Peter R. Ingalls Family
"Well, well!" Uncle Peter said. "Isn't there even one stocking with nothing but a switch in it?
My, my, have you all been such good children?"
-Little House in the Big Woods
Peter Riley Ingalls was born October 28, 1833, in Cuba Township (Allegheny County) New York, the eldest of ten children of Lansford Whiting Ingalls and Laura Louise Colby. He had younger siblings Charles (born 1836), Lydia (born 1838), Polly (born 1840), James (born 1842), Docia (born 1845), Hiram (born 1848), George (born 1851), and Ruby (born 1855). A younger sibling died shortly after birth in 1835.
When Peter was a young teenager, the Ingalls family moved to Kane County, Illinois, just west of Chicago. In the early 1850s, they moved to Concord Township (Jefferson County) Wisconsin; Lansford Ingalls bought 80 acres there in 1854. To the south lived the Holbrooks: Frederick, his wife Charlotte (widow of Henry N. Quiner), and her children Henry, Martha, Caroline, Eliza, and Thomas. Charlotte's eldest son, Joseph, married in 1856 and lived several miles away.
There were three marriages between the Ingalls and Quiner families: Henry Quiner married Polly Ingalls in 1859 and Charles Ingalls and Caroline Quiner were married in 1860. Peter Ingalls married Eliza Ann Quiner on June 5, 1861. Eliza was born April 21, 1842.
Lansford Ingalls lost his farm in Jefferson County, and it was sold at sheriff's auction in January 1861. Peter and Eliza apparently lived with his parents for a while in Waterloo, Wisconsin. Daughter Alice Josephine was born there on April 28, 1862. While still living in Jefferson County in 1862, Eliza Ingalls wrote the following to her sister Martha Quiner Carpenter in Pepin County:
...We have had an increase in our family since last we wrote you but I suppose you have heard of it before this time. She is the prettiest little girl you ever saw... Caroline & Charles have been up here to make us a visit [and] went home today.... The baby wants me to take her so I will have to stop writing. Peter will finish this. Eliza Ingalls to her sister Martha -- Crops are very good. Our wheat is just heading out. I can't think of what to write. If I could see you we could find plenty to talk about. – Peter
Peter moved his family to Pepin County, Wisconsin, in the mid-1860s. Daughter Ella Estella was born in Pepin County on January 23, 1865. The family then relocated to Pierce County, where three more children were born: Peter Franklin (November 16, 1866); Lansford Newcomb (April 5, 1870); and Edith Florence (June 29, 1872). Peter Ingalls didn't ever own land in Wisconsin; it is suspected that his family lived with Lansford and Laura Ingalls, or that they rented a house or farm.
Laura Ingalls Wilder first mentioned Peter
Ingalls' family in Little House in the Big
Woods (Chapter 4, "Christmas"),writing that
Uncle Peter and Aunt Eliza and Cousins Alice,
Ella, Peter, and Dolly Varden came to spend the
holiday with Laura's family. In her Pioneer
Girl memoir, Wilder mentioned Cousin Lansford
and wrote that Cousin Edith was called Dolly
Varden because she had a dress made out of that
calico. "Dolly Varden" was both a bright pink and
white print and a style of dress made popular
following the publication of Charles Dickens'
Barnaby Rudge, a novel which included a
character named Dolly Varden.
In 1874, Peter Ingalls moved his family to Zumbro Falls (Wabasha County) Minnesota. Peter purchasing a lot in the original town on the south side of the Zumbro River, where he worked as a laborer and carpenter. Son Edmund Llewellyn was born in Zumbro Falls (August 26, 1880). Following a flood in 1888 which destroyed the Ingalls home, Peter, Eliza, and Edmund (the other children were already married) moved north to Milaca (Mille Lacs County) Minnesota, where Peter Ingalls died in March 1900.
After Peter's death, Eliza Ingalls went to live with daughter Edith in North Dakota. She then moved to Stevens County, Washington, and lived with son Edmund. When he decided to move south, Eliza moved to California and alternated living with daughters Alice and Ella in their homes. Eliza Ingalls died June 6, 1931, in Eagle Rock, California; she was buried in Hemet.
Ingalls, family of Peter
