First of all, I would like to say that I do have a bit of a problem with possessives and possessive plurals on occasion. That being said, it has always bothered me that people commonly use “the Ingalls” when context suggests that they don’t mean one member of the Ingalls family; they mean the whole family. “The Story of the Ingalls” is one example. That one always makes me think of “the Donald.” The booklet isn’t the story of Laura, or just one person with the surname Ingalls, so it should be “The Story of the Ingallses” to be grammatically correct.
Note this from The First Four Years:
The holidays were near and something must be done about them. The Boast and the Ingalls families had spent them together whenever they could. Thanksgiving dinner at the Boasts’, Christmas dinner at the Ingallses’ home. Now with Laura and Manly, there was a new family, and it was agreed to add another gathering to those two holidays. New Year’s should be celebrated at the Wilders’.
Both the handwritten manuscript and the published book read the same, except that in the manuscript, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote that “New Year’s should be celebrated at the new home.”
Christmas dinner at the Ingallses’ home? Thank you, Laura!
