These Happy Golden Years
Laura Ingalls leaves home at age fifteen to teach
her first school in Brewster settlement, twelve
miles from home. Homesick and unsure of herself as
a new and underage teacher, Laura survives the
miserable winter weekdays primarily because
homesteader Almanzo Wilder drives her home to De
Smet every
weekend.
Following this first school, Laura returns to the classroom herself, then she spends part of the summer with seamstress Mrs. McKee and her daughter Mattie while they hold down a claim near Manchester, east of De Smet. Laura cuts her stay with the McKees short in order to spend time with sister Mary, home for the summer from the Blind School in Vinton, Iowa.
Laura teaches in two more one-room schoolhouses: the Perry School, located just south of the Ingalls homestead, and the Wilkins School northwest of town. She also attends classes in the newly built two-story schoolhouse in De Smet, but leaves school before the first class is graduated. Following the almost day-by-day account of her time spent in the Brewster School, less and less is included about subsequent schools, as Laura's attention is elsewhere - with singing school and buggy rides and becoming engaged to Almanzo Wilder.
At age eighteen, Laura leaves both school and teaching to marry the dashing Almanzo Wilder. They move to a little gray house on his tree claim north of town to begin their married life together. The story of their early years of marriage is told in The First Four Years.
The text of These Happy Golden Years was
copyrighted March 17, 1943, by Laura Ingalls
Wilder for an original term of 28 years. The
copyright was renewed by Charles F. Lamkin in 1971
for another term of 28 years and transferred to
Roger Lea Mac Bride by 1973. Mac Bride renewed the
copyright for 19 years in 1976. The Copyright Act
of 1976 extended the renewal term from 28 to 47
years. Public Law 105-298, enacted on October 27,
1998, further extended the renewal term of
copyrights still subsisting on that date by an
additional 20 years, providing for a renewal term
of 67 years and a total protection of 95 years.
Currently, the text of These Happy Golden
Years is protected by copyright until the end
of the year 2038.
