔔LAURA’S TENTH CHRISTMAS — Laura has this to say the Christmas as a nine-year-old in Pioneer Girl: “Christmas was disappointing. Ma was always tired, Pa was always busy, and Mrs. Steadman did not give us anything at all for taking care of her disagreeable baby, Tommy.”

The year 1876 began with the Ingallses still living in Minnesota; if they started the year in the rental house in Walnut Grove, they must have moved back to the Plum Creek preemption claim at some point. The Ingallses were struggling to make ends meet, with Pa only declaring a personal worth of $110 for the year 1876.

Pa apparently didn’t plant a crop that year; knowing he’d have to go east to find harvest work again, he made the decision to leave sooner rather than later. William Steadman, who the Ingallses knew from church in Walnut Grove, had made arrangements to take over a hotel in Burr Oak from William J. Masters in the fall (one wonders how that came about), and Mr. Steadman asked Pa to move to Burr Oak to help him run it. Steadman had a homestead in Redwood County and made final proof in October before moving to Burr Oak, where he bought the Masters Hotel and the lower level of the saloon next door from Mr. Masters (Laura wrote that the saloon was “next door,” and the deeds support that this saloon wasn’t inside the hotel proper). William J. Masters bought Steadman’s homestead in Redwood County.

Hanging onto his tree claim in Redwood County, Charles Ingalls paid $430.76 for his preemption claim on July 7, 1876, selling it three days later to Abraham Keller of Olmstead County, Minnesota for $400. It’s hard to make sense of Pa’s decision to take a loss, when he could have simply relinquished the claim or walked away from it, thereby keeping open the option to file on another preemption claim at a later date.

The Ingallses moved in with Uncle Peter and Aunt Eliza and the cousins in Zumbro Falls. This part of the story is told in Pioneer Girl so I don’t need to re-hash it. Remember that ten-month-old Baby Freddy died on August 27th while they were living at Uncle Peter’s. There was no cemetery in Zumbro Falls at the time, so he was buried in the cemetery across from the South Troy post office.

From Pioneer Girl: “We felt so badly to go on and leave Freddy, but in a little while we had to go on to Iowa to help keep the hotel. It was a cold miserable little journey…”

Once they got there and settled down to work, Ma was always tired and Pa was always busy, according to Laura, but I bet Ma was busier than Pa: cooking, cleaning, and washing for hotel guests and Mr. Bisby the boarder, plus looking after the family. The Ingallses were believed to have all lived in one room in the lower level of the hotel during this time; I wonder where Mr. and Mrs. Steadman and their four children lived?

Although Laura writes that she and Mary looked after the Steadmans’ disagreeable baby, Tommy (who was four at the time), Mrs. Steadman had given birth to a daughter, Mary Ruth, a few months before Freddy Ingalls was born. Laura probably didn’t use the baby’s name so as to avoid confusion with her own sister, Mary. Furthermore, Mrs. Steadman’s name was also Mary.

The Ingallses probably attended services at the Congregational church from the time they moved to Burr Oak in the fall of 1876. Rev. George Sterling was pastor in 1876-1877, serving churches in both Burr Oak, Iowa, and Lenora, Minnesota to the north. Burr Oak Congregational Church was established in 1850 and the church was dedicated in 1858. The church was no longer active when, in 1905, the bell was sold to the Friends Church in Hesper (the bell is now back in Burr Oak and part of the LIW Museum complex). Originally located three blocks south and one west of the Masters Hotel, the church building ended up as a storage shed on Main Street, but a historical marker was placed at its original location.

Laura wrote that she and Mary attended school in Burr Oak, with William Reed as their teacher. Mr. Reed’s first day of teaching was on November 27th, so he and Mary and Laura must have started school together. It’s unknown if there were any Christmas festivities in connection with the school that year.

This doesn’t have anything to do with Laura and Christmas, but on Christmas eve in 1876, Eliza Jane Wilder and Alice Wilder (Almanzo’s sisters) were baptized in the Methodist-Episcopal Church in Spring Valley, Minnesota, during the first worship service held in the church; it’s now the Spring Valley Methodist Church Museum.

📍LINKS:
Info about Abraham Keller and subsequent owners of Pa’s claim HERE
I posted about where Uncle Peter lived in Wabasha County last year. That post should be HERE (it was on June 3, 2023 if you have to scroll to find it).
Freddy Ingalls
South Troy / Zumbro Falls during the Little House years
Burr Oak during the Little House years
Masters families
William Steadman family
Jerome Bisby
William H. Reed
TALES OF TRAVEL AND LIFE AND LOVE, by George Bent (early Burr Oak history and familiar photos of the town, hotel, church, and school, but much of what Bent recorded happened a decade before the Ingallses lived there)
I don’t know this person, but if you haven’t visited Burr Oak, she has great Burr Oak photos HERE:

🔔 LAURA’S ELEVENTH CHRISTMAS — What did Laura write about this Christmas when she was ten? Not a thing!!

The Ingallses were back in Walnut Grove for Christmas 1877. They’d moved in with John & Luperla Ensign in the Ensign home on the corner of Bedal and 8th Streets. There were two sets of parents and seven kids: Willard (18), Anna (15), Howard (11), Mary (12), Laura (10), Carrie (7), and Grace (7 months). Laura and Mary were back in school, and they walked to school with Howard and the two sons – Albert and Lurton – of Rev. Leonard Moses, the new preacher at the Congregational Church. Rev. Moses was always leading activities at the church that year, so it’s hard to imaging there not being something special going on at Christmastime. I like to think the Ingallses were still living with the Ensigns that Christmas, but we don’t know for sure.

It was probably a happy Christmas for the Ingallses in 1877, if for no other reason than the fact they were back “home” and among friends.

The Ingallses began the year 1877 in Burr Oak, still living and working in the Masters Hotel. There are a couple of things of interest about that January. Laura wrote that she and Mary were both using the “fifth reader” in school, and Mary’s copy of the Independent Fifth Reader survives. An inscription in the front reads: “Mary Ingalls, Burr Oak, Jan 10 1876, Iowa.” The Ingallses weren’t in Iowa in January 1876, so Mary probably received the book as a birthday present in 1877, but the wrong year was written in it. It’s a common mistake to make at the beginning of a new year.

On Sunday, January 14th, Charles & Caroline Ingalls, along with the Steadmans and Reverend and Mrs. Sterling, joined the Congregational Church in Burr Oak (see photo in comments). FYI: the Burr Oak church records are at the Congregational Library in Boston; the Walnut Grove church records are at Minnesota Historical Society in Saint Paul. Merry Christmas!
Here’s another present for you: Winneshiek County newspapers are online for free! Don’t depend on the search feature because it’s very, very unreliable. If you spend some time scrolling and reading, though, especially the Decorah Republican, you’ll find a LOT of Burr Oak news for the years the Ingallses were there and things Laura wrote about: measles, school reports (Mary and Laura were never mentioned, but Mr. Reed, the teacher, submitted them), the saloon fire, Mr. Bisby, church news, properties bought and sold, etc. Make sure you look at page 1 of the Decorah Public Opinion for June 18, 1947; Laura wrote a letter to the paper about her time in Burr Oak that’s been included in a lot of publications, but it’s nice to see the original.

The following bits are worth mentioning about this year:
In Pioneer Girl, Laura wrote that Pa had worked at a grist mill because there was little to do at the hotel, and a March 1877 item reported that “Porter & Ingalls have sold their grist mill to Paris Baker.” Near as I can tell, Pa and Mr. Porter briefly ran a feed mill (grinding grain for animal feed), but I have no idea where it was operated. Pa’s partner, James Porter, almost immediately took over running the other hotel in Burr Oak – the American House that was across the road from the Masters Hotel.

The Ingallses moved three times this year: they left the hotel to live in rooms over George Kimball’s grocery store two lots away (the post office was in the grocery store at the time, and Mr. Kimball was the postmaster). They next rented the brick house a few blocks away where Grace was born in May. The house had belonged to Ezra Bisby (the hotel boarder’s father), but Ezra had died and his son was happy living at the hotel, so it was available.

William Steadman bought a farm in Fremont Township that spring, and on Grace Ingalls’ birth day, he sold the Masters Hotel to John W.E. McLaughlin. Laura wrote that she didn’t remember ever seeing Reuben and Johnny again after moving out of the hotel; that’s because the Steadmans were living in the next township.

Around August or September, the Ingallses moved back to Walnut Grove. In Pioneer Girl, Laura wrote that Pa bought a lot from Mr. Masters and built a house on it “that winter.” It’s unclear if this happened before or after Christmas (my guess is after), but there’s no deed showing that Pa ever bought a lot in town.

There’s a record of Rev. Moses buying a lot in Masters’ Addition around this time, though, so there’s precedent. If the Ingallses had been living in a new little house Pa had just built for them that Christmas, don’t you think Laura would have mentioned it in Pioneer Girl?

📍 LINKS:
Winneshiek County newspapers
Independent Fifth Reader:

Winneshiek County Mills
Hamlin Garland’s “My First Christmas Tree” story has been associated with Laura’s Burr Oak in the past, but it’s about a different Burr Oak
Bisby family
Dr. Alfred Starr
John Ensign family
1947 letter from Laura (see column 3)
Record of Ingallses and Steadmans joining Burr Oak Church in Facebook post comments

🔔 LAURA’S TWELFTH CHRISTMAS — “There was a Christmas tree at the Church on Tuesday evening. Presents flowed freely,” is what the Currie Pioneer had to say about Christmas 1878 in Walnut Grove. Tuesday was Christmas eve, and Rev. Leonard Moses had been conducting a series of revival meetings at the church that would continue for a couple more weeks. Laura mentions attending the revival meetings that winter in Pioneer Girl, so it’s safe to assume that the Ingallses also attended the Christmas tree service. It’s possible that this tree service provided some of the inspiration for the one Wilder describes in ON THE BANKS OF PLUM CREEK. What do you think?

The Currie Pioneer was published in Murray County, Minnesota, from 1878-1880, and included lots of Walnut Grove news. The paper hasn’t yet been digitized, but it’s on microfilm at Minnesota Historical Society. Yesterday, I mentioned Winneshiek online newspapers; MHS has a digital newspaper hub of Minnesota newspapers available online for free, too!

The year 1878 began with Charles Ingalls paying the $1.24 he owed in back taxes from two years ago; Pa may have been a bad businessman, but at least he was honest. Taxes were collected by William Owens at his store in town.

In late January, Charles and Caroline rejoined Union Congregational Church in Walnut Grove, and the next month, Mary Ingalls, age 13, joined the church on confession of faith.

On March first, Charles Ingalls relinquished the tree claim that he’d filed on in the summer of 1875 – the SE 4-109-38, a couple of miles northeast of where the preemption claim / dugout / wonderful house had been. The Ingallses were living in Walnut Grove in the house on a lot in Mr. Masters’ pasture. How do we know? The March 21, 1878 Redwood Gazette reported:
“Town Officers of Springdale. 38 votes cast. Supervisors: W.J. Masters (chairman), N. Rawlings, Swen Peterson. Clerk, F. Ensign. Treasurer, L W. Hodgkinson. Assessor, Levi Montgomery. Justices, C.P. Ingalls and Levi Montgomery. Constable, W.A. Rawlings. For license 16. Against license 22. Note that this is for Springdale Township (T109N-R39W), not North Hero Township (T109N-R38W, the location of Charles Ingalls’ preemption and tree claim/homestead), which didn’t include the original village of Walnut Grove but did include the newly-platted six blocks of Masters Addition to Walnut Grove (where the hotel Laura worked in as a child still stands). On April 26, 1878, the dedication and surveyor’s certificate for Masters Addition was signed before “C.P. Ingalls, Justice of the Peace.” Wilder wrote in Pioneer Girl that Pa purchased a lot from William Masters (there is no record of this in the deeds) and the Ingallses lived in a house built there until the family moved to Dakota Territory. All of the other men named as township officers above definitely had claims or owned property in Springdale Township. If you’re more familiar with the Walnut Grove area than the plat maps, 8th Street / County Road 5 is the north/south line between the two townships: If you’re at the Museum, the gift shop is in North Hero Township (east of 8th Street), but the Masters Hotel (across 8th Street to the west) is in Springdale Township.

INGALLS HOMESTEAD?! — On May 9th, Charles Ingalls filed on half his former tree claim as a homestead (W-SE 4-109-38). That same day, David Thorp, attorney and teacher in Walnut Grove, filed on the east half of Pa’s former tree claim as his own homestead.

As this was a homestead claim, Ingalls was required by law to establish residency on the land within six months after filing (by November 9th) and for either he and/or family members to reside on the land for six months each year he held the homestead. Laura never wrote about Pa’s tree claim or homestead in Redwood County. The Ingallses must have planned to sell the house/lot in town (or stop renting it, if that was actually the arrangement) and move to the homestead. If they moved to the homestead for the winter, it’s possible that they were living there at Christmas time and either didn’t go to town for tree service and presents on Christmas eve, or that they drove to town as described in ON THE BANKS OF PLUM CREEK. Remember that for the Christmas that readers associate with the published story, the Ingallses would have been living in town behind the church, so they didn’t need to drive to church.

One thing that links the Ingalls family to being in town that Christmas season is the Silas Rood” incident the week before Christmas that Laura wrote about in PIONEER GIRL. There were multiple newspaper articles about it; I transcribed one in my A-Z website entry linked below, but there are more for you to discover on the MN newspaper site). Laura was supposedly staying with Fred & Delia Goff’s baby when Silas knocked on the door, but she must have been watching the Goff’s grandson who lived next door and had been born that summer.

REVEREND MOSES — I meant to write more about Rev. Moses (shown in the picture) in this post, because he’s really interesting; sorry! Did you know that Leonard Moses once lived in Wisconsin near where Minnie Johnson and Ben Woodworth’s families lived? Ben’s father was also a Congregational minister. Ordained in 1876, Rev. Moses served churches in Mapleton, Cottage Grove, and Walnut Grove, Minnesota; as well as Walla Walla and Seattle, Washington. He also wrote poetry and published books of poetry, the last when he was 94 years old!

WALNUT STATION — to end this post and the year 1878, the Redwood Gazette published this about Walnut Grove on Nov. 26th of that year:
     “Walnut Station is a promising little town on the C.&N.W.R.R., fifty-four miles west of New Ulm and twenty-six east of Marshall, with a population of about one hundred and sixty inhabitants.
     “There are four establishments engaged in general merchandise, one Grocery, one Hardware, one Furniture, one Drug store and post-office combined: One flour and feed store and another in process of erection. There is one butcher shop, two Blacksmith shops, one Lumber Yard: two wood and Coal yards, one ware house with an elevator, also a Livery stable.
     “Times are rather dull here on account of the poor grade and low price of wheat but we are looking forward to a time when Walnut Station will rank amongst the first towns in the west. The location is said, by all travelers, to be very pleasant and beautiful.”

📍 LINKS:
Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub
CPI as Justice of the Peace
David Thorp
Silas Rood

🔔 LAURA’S THIRTEENTH CHRISTMAS — Let’s just get this over with; the Christmas of 1879 is the one Laura writes about in Chapter 19 of BY THE SHORES OF SILVER LAKE, a book that has a couple of really depressing opening chapters. Because Laura didn’t write about backtracking interludes in the LH books, she now had to play catch up so she could start the first De Smet book with Laura at her proper age. Wilder is now writing about things Laura vividly remembers from her teenage years. We learn that the house is shabby and there’s little to eat, farming has been a failure and Pa wanted to go west for two years, everyone has been sick except Pa and Laura, and Mary has gone blind. And then Jack dies.

Moving on…

🎄CHRISTMAS 1879 was spent in the Surveyors’ House on the north shore of Silver Lake, at the railroad camp that’s been abandoned for the winter. It wasn’t just the Ingallses there that Christmas; Walter Ogden was living with the family because it was smart to have another man around when there were no neighbors for miles. As Charles Ingalls wrote in his “The Settlement of De Smet” essay (published in 1982 as part of “Treasures from C.P. Ingalls and Laura Wilder” by Aubrey Sherwood of the De Smet News), “Walter Ogdon [sic], a young man that was working for Henry Peck stayed with us taking care of teams belonging to Peck that were left here for the winter.” Laura wrote that Walter decided at the last minute that he would rather live with the family instead of wintering alone on his claim miles away, so he moved into the surveyors’ house, while the livestock he was watching and the hay to feed them were moved into the railroad company’s shanty stable nearby.

On Christmas eve, Ella and Robert Boast show up. They weren’t newlyweds as Laura wrote, but had already been married ten years. In his memoir, Pa wrote, “About the last day of December on a bitter cold night, I think it was the coldest night during the winter, some one called out at the door. Upon going to the door what was my surprise to see a woman on horseback but on looking a second time I saw a man also, it was R.A. Boast and wife that had come to stay and you may be sure we felt as though we had got to civilization again. They moved into a small house that had been put up for an office by an enterprising man.”

What I love about this Christmas is that it overflows with Christmas spirit. It may seem like it’s “all about the presents” before the Boasts arrive, but there’s an air of pure joy and excitement in doing for others as Ma and the girls decide on and work together to make presents for everyone.

There’s a handkerchief for Ma that Laura and Mary work on, plus an apron made by Laura and Carrie. There are bed shoes for Mary sewn from the end of an old blanket, but they’re finished beautifully with cords and tassels of yarn, made by Ma and Laura and Carrie. Laura and Mary knit “Fourth of July” mittens for Carrie, and everyone works on the swan’s-down hood and little blue coat with swan’s-down trimmings for Grace. Mary knits socks for Pa, and Laura makes him a blue silk necktie.

When the Boasts show up unannounced for Christmas, Ma unselfishly gives Mrs. Boast her own best handkerchief and Mr. Boast the wristlets she’d knitted for Pa, and the Boasts have bought candy for everyone. Little booklets of shaving paper for the men are mentioned in PIONEER GIRL, and on Christmas morning, we open Laura’s Christmas apron right along with her, and get to hear the story of how Mary and Carrie had been bursting with the secret of making aprons for both Ma and Laura without the other one knowing. I love how Laura describes the brightly colored tissue paper packaged on the breakfast table, all the good things to eat over the course of the day, and the surprise when Pa and Mr. Boast smell popcorn popping!

“Every Christmas is better than the Christmas before,” Laura thought. “I guess it must be because I’m growing up.”

– – – – – – – – – – –

Most of the year 1879 was spent in Walnut Grove, where in February, Pa was elected financial secretary of the Good Templars lodge; the lodge had been organized the previous year, and Ma and Pa were both members. The village of Walnut Grove was officially incorporated on March 13th, and in the first village elections held that month, with Pa again elected as justice of the peace.

Mary was ill in the spring, as was reported in the Currie Pioneer. I’m not sure we know exactly when her illness began.

From the Pioneer:

▪️April 24: “Miss Mary Ingalls has been confined to her bed about ten days with severe headache. It was feared that hemorrhage of the brain had set in, one side of her face became partially paralyzed. She is now slowly convalescing.”

▪️May 8: “Miss Mary Ingalls, daughter of C.P. Ingalls, of this place, has been quite ill for some time but is thought to be slowly recovering.”

▪️May 15: “Miss Mary Ingalls is still confined to her bed, and at times her sufferings are great.”

▪️June 12: “Miss Mary Ingalls is recovering, but very slowly. Her eye sight which she had almost lost is improving as she gains strength.”

▪️June 26: “Miss Mary Ingalls’ health improves, but her sight is so much impaired that she cannot distinguish one object from another. She can discern day from night but even this slight vision is also failing.”
Mary was treated during her illness by Dr. Robert Hoyt, whose own wife was dangerously ill at the beginning of the year and died on March 5th.

Pa went to work for the railroad that summer, but he probably wasn’t away from Walnut Grove the entire summer as Laura wrote, because there are legal transactions Charles Ingalls presided over in Walnut Grove that summer, including one that Laura wrote about in Pioneer Girl.

The Redwood Gazette reported on July 24th that Pa was taking charge of a gang of men near Lake Benton but was visiting in Walnut Grove that week, and:

▪️July 31: “Mr. and Mrs. C.P. Ingalls are expecting to take their daughter Mary to St. Paul in a short time, in hopes that they can have something done for her eye sight. Although entirely blind she is very patient and submissive.”

▪️September 4: “C.P. Ingalls’ family start this week for the Sioux river, where Mr. Ingalls is to work. They do not expect to return before spring.” (I don’t know if Ma and Pa took Mary to be seen by another doctor; do you think they did?)
The Ingallses still had the homestead north of Walnut Grove to return to in the spring, but the offer of the surveyors’ house for the winter allowed them to remain in Kingsbury County “without a penny going out until spring” due to the provisions left for them to enjoy.

Also happening this year but not about the Ingalls family: Angeline Wilder purchased the quarter section near Marshall, Minnesota, where Almanzo grew the seed wheat so important in THE LONG WINTER. Almanzo, Royal, and Eliza Jane Wilder also filed on homesteads and tree claims in Kingsbury County that summer. Horace Woodworth filed on a homestead not too far north of the surveyors’ house in September, and he wrote that he left his claim on November 24th (the “last man out”) due to ill health. Work stopped at the Silver Lake camp on December first, with trains having reached Volga by that time.

In December 1879, Kingsbury County was officially organized by the governor of Dakota Territory, William Alanson Howard, who appointed Henry Burvee, Ben Loken, and Herbert Palmer as county commissioners. Burvee’s claim was near Spirit Lake, Loken’s near Lake Whitewood, and Palmer’s at Lake Badger.

📍 LINKS:
Surveyors’ house
Walter Ogden
Robert & Ella Boast
Good Templars
Dr. Robert Hoyt
Mary & Samuel Ray / Ellen & Amos Leonard
Horace Woodworth family
Henry Burvee

🔔 LAURA’S FOURTEENTH CHRISTMAS – It’s Christmas 1880; Laura is fourteen and living with her family (and others) in De Smet. After experiencing the October blizzard on the homestead, the Ingallses moved into Pa’s sturdier building in town (it was on the east side of Calumet at 2nd Street, on Block 4, Lot 21), close to the railroad and the groceries it brings (ha!) and Carrie and Laura start going to school. In The Long Winter, Wilder takes fourteen chapters to navigate her readers from October 15th to Christmas eve, and she writes six blizzards into those chapters. The De Smet newspaper, however, later reported “two months of fairly good weather” after the October blizzard, with most of the snow melting except in large drifts, and “some snow falling in November, then additional snow every week until after Christmas when another blizzard struck.”

As I’ve pointed out before, Laura used the word “blizzard” in Pioneer Girl sixteen times when writing about this winter, but by the time THE LONG WINTER was published, she’d upped it to 113 times. (That doesn’t mean she wrote about 100+ blizzards in TLW; it just means that the Hard Winter got worse and worse the more times she or Rose wrote about it.)
The trains did stop running (but not until January irl), but The Long Winter finds the Ingallses having to make do without the Christmas barrel sent by Reverend Alden. Did he really send a Christmas barrel to the Ingallses? In Pioneer Girl, the barrel comes from “friends in Chicago,” but the American Home Missionary Society (for which Rev. Alden worked) was based in New York. Alden had been appointed to the mission field in “De Smet, Aurora, and Ashton” Dakota Territory in May 1880. He was reappointed in May, but had relinquished the De Smet field to Reverend Brown before the October blizzard and moved to Spink County. On May 16, 1881, he filed on a homestead west of Ashton (just north of what became the town of Athol; Alden was Athol’s first postmaster). Although he was enumerated on the 1880 census in Washington, D.C., I have no idea where Rev. Alden spent the Hard Winter.

George and Maggie Masters and their 7-month-old baby, Arthur, were living with the Ingalls family that Christmas. In a letter to Rose when working on her Hard Winter manuscript, Laura wrote that Maggie and the baby lived with the family while George was working on the railroad, and they kept expecting them to leave but they didn’t. And then the trains stopped running and they couldn’t go anywhere so they just stayed. Laura didn’t include the Masterses in her story because “he never went with Pa for a load of hay, he never twisted any, he just sat.” I assume George just sat through Christmas as well, so let’s ignore the Masterses.

Laura writes CHRISTMAS 1880 as a day of plenty, with a dark cloud lurking on the horizon. Ma being Ma, they have to do the laundry before they can have any fun. David Gilbert really was an early “mail pouch boy,” carrying mail from Volga to Huron twice weekly in the early years, but only occasionally from Lake Preston to De Smet during the Hard Winter. (He also moved his family to Mansfield in 1894 but high-tailed it back to De Smet pretty quickly.) For this Christmas, there’s the anticipation of the Christmas barrel; without it, there’s still The Advance, Youth’s Companion, Chicago Inter-Ocean, St. Paul Pioneer Press, a letter from Rev. Alden, flowered suspenders, a hair receiver, knitted lace, framed Sunday school card, a jumping jack, Christmas candy, and oyster soup. For the first time, we get to follow along with Carrie and Laura as they go shopping in De Smet.

Things do go downhill in a hurry right after Christmas for the Ingallses. It’s blizzard after blizzard for real, the coal runs out, the flour runs out, and the last little bit of kerosene is sucked up by the lamp’s wick on Christmas day.

– – – – –

🎉The year 1880 begins with the Ingallses living in the Surveyors’ House and celebrating a pleasantly warm New Year’s Day with the Boasts in their tiny office shanty. The Brookings County Press noted that “New Year’s Day of 1880 will long be remembered for its balminess.” The tradition of the Boasts and Ingallses spending Christmas and New Year’s together supposedly started with the friendship forged at the railroad camp in 1879.

Charles Ingalls wrote: “About the first of February travel commenced between the Sioux & the Jim Rivers, then we had company in plenty. Some nights there was so many that they covered the floor as thick as they could lay down.” Pa took advantage of the good weather later that month to travel to Brookings and file on a homestead, the NE 3-110-56. Thomas H. Ruth came to look over the area on February 28th – he established A. Ruth & Co., later incorporated as the Kingsbury County Bank, and he was there the next day when Rev. Alden held the first services in the area at the Surveyors’ House. Records show that those present “included Mr. and Mrs. Ingalls, Mr. and Mrs. Boast, T.H. Ruth, A.W. Ogden, and Mr. O’Connell and Wm. O’Connell. 25 in all.” In his memoir, Pa also noted as guests at the Surveyors’ House some men who Laura included in the Little House books: Edelbert Harthorn, Visscher Barnes, and Jerome Beardsley. Laura mentioned others in By the Shores of Silver Lake: Henry Hinz, Edelbert Harthorn, and Mr. Harthorn’s son Frank.

Pa wrote that sixteen buildings plus the depot were built in De Smet in the spring, most of them after the town was surveyed and stakes laid out. You’ve heard the story about Henry Hinz trying to guess where the lot closest to the railroad tracks would be in order to place his saloon on that spot, but he missed by three lots. The first town lot sale was recorded as being made to Royal Wilder. Familiar names of business/lot owners that first year include: Thomas Ruth (bank), Charles Barker (groceries), Charles Mead (hotel), Martha Beardsley (hotel), James McKee, Elizabeth Power (tailor shop), Sam Owen (boots & shoes), E.M. Harthorn (groceries), Dan Loftus (general store), and Caroline Ingalls.

In April, the Ingalls family moved into the building that soon opened as Couse Hardware, then to a shanty on the homestead. Pa built a building on their lot catty-cornered from the hardware store, and it was used as the “county building” in the early days. With the first train arriving in De Smet in May, so did building supplies, groceries and other supplies, and the storekeepers to sell them. The Loftus Store opened its doors in June 1880.

Also in June, Reverend Brown organized the First Congregational Church of De Smet at services held in the depot. The charter members included: Mr. and Mrs. C.P. Ingalls and daughter Mary, the Rev. and Mrs. Edward Brown, Mr. and Mrs. S.N. Gilbert, and V.V. Barnes. The Articles of Incorporation for the church were signed by V.V. Barnes, Rev. Brown, S.C. Sherwin, C.L. Ingalls, Orville Sherwin, Mary Ingalls, and C.P. Ingalls.

July 27th, the first meeting of De Smet school district No. 2 (Nordlund – changed to Arlington – was #1) was held at the Charles Ingalls building in De Smet; the School Board elected was: John H. Carroll (director), Charles Ingalls (clerk), Thomas Ruth (treasurer). Ingalls and Carroll were replaced the following month, as their homesteads weren’t in the school district, but the district lines were later re-drawn to include the Ingallses. Two acres for the site of the first schoolhouse was purchased from John Carroll, and the school built. The first teachers’ examinations were given on October 28th, with Willard Seelye, Florence Garland, and Thomas Garvin receiving certificates. School began in early November.

📍 LINKS:
The Youth’s Companion
The Advance
Chicago Inter-Ocean
Pioneer Press
Silliman Gilbert family
Hair Receiver
Oysters
Jumping Jack
Suspenders
Perforated paper embroidery
The Hard Winter of 1880-1881 (newspaper bits and TLW chapter posts at bottom of page)

🎁 BONUS CHRISTMAS – May 1881 — We’re given the gift of an extra Christmas in 1881 once the Hard Winter is over: the “Christmas in May” (or June) celebration after the trains are once again running to De Smet and supplies are plentiful.

Laura wrote to Rose in March 1937, debating whether to include George & Maggie Masters in The Long Winter, substituting another couple for them – such as the Boasts, or having no one live with the family, which was what they did:
“The Christmas barrel came the first of June. Train got through the middle of May but freight was so congested all along the line that it was not straightened out until June. / People were afraid to leave their houses that winter. Pa and the Wilders were about the only ones who would do so except the mail carrier. / There are more objections to moving Boasts to town to live with us. Leaving them on the farm all winter shows the fear of the storms. Having them at the Christmas dinner in June makes it a happy reunion. / I think they belong in the place I have given them as friends to the last chapter.” At one point in the writing process, Laura had Almanzo at the Christmas dinner, too!

It’s unknown if the Christmas barrel turkey dinner really took place or who might have been there. In The Long Winter, the dinner is in May, but her manuscripts place it in June. The first train got through to De Smet on May 4th or 5th. Visscher Barnes wrote a letter to the newspaper in 1917 in which he wrote: “When the first train came in from the east in May, it was loaded not with provisions but agricultural implements, and I recollect George Wilmarth’s remarking that he was hungry and succeeded in getting hold of a dragtooth for breakfast and a Randall harrow for dinner which seemed to so amuse him that it satisfied his appetite and everyone felt jolly.”

Did you realize that “Christmas in May” in 1881 is the last time the Ingalls family was all together and living under the same roof at Christmastime?! Mary Ingalls left for school in Vinton in November 1881, and she isn’t home in December except in 1887 (when she had left school in the spring and didn’t finish the year) and after she graduated in 1889. Laura and Almanzo had married and were living in their own home, so they would have been visitors.

– – – – – – – –

▪️March 23, 1881: Amos Whiting and Visscher Barnes visited the De Smet school being taught by Florence Garland and reported an enrollment of 26 students with good average attendance (even though Laura wrote that school had already been cancelled for the duration of the winter)

▪️April 2, 1881 – The De Smet Congregational Church selected a site for a sanctuary and voted to raise $1000 to build it

▪️April 10, 1881 – First meeting of Congregational Church of De Smet held in the schoolhouse

Instead of listing of the Hard Winter hardships, I’ll point you to the Kingsbury County historian, Percy Robert Crothers (1861-1951), who spent the winter of 1880-1881 in Badger Township in the northeast corner of the county. If you have some time, read his ROMANCE OF THE PRAIRIE.

Hod Phelps was Horace Lyman Phelps (1852-1929), married to Isabella “Belle” Atwater (1859-1935); they had claims in Sections 3&4 -111-53. Willis D. Atwater (1850-1933) was Belle’s sister; he married early Kingsbury County teacher, May Wheeler (1859-1908).

📍LINKS:
Romance on the Prairie
Percy Crothers

Transcription of the February 24, 1881 issue of the Kingsbury County News can be found in the “Hard Winter newspaper bits” file on pages 157-162 on my website HERE

🔔 CHRISTMAS 1881 — Laura’s fifteenth or sixteenth Christmas (I think I’ll stick with the year from now on) was the same year as the bonus Christmas at the end of the Hard Winter, just on its traditional date.

Little Town on the Prairie begins in May 1881 and ends on December 24, 1882 with 15-year-old Laura earning her first teaching certificate and being hired to begin teaching the Brewster school the next Monday. Because the certificate date is included, savvy readers figured out that Laura’s certificate was issued on a Sunday, and Laura was to start teaching on New Year’s Day.

By now, everyone knows that in real life, Laura’s first teaching certificate was issued on December 10, 1883, meaning “the events of two years were crowded into a little more than one” for Little Town on the Prairie. That’s exactly how Laura explained it to Rose in a March 1937 letter. At some point, Laura and Rose realized that everything that she wanted to write wouldn’t fit in Prairie Girl (the working title for the book that became LTP and was supposed to be the last book in the series), so another book had to be added.

One of the reasons this book is the favorite of many readers (like me) is because so may things happen in it. It’ll also make your head hurt if you try to list them and then note when events really happened (trust me). Laura is really busy and quite the social butterfly in Little Town on the Prairie; in addition to school and studying, there’s: Laura working for Mrs. White, getting Mary ready to go to college, Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works, Ben Woodworth’s birthday party, the dime sociable, multiple literaries, sledding with boys from school, various teachers and when they taught the De Smet school, seat rocking, slate poetry, the New England Supper, the joy that is name cards, Nellie trying to lure Cap Garland away from Mary Power, the school exhibition, and the dashing Almanzo Wilder offering Laura a ride in his buggy. I’m sure I missed an event or two.

In Little Town on the Prairie, the Ingallses try to celebrate the first Christmas without Mary, but they don’t even pretend to be jolly the next year. There were only presents for Carrie and Grace the second book Christmas, and Laura doesn’t even tell us what they are, or what was in the small Christmas box that Mary sent to the family.

Mary Ingalls was enrolled at the blind school in Vinton on November 23, 1881 – the day before Thanksgiving that year – but book Mary goes to college in late summer, shortly before Laura and Carrie start back to school in September. While it’s been several months for the family between when book Mary goes away and Christmas, in reality, it was only a month.
I’ve always wondered if the autograph albums and Mother Goose book that Ma & Pa give the girls when they get back from taking Mary to college were really their Christmas presents that year, which is why I’m not going to write about Tennyson’s Poems or Stories of the Moorland today.

The De Smet school was in session for a couple of weeks after Ma & Pa returned. Wouldn’t Laura and Carrie have taken their shiny new albums to show their friends before Christmas if they had them? Laura’s autograph album is on display at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Library in Mansfield; it’s been photographed and they used to let you take pictures of the pages, although I don’t know if that’s still the case. The earliest dated autographs in it are those of Charles Ingalls and Mary McKee (January 6, 1882), Ida Wright (January 15, 1882), Mary Power (January 16, 1882), and Cap Garland (January 17, 1882). All are school days.

The first Christmas without Mary, the Ingallses are said to receive a letter in a strange handwriting that was signed: Mary. She explained that she used a grooved, metal slate that she placed a sheet of paper on top of, and by feeling the lines with her fingers, she was able to write words in a straight line in cursive with her pencil. Mary would have remembered how to form the letters from years of practice before losing her sight, and even after learning New York Point (which her sisters also learned to read by looking at the dots, not by touching them), Mary continued to write to sighted friends using this method.

Mary signed Laura’s autograph album on August 11, 1883, and she used her “braille slate” and wrote in New York Point.

Mary’s handwritten signature on the image is from a later date; the others are from Laura’s album.

I haven’t seen the inside of Carrie’s album, nor do I remember ever seeing photos of the inside or its contents shared, so I have no clue who signed hers and when. If it has a bunch of early December 1881 signatures, that would blow my theory out of the water, and I’m okay with that because then I’d know.

What do you think Christmas 1881 was like for the Ingallses?

– – – – –

Some events that occurred the last half of 1881:

▪️In June, the Congregational Church began a subscription drive to raise money to build a sanctuary, ultimately raising $200.

▪️Laura worked two weeks that summer for Mrs. Martha White, not nine weeks, but which two weeks is unknown.

▪️October 3, 1881 – Amos Whiting, Kingsbury County Superintendent of Schools, wrote a statement indicating that Mary Ingalls was entitled to the benefits of the Territorial Blind Asylum, and the letter was forwarded to the Governor of Dakota Territory. This is why Mary didn’t start school at the beginning of the term in Vinton.

▪️October 24, 1881 – The first teacher’s institute was held in De Smet. Laura didn’t attend.

▪️November 23, 1881 – Mary Ingalls enrolled at the Iowa Institution for the Education of the Blind in Vinton, IA.

🔔 CHRISTMAS 1882 — The last chapter in Little Town on the Prairie takes place on Christmas eve 1882, and the reader is told that the Ingallses wouldn’t try to have another Christmas without Mary, and that the only presents that are hidden away are for Carrie (twelve that year) and Grace (six). We’re not told what those presents are. Mary sent the family a small vase made out of tiny beads, with a bead fringe. Pa & Ma wonder how they’ll be able to afford to buy the summer clothes Mary needs, and they need to send her spending money plus money for a Braille slate, which would be expensive. I didn’t look very hard, but I found a 1909 school board list of supplies provided for blind students, and it includes braille slates for each student at $2 each, which is around $62 today.

Laura saves the day by being hired as a teacher right there on Christmas eve. Even though Laura doesn’t want to be a teacher, her salary will help the Ingallses out of a financial pinch by helping Mary. And the superintendent didn’t even ask Laura how old she was.

The end.

– 🌲 – 📕 – 🌲 – 📗 – 🌲 – 📘 – 🌲 –

In Little Town on the Prairie (Chapter 12), Laura wrote that when packing up to move from the homestead into town for the winter, she found a “green cloth with a gilded pattern pressed into it” book of Tennyson’s Poems hidden in the bureau drawer. She realized it was intended to be her Christmas present so she quickly put it away, and she was correct. When Christmas comes around (in Chapter 19), the book is described as being “blue-and-gilt.” Interestingly, the hidden-for-Christmas book in Pioneer Girl was a red cloth copy of Scott’s Poems, not Tennyson’s.

The list of books in the parlor library at Rocky Ridge sold by the museum in recent years includes “The Complete Works of Tennyson” but there is no other information provided. Was this Laura’s book; what color is the cover and is it gilded; and is it perhaps inscribed with a date? If anyone has info on the copy of Tennyson’s poems at Rocky Ridge, please share. I don’t remember a copy ever being on display separately in the museum; do you?

There was at least one edition of Tennyson’s poetry published in the U.S. in 1880, and it has the red-outlined and creamy-colored pages that Laura describes. Tennyson’s and Scott’s poems have both been published with covers of various colors, however, including green and blue, and Scott’s poems in red. In her introduction to On the Way Home, Rose Wilder Lane wrote that the Wilders owned copies of both Tennyson’s Poems and Scott’s Poems.

The Christmas that Laura receives a book of poetry, Carrie’s gift is a copy of Stories of the Moorland, written by Lizzie Bates and first published in 1869. For Grace, there was a china doll, some doll clothes, and a cigar box cradle complete with bedding and a little patchwork quilt. Laura and Carrie buy a German silver (nickel) thimble for Ma, and a blue silk necktie for Pa. (The LTP manuscript has that Pa’s gift was a blue silk handkerchief, not tie.) The Ingallses sent a Christmas box to Mary, containing a fleecy nubia crocheted by Laura, a lace collar, six lawn handkerchiefs made by Carrie, a ribbon Grace had saved her pennies to buy, and a long letter from the whole family plus a five-dollar bill which Pa said would be for the little things Mary needed.

In Little Town on the Prairie, this is written as the Christmas after the Hard Winter and the one after Mary went to college at age sixteen, which means the Christmas of 1881. Laura was fourteen, Carrie was eleven, and Grace was five. I’m okay with that year, even though I wrote about autograph albums the other day and why I felt that the albums could have been the girls’ gifts that Christmas.

– – – – – – –

🗓 Some things that happened in 1882:

▪️JANUARY: Charles Ingalls was elected as trustee of the Congregational Church of De Smet, for a term of two years / Pa and some of Laura’s friends signed her autograph album in January. / The Methodist Episcopal and Congregational Churches in De Smet hosted a New England Supper, and according to the De Smet Leader, “a fine, large Dakota pig, roasted whole, was a feature of the occasion.” / Ben Woodworth’s birthday party was on January 28th. (Rev. Woodworth isn’t mentioned because he was in Washington, D.C., with a group lobbying for statehood.)

▪️FEBRUARY: Eliza Jane Wilder returned to De Smet after being in Valley Springs since August 1881. She went to look after a friend who had been thrown from a buggy and seriously injured.

▪️MARCH: Multiple meetings were held in the schoolhouse (which was being used by the Congregational Church as well as the Methodist Episcopal Church) to organize a temperance union in Kingsbury County.

▪️APRIL: In the “Unexpected in April” chapter, Laura wrote about the spring blizzard (which actually took place in March) in which two men lost their lives. The two men were brothers Joseph & Henry Swan from St. Louis. They had come with their father and filed on a claim near De Smet and were in the process of building a claim shanty, but ran out of lumber. They left their father at the unfinished shanty and headed to De Smet for more lumber, but were caught by the blizzard and perished. Their father suffered greatly from the cold, but survived.

▪️MAY: The census of 1880 showed Kingsbury County to have a population of about 1200. The census taken by school districts on March 31, 1882, showed 3262, with a couple of villages not reporting. No county on the Dakota Central railroad, had received as many new settlers as Kingsbury County had at the time. The county wasn’t suffering for teachers, though, as there were dozens of applicants for some teaching jobs. / The courthouse block was deeded to Kingsbury County by Mr. and Mrs. Albert Keep; he was president of the railroad at the time.

▪️JUNE: Gophers were playing the deuce with the corn crop. Reports came in daily from various sections of the county that large fields had been entirely cleaned out by these pests.

▪️JULY: De Smet had a baseball team called the “Cork Pullers.” The name was almost immediately changed to the “Clippers.” (In 1888, Cap Garland was left fielder and was said to be the best fielder De Smet ever had.) / George Brady, the man who murdered John Hunt on Main Street in De Smet in May 1881, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in prison. / There were plans to build a Catholic Church in De Smet in the fall. De Smet hoped to have the first Catholic Church on the Dakota Central, but Aurora (near Brookings) beat them to it. / The Congregational Church purchased a lot for the site of a church in De Smet.

▪️AUGUST: First services in the newly-constructed Congregational Church. The structure was 28×48 feet, the roof steep and the ceiling vaulted, with its entrance at north end with two small vestry rooms.

▪️SEPTEMBER: Kingsbury County Fair held on the 6th and 7th in De Smet. / County convention held in De Smet on the 18th. Delegates seated included Charles Ingalls (3rd precinct), Lyman Fellows, Charles Dawley, Henry Burvee, and John H. Carroll.

▪️OCTOBER: The busiest day encountered by any Dakota land office during settlement of Dakota territory was at Huron on the 9th. On that day, there were 690 entries, 163 claims contested, and 1200 applications for final proof. / The Great September comet was still visible in the sky in the early morning hours.

▪️NOVEMBER: Louis H. Bouchie and Olive D. Morrison (“Mr. and Mrs. Brewster” in THESE HAPPY GOLDEN YEARS), both single, filed on adjoining homesteads (the SW (Louis) and SE (Olive) 27-110-57) on the 25th.

▪️DECEMBER: The Kingsbury County News reported that the De Smet school had 38 students enrolled in September with an average attendance of 20. In October, there were 51 students enrolled; average attendance, 38. In November, 44 students enrolled; average attendance, 42. / On Christmas day, Olive Morrison and Louis Bouchie were married. / Laura Ingalls wasn’t hired as a teacher in December 1882.

❄️ There was said to be just enough snow on the ground to make it seem more like Christmas that year!

📍 LINKS:
New England Supper
Women’s Christian Temperance Union
George Brady / John Hunt
church
Eliza Jane Wilder
Bouchie families
LIW & Education in Kingsbury County
Tennyson’s Poems
nubia
handkerchief

🔔 Christmas 1883 — One hundred years ago this very week, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Christmas column appeared in the Missouri Ruralist. Most Little House fans are familiar with the column; I’ll put a transcription in the comments and a link to a scan of the original below.

December 1924 was before Pioneer Girl and These Happy Golden Years, and Laura’s column tells the story of Almanzo Wilder – “he who later became the man of the place” – going to Laura’s first school to bring her home for Christmas. That first school, of course, was the two-month Bouchie School, taught that winter in David Gilbert’s homestead claim shanty, 8 by 16 feet in size. The shanty was available for use as the schoolhouse because Gilbert left Kingsbury County “the middle of December 1883” and went to Lake City, Minnesota, for a two-month visit.

Although school records don’t say when the term started and when it ended, Laura was issued her first teaching certificate on Monday, December 10, 1883, and the school was said to start the next week. Laura was sixteen years old, and although she hadn’t quite figured it out yet, she was being courted.

🎄 There was a “grand Christmas tree” at the Congregational Church on the Christmas eve in 1883, as well as speakers, poems, and songs to dedicate the new church bell. The De Smet Leader advertised the event: “A grand Christmas-tree will appear at the church on Monday evening next. Everybody is invited to come out and see the fun, and contribute their gifts to help out the adornment of the tree. It will demonstrate that this particular variety of fruit-tree flourishes in Dakota as well as anywhere. All are requested to bring their gifts during the afternoon. One of the features of the evening will be the dedication of the new bell, with appropriate exercises.”

🎁 Laura was surprised to be handed a package while waiting for Grace’s Christmas doll to be brought to her from the candle-lit tree – didn’t Grace also get a doll last Christmas? Laura’s gift was a black leather case lined in blue silk, with an ivory brush and comb inside, the very case that Pa tells Laura he saw Almanzo Wilder buying in Bradley’s drug store!

Way to go, Almanzo; he was definitely already courting, wasn’t he? Do you think he asked Pa’s permission to buy Laura a present that year? Laura writes about this present as being given to her after she taught school, but it had to have been before, since they were engaged before Christmas next year. We don’t know what happened to the comb and brush set, but I’ve spotted what sure looks like an ivory comb with hairpins and other items in a wooden box on display in the bathroom at Rocky Ridge.

– – – – – – – – – –

1883 was a very busy year in De Smet.

▪️JANUARY: Charles Ingalls was sworn in as Justice of the Peace in Kingsbury County. He was appointed to finish the term of E.W. Smith, who moved away. — The De Smet Leader, published by Rev. Brown’s son, Mark Brown, was first published. — Laura’s teacher this winter was Mr. Clewett. — The Literary Society was still meeting, so you have to wonder when Almanzo first asked Laura if he could see her home: this year or last year?

▪️FEBRUARY: Laura’s sixteenth birthday.

▪️MARCH: Oliv & Louis Bouchie (who were married in December 1882), first settled in a house built on the line separating their two homestead claims. — Change in school law in Dakota Territory; eighteen was now the minimum age for teachers. — Last Literary Society meeting until winter. – Jim Woodworth left as depot agent, taking a job in Minneapolis. – Carter Sherwood, printer and brother of De Smet carpenter, Arthur Sherwood, moved to De Smet.

▪️APRIL: Alfred Thomas arrived in De Smet; he was married and had four children, so let’s hope he wasn’t the one who had hung around the Ingallses’ place hoping to escort Laura to one of the literaries. It had to have been his brother Carey, a young attorney working in Alfred Waters’ land office who Laura remembered. — James McKee relinquished his tree claim near Manchester and filed on it as a preemption, so Laura lived on the claim with Mrs. McKee and daughter this spring.

▪️MAY: The teacher in De Smet for the term was Emma Dawley, sister of Charles Dawley (who married Florence Garland, De Smet’s first teacher, in 1887). – The bird’s-eye drawing of De Smet was completed by Henry Wellge, and copies were available for purchase.

▪️JUNE: Susie Power (Mary Power’s older sister) married Jacob Hopp (the printer). – Charles Ingalls’ homestead was officially attached to the De Smet school, so that the Ingalls girls could go to school in town when living on the homestead. – Carter Sherwood and Mark Brown became joint publishers of the De Smet Leader.

▪️JULY: When personal property was assessed this month, Almanzo Wilder only declared farm vehicle(s) worth $20, and no livestock. Royal declared 7 horses valued at $290, and farm vehicles worth $81. — The Glorious Fourth! Grand celebration in De Smet: “100 guns fired at sunrise, decoration of buildings, music, prayer, singing “America”, Reading of Declaration of Independence by J. H. Carroll, singing, Orations, more singing, benediction, music… dinner, races, songs, greased pig, baseball…. Races!” — Mid-month, the Leader reported that Mary Ingalls had sent a beaded watch case to Rev. Brown.

▪️AUGUST: There were now four churches in De Smet – Rev. Edward Brown (Congregational), Rev. P. L. Hooker (Methodist), the Rev. Thomas O’Riley (Catholic), Rev. G.N. Annes (Baptist, with services at the Congregational Church every other Sunday at 2:30 p.m.).

▪️SEPTEMBER: V.S.L. Owen was hired on the 8th to teach the De Smet school. – David Gilbert filed on a homestead (SE 22-110-57), built a shanty, and moved in. – Charles Ingalls was nominated as Justice of the Peace. – Agriculture Fair held in De Smet on Sept. 26-28. Royal Wilder won first prize for best family mare in harness.

▪️OCTOBER: Teacher’s Institute, Oct. 1-5. Aldred Thomas helped as instructor. Laura Ingalls didn’t attend. – Ladies Aid of the Congregational Church held a picnic supper. – Ida Wright joined the Congregational Church. – Frank Harthorn and May Burd were married.

▪️NOVEMBER: Almanzo Wilder purchased two lots on Second Street, selling them five months later at a $30 profit. What would a bachelor with a homestead and tree claim want with town lots? – Frank Cooley and Emma Newell (“Mr. and Mrs. Cooley” from ON THE WAY HOME) were married in Nebraska. – Ella Ingalls (Laura’s cousin) and Leslie Lee Whiting married in Davison County, D.T.

▪️DECEMBER: Laura Ingalls was awarded a Third Grade teaching certificate in Kingsbury Co., D.T. from George A. Williams, Superintendent of Schools — December 10, 1883: Miss Laura Ingalls received Third Grade Teacher’s Certificate, good for 12 months, from Superintendent George A. Williams. Laura’s grades: Reading 62, Writing 75, Orthography 70, History 69, English Grammar 81, Arithmetic 80, Geography 70. – Dec. 20th, new bell hung in belfry of Congregational Church and run for the first time. – Thomas L. Quiner (Ma’s brother and Laura’s “Uncle Tom”) “arrived in De Smet with a load of lumber, with which he proposes to build a store,” purchasing a lot on Third Street.

📍 LINKS:
“As a Farm Woman Thinks.” Missouri Ruralist, December 15, 1924. Click on the thumbnail at right for “Christmas 1883” transcription image in full size.
Birds eye drawing (What De Smet looked like this year)
Alfred Thomas / Carey Thomas
Oscar Rhuel / Rӧhl (he’s mentioned in PG in connection with the “May I see you home?” story
James McKee family

🔔 CHRISTMAS 1884 — “Isn’t this the nicest Christmas! Do Christmases get better all the time?” I just love reading about this Christmas; don’t you? The Ingalls family didn’t move to town for the winter of 1884-1885, but fixed up the homestead and added a new sitting room and spent the winter on the homestead. Laura’s last Christmas living at home in THESE HAPPY GOLDEN YEARS has all the happiness and cozy feelings that you remember from Little House in the Big Woods, and it’s the perfect way to end the series, Christmas-wise.

❄️The Ingallses had gotten ready to go to town for the presents and tree at church on Christmas eve, but howling wind and snow had Pa deciding not to risk the trip, so there’s a bustle of getting ready to spend Christmas eve at home. There are popcorn balls and little bags of candy, and reminiscing over past Christmases. Pa plays the fiddle first “for Mary,” who isn’t at home that Christmas, and Laura – who got engaged that summer – is missing Almanzo, who left De Smet in the fall and wasn’t expected back until spring crop-planting time.

❤️Then Manly shows up on Christmas eve and he even kisses Laura “before all the folks”! Almanzo brought a sack of oranges and a little white box wrapped in white paper for Laura. It was a gold bar pin, with a little house, a tiny lake, and a spray of grasses and leaves etched on its surface. We don’t know what Laura’s pin actually looked like, which makes if fun to scour ebay for gold brooches such as Laura described. Raise your hand 🙋‍♀️ if you’ve bought one that reminds you of Laura’s; the image is of a pin once (still?) sold by the LIW Pageant Society in De Smet.

Do you think Pa was expecting Almanzo? I suspect so, since we know that Charles Ingalls wrote to Royal and Almanzo while they were gone; there’s one letter from Pa to “friends Wilder” from this period that’s in the museum at Rocky Ridge, and the De Smet Leader included updates on the Wilder brothers’ trip progress. Laura knew in real life that Almanzo hadn’t gone to his old home to be around old friends and girls he used to know. He and Royal planned to go to New Orleans to see the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, but for some reason, they only got as far as Nebraska before heading back to De Smet.

I love the glimpses into Laura and Almanzo’s affection for one another that are in Pioneer Girl and These Happy Golden Years, such as Almanzo saying he “couldn’t stay away so long,” and the Sunday evenings they spent by the fire in the sitting room that winter: “The folks left us alone about nine o’clock, but we knew that Manly was expected to leave when the clock struck eleven. He always did except one stormy night when he stopped the clock just before it struck and started it again when his watch said twelve, so that it struck eleven just as he left. I hastily pushed the hands ahead to nearly twelve, blew out the lamp, and went to bed in the dark.”

– – – – – –

In 1884:

Laura finished teaching the Bouchie School and she taught the Perry School from April 28th to June 27th. Harvey Dunn was born in March! There had been a school exhibition shortly before this school that sounds a lot like the one described at the end of LITTLE TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE. That summer, half-brothers Clarence and Isaac Bouchie fought, resulting in Isaac’s death. A skating rink was built on the lot behind Couse Hardware, and Laura skipped school to go skating. Reverend Brown resigned (retired) as pastor of the Congregational Church. De Smet had outgrown its schoolhouse and was in the process of building a two-story graded school building that would be dedicated in January.

📍 LINKS:
Perry School
Delos Perry family
Bouchie families
Bouchie trial documents
An organ for Mary
Reverend Edward Brown
World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition
gold bar pin

🔔 CHRISTMAS 1885 — Almanzo (age 28, or maybe 26) & Laura (age 18) had been married all of four months on Christmas day in 1885, and the Wilders were living in the “little gray home in the west” – the house on Almanzo’s tree claim. Laura describes the layout of the house in great detail in The First Four Years and in even greater detail in the manuscript, but, somehow, I can’t quite figure it out on paper. Who do you think was the “carpenter of the old ways” who built that amazing wall of pantry storage and shelves? Was it Charles Ingalls?

Laura and Almanzo turn to the Montgomery Ward catalog for their Christmas shopping that first year, spending less than four dollars for “…A set of glassware. They needed it for the table and there was such a pretty set advertised, a sugar bowl, spoon holder, butter dish, six sauce dishes and a large, oval shaped, bread plate. On the bread plate raised in the glass were heads of wheat and lettering which read- ‘Give us this day our daily bread. When the box came from Chicago, a few days before Christmas, and was unpacked, they were both delighted with their present.”

The molded glassware was in the 1881 “City” pattern made by McKee & Brothers Glass Works of Pittsburgh, and there were other pieces manufactured than what Laura checked off, including a celery holder, egg cups, several sizes of covered compotes (or comports), castors with metal lids, relish tray, and small covered pitcher. The print advertisement shows a slightly different bread plate than the one at Rocky Ridge, which has always caused people to question if it was “the” bread plate or one substituted for the one ordered or a replacement purchased by the Wilders. There are also a couple of custard dishes that went un-noticed as being from the set for decades until Richard Fisher pointed them out, and I spotted what looks like the City water pitcher in an early photo of the dining room at Rocky Ridge but have never seen one on display. I’ve never seen a real “Bismarck plain” goblet from the set before, but other pieces of the “City” or “Crossed Disks” pattern show up frequently on ebay. If you want a bread plate just like Laura’s, look for stippling inside the outlined letters (hers had it) because the plates were made both with and without that detail. I also just realized that the covered butter dish has two handles that are parallel to the table, not vertical like on a pitcher, so I’ve never seen a real butter dish, either. There’s always something to keep you on your toes in the Little House world, isn’t there?

– – – – – – – – –

1885 events:

▪️JANUARY: The new $5000 De Smet graded school building was dedicated on New Year’s Day with quite the fanfare. There was music, prayer, and lots of speeches. The schoolhouse was designed by architect Thomas Wilkin (Laura’s classmate Florence’s father) and built by Louis Sasse who was both a druggist and a builder. The new schoolhouse was 29 x 58 feet, two stories and 26 feet high, with was an addition 10 x 29 feet on each side of the building. There were two halls and two stairways with storage room underneath, two cloak-rooms on the first floor, and a large coal-cellar in the basement. Two square classrooms were on each floor, and two additional recitation rooms were upstairs. Miriam Barrows taught the primary classes (Grace started school for the first time this year), V.S.L. Owen was principal and taught the grammar and high school students, and a third teacher, Elgetha Masters (Gennie’s sister) was hired to teach the intermediate department. By the end of the term, there were 85 students enrolled in the school. – George Masters and family moved back to De Smet and he took charge of the Empire Lumber Company. – Dan Loftus got married. – A series of revival meetings held in the Congregational Church the last week in January.

▪️FEBRUARY: Revival meetings continued at the Baptist Church the first week in February. — Under the auspices of the G.A.R., a militia company was organized in De Smet. Men between ages 18 and 45 could join, and under 18 with written consent of parent(s) or guardian(s). – George Westervelt was started another singing school in De Smet. – George Bradley added a soda fountain to the drug store. — There were dances, masquerade skating parties, lectures, and gatherings of young people on school nights; whether Laura and Almanzo went to any of these is anybody’s guess. – Carter Sherwood took over running the De Smet Leader because Rev. Brown’s son, Mark, was ill with what would turn out to be tuberculosis and would prove fatal. (Ida also had TB, but much later.) — The school adopted a 12-year / 12-grades curriculum, 10 years of which were currently being taught in the school (there were no high school students at the time). It was even more complicated that understanding the grades on a teaching certificate.

▪️MARCH: De Smet was incorporated and became a “city” instead of a “village.” – Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Figures was presented at the skating rink on the 18th. – There was a teachers’ institute for Kingsbury County and neighboring Beadle County held in Iroquois. Mr. Owen and Miss Masters were there, but Laura probably wasn’t. – Revival meetings at by Methodist Episcopal Church. – De Smet had a dramatic society, which performed “Kathleen Mavourneen” – Mary Power was the lead actor. – Charles Ingalls was elected Justice of the Peace for De Smet Township. – George Westervelt conducted a concert by the De Smet Choral Union (his singing school students). There’s a handwritten invitation at Rocky Ridge for “Ye Greate Concert” of the Choral Union for a similar concert in February 1886, which begs the question: when and how many times did Laura and Almanzo sign up for singing school? – Jake Hopp’s brother, Tom, started the Arlington Sun (one of the newspapers Carrie Ingalls spent some time working for); I wonder if Tom was as witty as George??

▪️APRIL – Laura took the teaching exam and was awarded another Third Grade certificate on the 8th. She signed a contract to teach the Wilkin School on the 14th, and taught the school from April 20 to July 10. Laura devoted only a few short paragraphs to the school in These Happy Golden Years.

▪️MAY: Eliza Jane Wilder returned to De Smet after spending the winter in Spring Valley.

▪️JULY: The Glorious Fourth began with the booming of cannons (anvils) in the wee small hours of the morning (sound familiar?), the beginning of a grand celebration of prayers, music, speeches, a parade, and all sorts of races, ending with a grand ball. Charlie Power (of “got up off a pin” fame), came in second ON FOOT against Willard Seelye’s horse in one race. – Co. E., Dakota National Guard had a group photo taken. — Teachers’ Institute beginning July 20; Laura didn’t go because she was done with that sort of thing.

▪️AUGUST: Memorial service for Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (who died in July) held at the Congregational Church on the 8th. — August 25, 1885: Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder were married at the home of The Reverend Edward Brown, with Ida Wright & Elmer McConnell as witnesses.

▪️SEPTEMBER: Gennie Masters began teaching the Wilkin School. – Fall term at De Smet school began on the 11th. Laura was busy being a farm wife. Why in the world did she wait until Almanzo was proposing to say that she didn’t want to marry a farmer?

▪️OCTOBER 31: Caroline Ingalls sold Lot 21, Block 4 and premises (the Ingalls building on the corner of Calumet and Second) to John Carroll for $600. He moved the building to the east end of the lot and facing Second Street in order to build the brick First National Bank of De Smet building (still there).

▪️NOVEMBER: Rev. Brown preached Thanksgiving services at the Baptist Church.

▪️DECEMBER 3, 1885: Ida & Elmer McConnell were married by Rev. Brown, with Laura & Almanzo as their witnesses. – Christmas tree at the Band Hall on Christmas eve, sponsored by the churches of De Smet. The pupils of the De Smet school placed upon the tree handsomely bound books for each teacher: Prof. Owen received a copy of Whittier, Miss Masters, Tennyson, and Miss Barrows, Burns.

📍 LINKS:
Glassware set

Wilkin School

Thomas C. Wilkin family

Rev. Edward Brown / Mark A. Brown

Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works

Masters families

Mary Power / Ed. Sanford

Ida Wright / Elmer McConnell

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime. -Laura Ingalls Wilder, Missouri Ruralist, December 1924

And in her mild, round face and blue eyes there was a girlish simplicity and candor against which time was powerless. To others, [she] might appear a stout, commonplace woman with a certain salty wisdom, but under the pleated bosom of that second-best blue crepe, size 40, a girl’s heart was beating. -Rose Wilder Lane, “Old Fashioned Christmas”

🎄M-E-R-R-Y C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S 🎅
xoxxo, nansie

     

Christmas (BW 4; FB 26; LHP 19, 25; BPC 12-13, 17, 21, 29, 31, 35, 40-41; SSL 3, 19; TLW 9, 11, 16-18, 27-28, 32-33; LTP; THGY; PG)
     barrel (TLW 18, 32; LTP 9; PG), see also barrel
     candy (BW 4, 7; BPC 21; SSL 3, 19, 21; TLW 11, 18; THGY 17, 25)
     “Christmas comes but once a year” (BW 4; SSL 21)
     Christmas in May (TLW 33)
     dinner / feast (BW 4; FB 26; LHP 19; BPC 40; SSL 19, 21; TLW 18, 32-33; THGY 25; PG)
     eve (BPC 12-13, 41; SSL 19; TLW 18; THGY 25)
     holidays (PG)
     horses (BPC 12-13, 16, 20)
     box (BPC 31; LTP 19, 25; THGY 25)
     Laura and Mary make button-string for Carrie (BPC 13)
     Laura and Mary receive a cake, penny, tin cup, and candy (LHP; TLW 11)
     Laura receives Charlotte, candy, and mittens (BW 4)
     Laura receives jewel box, mittens, candy, popcorn ball, and furs (BPC 31)
     Laura receives Tennyson’s Poems (PG) – check TLW
     Laura receives gold bar pin (PG)
     Pa lost in a storm (BPC 40; SSL; TLW 9; THGY 25)
     Pa makes bracket for Ma (BW 4)
     stocking / sock (BW 4; FB 26; LHP 19; BPC 13, 21; SSL 19; TLW 18; THGY 25)
     tar (THGY 25)
     tree (BPC 31, 38; SSL 19-20, 23; LTP 23; THGY 17, 25; PG)
     turkey (LHP 16, 19; TLW 18, 32; PG)
     white (SSL 19)