Biography of Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder
Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder was born on February 7, 1867 in Pepin, Wisconsin. Laura’s parents
were Charles Ingalls and Caroline Quiner Ingalls. Laura had three sisters, Mary, Carrie and Grace. Laura
did have a brother; however, he died at the age of nine months.
Her many years of traveling began in 1874 where Laura and her family left the Big Woods of
Wisconsin for Walnut Grove, Minnesota. They left Walnut Grove and moved to Burr Oak, Iowa only to
return to Walnut Grove in the fall of 1877. In 1879, the Ingalls family moved again, this time to a
homestead in the Dakota Territory. Laura’s parents remained in the Dakotas until they died.
Laura attended regular school whenever possible. However, because of her family's frequent
moves, she was largely self-taught. In 1882, at the age of fifteen, she received her teaching certificate. For
three years, Laura taught at a small country school a dozen miles from her home in De Smet and boarded
with a family who lived nearby.
During her time teaching in De Smet, Laura became acquainted with Almanzo Manly Wilder,
who had settled near De Smet in 1879 with his brother Royal. After courting for a little more than two
years, they were married on August 25, 1885. Laura Wilder then quit teaching to help her husband on
their farm.
Rose, their only surviving child was born on December 5, 1886. The Wilders faced many
hardships while settling their new land. In August 1889, Wilder gave birth to a baby boy who died
shortly after, an event that never appeared in any of her books. Manly came down with diphtheria, which
left him partially paralyzed. Finally, their house, built by Manly, burned to the ground.
On July 17, 1894, the Wilders began their journey to Mansfield, Missouri, the place they would call home
for the rest of their lives. There they established a farm and named it Rocky Ridge.
By the mid-1920s Wilder and her husband were doing little of their own farming on Rocky Ridge,
which allowed her to spend most of her time writing. Around this same time, Rose returned to Missouri,
built a new home for her parents on Rocky Ridge, and moved into the old farmhouse. She also began
encouraging her mother to write the story of her childhood.
Wilder completed her first autobiographical work in the late 1920s. Entitled Pioneer Girl, it was a
first-person account of her childhood on the frontier from the time she was three until she reached the age
of eighteen. After Rose edited the book, Wilder submitted it to various publishers under the name Laura
Ingalls Wilder. But no one was interested in her chronicle, which contained plenty of historical facts
about her childhood but little in the way of character development.
Wilder changed her writing approach, the "I" in her stories became "Laura," and the focus moved
from the story of one little girl to the story of an entire family's experiences on the new frontier. Wilder
also decided to direct her writing specifically at children. Although she sometimes streamlined events,
created or omitted others entirely (such as the birth and death of her brother), and opted for happier
endings, she wrote about real people and things that had actually happened. In 1932, at the age of sixty-
five, Wilder published the first of her eight "Little House" books, Little House in the Big Woods. Wilder was
seventy-six years old when she finished the final book in her "Little House" series.
Manly died in 1949 at the age of ninety-two on their Rocky Ridge Farm. Wilder was ninety when
she died at Rocky Ridge Farm on February 10, 1957. After her death, her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane,
edited the diary her mother had written as she and Manly traveled to Missouri. The resulting book, On
the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894, was published in 1962.
Books Written By Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little House in the Big Woods- 1932
Farmer Boy- 1933
Little House on the Prairie- 1935
On the Banks of Plum Creek- 1937
By the Shores of Silver Lake- 1939
The Long Winter- 1940
Little Town on the Prairie- 1941
These Happy Golden Years- 1943
The First Four Years- 1971 (published posthumously)
On the Way Home- 1962 (with a setting by Rose Wilder Lane and published posthumously)
West From Home- 1972 (edited by Roger Lea MacBride and published posthumously)
As the Days Pass- 1975 (unedited and published posthumously)
Little House in the Ozarks: The Rediscovered Writings - 1991 (edited by Stephen W. Hines and published
posthumously)
Classroom Activity
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books are autobiographies of her growing up in the west. The students
will brainstorm using graphic organizers to develop their own autobiography, working on the 6 + 1 trait
writing skills.
Works Cited
(2004). Retrieved June 2, 2009, from Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Museum:
[Link]
Children's Literature. (2004). Hays, Kansas, United States of America.
Wikimedia Foundation Inc. (2009, June 1). Wikipedia. Retrieved June 2, 2009, from Laura Ingalls Wilder:
[Link]
Wilder, L. I. (1994). The Complete Little House Nine-Book Set. New York: Harper.