During her 1931 visit to De Smet, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Grace Ingalls Dow visited Wilmarth’s store. Laura wrote: “They didn’t know me of course and I didn’t care to know them.”
This wouldn’t have been the Hard Winter Wilmarths: Mr. Wilmarth was dead, and Mrs. Wilmarth was living in Minnesota with family. The Wilmarth running the grocery store in De Smet was George’s brother, Delbert, not to be confused with the Delbert Wilmarth who was (but couldn’t have been) one of the “small Wilmarth boys” from The Long Winter (see Chapter 9, “Cap Garland“).
What fault in the world could Laura have found in Delbert Wilmarth? He wasn’t exactly her school chum, being eleven years older than she. Then again, surely he and Almanzo had reason to cross paths. The Wilders and Wilmarths were married the same year, though. In December 1885, Delbert married Nora Pierson, sister of De Smet liveryman John Pierson.
The Wilmarths were great friends of Mary and E.P. Sanford, the Hopps, Loftuses, and Tinkhams. Maybe that explains it. Once Laura married, she was no longer a town girl, having “married a farmer, who’s always in the dirt.”
