George Whiting Ingalls
Laura could not keep her feet still. Uncle George looked at her and laughed. Then he caught
her by the hand and did a little dance with her,
in the corner. She liked Uncle George - Little
House in the Big Woods, Chapter 8, "Dance at Grandpa's"
George Whiting Ingalls was born July 15, 1851, in Concord Township (Jefferson County) Wisconsin, the ninth of ten children of Lansford Whiting Ingalls and Laura Louise Colby. He had older brothers Peter (born 1833), Charles (born 1836), James (born 1842), and Hiram (born 1848), and older sisters Lydia (born 1838), Polly (born 1840), and Docia (born 1845). Younger sister Ruby was born in 1855. An older sibling had died shortly after birth in 1835.
Three years before George's birth, his father had purchased 80 acres on the Oconomowoc River in Jefferson County. When George was ten, his father lost his farm, and it was sold at sheriff's auction in January 1861. George moved with his parents and some of his siblings to Pepin County, Wisconsin, where Lansford Ingalls purchased 80 acres adjoining that of his son James. In 1868, Lansford sold his Pepin County property and moved to Pierce County; he later relocated to Burnett County, Wisconsin.
Little is known of George's life as a young man. Although Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in Little House in the Big Woods that her Uncle George had "run away to be a drummer boy in the army, when he was fourteen years old" (which would have been circa 1865, see Chapter 8, "Dance at Grandpa's"), this was not the case. Although James and Hiram Ingalls enlisted in the Union Army in January 1865, there is no record of George Ingalls serving in the Civil War. There are family stories that at one time, George Ingalls worked on or ran a ferry boat crossing Lake Pepin.
June 11, 1876, George Ingalls married Julia E. Bard in Alden (Polk County) Wisconsin. Julia was the daughter of Ephraim Bard and Mariette Card; she was born July 15, 1869, in Eaton County, Michigan. While most "Little House"® fans are aware of the three marriages between the Ingalls and Quiner families (Charles Ingalls and Caroline Quiner, Peter Ingalls and Eliza Quiner, Henry Quiner and Polly Ingalls), there were also marriages between the Ingalls and Card/Bard families. The same day George and Julia married, Julia's sister Hattie married George's nephew, Isaac Clough, son of Lydia Ingalls Clough and her first husband, Robert F. Clough. The couples were close friends and were married by the same Justice of the Peace; they may have had a double wedding. Later, Mariette Card's brother, Joseph, married George Ingalls' sister, Ruby. In addition, the daughter of Lydia Ingalls Stouff by her second marriage to Joseph Stouff, Minnie Bell Stouff, married James Phillips, a son of Joseph Card's sister, Eliza Jane Card Phillips.
At the time of his marriage, George Ingalls was
a farmer living in Rock Elm Township (Pierce
County). George and Julia settled in Alden,
Wisconsin. The couple had several children, all of them dying shortly after birth. Their next child lived for a year, but when they took him to visit relatives one winter, he was so tightly bundled that he smothered. Julia Ingalls was distraught over the deaths of her children, and in 1888,
she was admitted to the Wisconsin
State Hospital for the Insane at Mendota. Five years later,
she was transferred to the Dunn County Asylum
for the Chronic Insane in Red Cedar Township (Dunn
County) Wisconsin. Julia Ingalls died
there in May, 1910.
In the 1880s, brothers Hiram and George Ingalls filed homestead claims in Oakland Township (Burnett County) Wisconsin - both filing in Section 35. Their farms were located northwest of the current town of Webster, south of Mud Lake and between Devil's Lake and Connor's Lake. George Ingalls died February 15, 1901. He was buried in Orange Cemetery, located east of Devil's lake on land donated for use as a cemetery by his brother Hiram. Lansford and Laura Ingalls - and Hiram Ingalls and family - are also buried here.
Ingalls, George Whiting, Laura's uncle (BW 8, 10; SSL 1; THGY 13)
