Little Author in the Big Woods Read online

  Even though Laura had accepted Manly’s ring, she still had doubts about being a farmer’s wife. From Ma’s experience, she knew all too well just how hard a life it was: lots of work, and very little money. Manly listened to her concerns and asked that they give farming a try for three years. If they had not succeeded by then, he’d give it up.

  His words must have calmed Laura’s fears. On August 25, 1885, Laura and Manly drove to Reverend Brown’s house and were married.

  Laura was too independent of spirit and mind to accept the word obey in the wedding ceremony, and so she did not utter it. Manly agreed with her.

  After the wedding, they drove to Ma and Pa’s for dinner. Laura might have had mixed feelings about starting a new chapter in her life; she loved Manly but would miss her parents and sisters very much. When the time came, she bravely kissed them all good-bye. She was a married woman now, and she went home to the house that Manly had built for them, just two miles north of De Smet.

  Laura loved the little gray frame house. There were windows in the kitchen, the living room, and the bedroom. In the pantry was a special cabinet Manly had designed and made. Now that Laura would be running her own house, she could put all Ma’s lessons to good use.

  Despite her earlier doubts, Laura was excited about the farm she and Manly were planning. To save money, Laura started helping with the work. She learned to use different machines and rode the corn binder, driving six horses. When they weren’t working, they visited friends or Ma and Pa in De Smet. They went to concerts and church socials. Sometimes they saddled up their two swift ponies, Trixie and Fly, and rode off across the prairie. Other times, they took buggy rides. Laura loved the red and pink wild roses blooming all around her.

  In the summer of 1886, Manly looked over his wheat field with satisfaction and pride. He had never seen such a promising crop. But in August, before he could harvest the wheat, a terrible storm blew across the prairie, and hail came pounding from the sky. The wheat field was destroyed. There would be no big harvest that year. He and Laura were bitterly disappointed.

  But there was good news too. Laura was expecting a baby, so she and Manly had to change their plans. On their first anniversary, they mortgaged the little gray house and moved into a shanty on another part of their claim in order to save money. Manly continued to farm, making plans for the next year. Laura could not help anymore. She had to rest while she waited for the baby.

  On December 5, 1886, Laura gave birth. Thinking of the lush flowers she had seen over the summer on her rides with Manly, she called the baby Rose. Rose was a big, strong baby, and Laura was grateful for that. But the spring and summer of 1887 were again disappointing. The crops were poor, and a fire destroyed the barn and a lot of the hay. Laura thought they should give up farming. Pa had, and he and Ma now lived full-time in town, where he worked as a carpenter.

  Manly was still not ready to give up. He told Laura they needed to keep working and be patient. The next year, though, things got even worse. Laura and Manly came down with diphtheria. Diphtheria is a bacterial infection spread by coughing or sneezing. It affects the nose and throat, and the disease makes breathing difficult. Today there is a vaccine that prevents the spread of diphtheria. Back in Laura’s time, the vaccine did not exist and the disease could be serious, even fatal.

  They were nursed by Manly’s brother Royal. Little Rose was taken to town, where her loving grandparents watched her. Even though both Laura and Manly survived, their recovery was slow, and Manly was never the same afterward. His hands and feet were partially crippled, and walking was difficult for him. He could no longer manage the 320 acres, so he sold part of it, and he and Laura returned to the gray house. Peter Ingalls, Laura’s cousin, moved to De Smet. He was a big help to Manly, and they were able to plant some crops.

  The summer of 1889 was hot and dry. The wheat and oats withered, shriveled, and finally died. Laura and Manly had one good thing to look forward to: another baby was on the way. Sadly, he was born one stifling day and died 12 days later; Laura never even gave him a name.

  For the remainder of the summer, Laura mourned her loss. She wanted only to rest. She began to rely on Rose, who was almost four, for simple chores, like feeding the stove with hay sticks. One day, the hay Rose carried caught fire. Terrified, she dropped it, and the fire immediately spread. Laura couldn’t even rally to put out the fire. All she could do was escape with Rose. By the time Manly rushed in from the field and the neighbors came to help, it was too late. The little gray house had burned to the ground.

  Manly built a shanty near the scorched, blackened place where the house had been. But it was only a temporary dwelling. There was another drought, and Manly still was not fully recovered. He and Laura decided they would go to Minnesota, to his father’s thriving farm. Help was always needed there. The Wilders packed up what little they had left after the fire and traveled by covered wagon to Minnesota.

  Manly’s family welcomed them with open arms, and Laura quickly grew to love her in-laws. Laura and Manly stayed for about a year but were advised that a warmer climate might be good for Manly’s crippled hands and feet. Laura’s cousin Peter had moved to Florida. He wrote, urging them to come. They decided to give it a try. Once again, Laura and Manly were on their way. This time they went by train, well stocked with food given to them by the generous Wilders.

  To Laura, Florida might as well have been the moon. With a mixture of fascination and revulsion, she described a place “where butterflies are enormous, where plants … eat insects … and alligators inhabit the slowly moving waters.” While she tried to adjust, Manly may have worked in the lumber camps near Westville, or he may simply have tried to recover his strength. But Laura could not get used to Florida.

  The moist, dense air made her feel sick. Their new neighbors shunned the Northerners, whom they called Yankees. She took to carrying a revolver in her skirt pocket and did not let Rose out of her sight. Laura longed to go home.

  So in 1892, after less than a year, the Wilders packed up again and took the train back to De Smet. They stayed with Ma and Pa before moving to a house just a block away. Manly did carpentry or painting, or he worked as a clerk in Royal’s variety store. Laura worked at a dressmaker’s shop, where she earned $1.00 a day. Little Rose stayed with her grandparents. Ma taught her to sew and knit. At the age of five, Rose started attending the De Smet school, and like her mother, Laura, she was immediately recognized as an unusually gifted student. Laura was proud of her.

  At night, after work, Laura and Manly tried to come up with another plan. Large-scale farming was out of the question now. If they were going to farm, it would have to be on a much smaller scale. And they needed a place that was not too cold. They started to hear about land in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. One of their neighbors had visited the Ozarks. When he came back, he brought a shiny red apple. Laura had never seen an apple so big or so red. Surely that must be a sign of something good. She and Manly agreed. Missouri was the place to be.

  SIX

  A Budding Writer, and Rose Leaves Home

  1894−1903

  Rocky Ridge, Missouri

  On a morning in July of 1894, Laura, Manly, and Rose were ready for their trip to the Ozarks. There had been a big farewell dinner at Ma and Pa’s the night before. The family had all gathered together; even Mary was home from school. After they ate, Pa sang and played the fiddle.

  Laura was nervous about the long ride in the black painted wagon. But she was somewhat comforted by the knowledge that she had a $100 bill stashed safely away among her things. This was money she had earned working for the dressmaker, and she was counting on using it to buy a piece of the inexpensive land available in Mansfield, Missouri. One other comforting thing she had with her was a small diary, purchased for 5 cents. She thought it would be interesting to keep a record of her travels.

  The Wilders were joined on the trip by the Cooleys, a family they had met in De Smet. Starting from De Smet, the two families went south to
Yankton, South Dakota, which was on the Missouri River. They had to cross the slow, muddy river on a ferry. They continued south, and then east, through Nebraska and Kansas. The prairie was hot and dry, as it always was in the summer. In her diary, Laura wrote that the temperature often reached 100 degrees or more.

  On August 22, they left Kansas and crossed the Missouri state line. Here was a big change. Missouri was rolling and green. The hot, dry wind became a cool, gentle breeze. There were trees, not just dry plains. Laura wrote letters back to her family in De Smet, describing everything. In her signature bright, lilting style, she also wrote to Carrie Sherwood, editor of the De Smet News and Leader. The letter ran in the paper, and Ma clipped it and sent it to Laura, who was so proud of her very first publication.

  After weeks on the road, the Wilders and the Cooleys reached Mansfield. The Cooleys went off to a hotel. They were going to be innkeepers. The Wilders camped out, looking for a farm. Almost immediately, Laura fell in love with an abandoned little farm about a mile outside of town. Manly thought it looked neglected. Laura saw the potential in the land and the apple orchard. Using the $100 bill as a down payment on the $400 farm, she persuaded Manly to see things her way. They paid the bank, and the place was theirs. Because of all the rocks on the property, Laura called it Rocky Ridge Farm.

  They moved in right away. There was a log cabin already built. It had no windows, so light came in from the chimney, or through chinks in the mud that held the walls together. Laura and Rose worked to make the cabin comfortable and pretty, while Manly chopped down trees, both to clear the land and to build up a store of wood for the winter.

  The Wilders planned to grow fruit and raise chickens and cattle. They saw farming as a joint effort, one in which a man and a woman worked side by side, together. The same woman who did not want to promise to obey was one who saw herself as an equal. Manly’s hands and feet had improved, and he could do more work now. Together, he and Laura cleared the brush and timber from their land. They used some of the fallen trees to make fence rails and to build a henhouse and a barn. Manly sold some of the wood for 75 cents a load. That money, along with the money Laura earned from selling eggs, kept them going that first year.

  In the spring, they planted corn and a garden. Rose helped by gathering eggs and the wild huckleberries and blackberries. At age 8, Rose was old enough to take buckets of berries into town to sell for 10 cents a gallon.

  Because Rocky Ridge Farm was so close to town, Rose was able to go to school. Just as Caroline had communicated her love of books and learning to her daughters, Laura did the same for her own daughter. Everyone thought Rose was the smartest student in the class. She was an excellent reader and speller, too. She brought home books like The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, The House of the Seven Gables, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, and Pride and Prejudice from the school library. At night, Laura read them aloud.

  On Sundays, there was no school or work, and the family relaxed. If the weather was nice, they had picnics with the Cooleys in the ravine near their cabin. Laura and Manly taught Rose to ride a horse, and they bought her a donkey named Spookendyke. Rose was supposed to ride him to school and back, but he was sluggish and stubborn. How she hated those rides!

  Life at Rocky Ridge was good. Laura and Manly were able to buy another six acres of land as well as a cow and a pig. Laura and Rose churned butter that they sold for 10 cents a pound. And they had extra vegetables to sell to town folk. The orchard was doing well, thanks to all the research Laura and Manly did about apple growing. They added peach and pear trees and planted strawberries and raspberries in between the rows.

  They were able to expand the log cabin too. First Manly added a frame room with actual windows and a door. Later he and Laura selected a new building site a short distance from the log cabin. Manly then removed the new room from the old cabin and, using big logs, rolled it onto the new site. When that was done, he built another new room right next to it and joined the two rooms together. Up above he created a sleeping loft for Rose. The old log cabin was turned into a barn.

  Life at Rocky Ridge was not all work. There were corn-husking parties, barn dances, and quilting bees. Laura loved to dance. “There is always a little music in my feet,” she said. These gatherings included an abundance of food. Laura’s contribution was usually gingerbread. She used an old recipe of Ma’s; the result was soft, moist, and delicious. At home, Laura made gingerbread for special occasions like birthday or holiday dinners.

  One year, Rose asked if she could make the gingerbread for Manly’s birthday. Laura said yes, she was old enough now. Rose was excited and vowed to be extra careful in the baking. Sometimes when Laura left her to watch the bread, Rose got caught up in a book and the bread burned. Not today. She made the gingerbread, and when she took it from the oven, she thought it looked every bit as good as Laura’s. Laura and Manly were away for the day, but how proud Laura would be when Rose served the gingerbread.

  Then Rose was surprised by an unexpected call from the minister. She served him a piece of the gingerbread and noticed he had an odd expression on his face as he ate. He said no to a second piece. Rose wondered about this until she and her parents ate their own pieces later that evening. Rose had mistakenly used cayenne pepper instead of ginger! The gingerbread burned their mouths, but they had a good laugh about it.

  During the late 1890s, Mansfield was growing fast. There were general stores, hotels, a bakery, a drugstore, an opera house, flour mills, and a bank. Although Rocky Ridge was prospering, it was not yet a fully self-supporting farm. Laura and Manly decided to leave it for a while, and they rented a little yellow house just outside of town. Manly went to work as a drayman, or deliveryman, hauling loads and picking up goods transported by railroad. Laura took in boarders and started making country-style meals using ingredients from the farm, like fresh eggs, milk, fruit, vegetables, and chickens raised on Rocky Ridge. She served them to the travelers staying at the yellow house and invested her earnings back in the farm. As soon as they had enough money, they would return.

  Rose became a town girl. She was not sorry to say good-bye to her stubborn old donkey. But she was sad to think she would have to end her studies after eighth grade. The school in Mansfield did not go any higher, and while there were private academies in other towns, Laura and Manly could not afford the tuition.

  In the summer of 1898, Grandpa and Grandma Wilder came for a long visit. They were heading south, to settle in Crowley, Louisiana. Manly’s sister Eliza Jane had married the wealthy owner of a rice plantation. Before he left, Grandpa bought the yellow house and turned the deed over to Manly.

  Laura’s family was doing well too. Ma and Pa wrote to say that they were snug and comfortable in their house in De Smet. Mary lived with them now. She knew Braille, a system of raised dots that enabled blind people to read, and she was a big help to Ma with the housework. Carrie worked at the De Smet News and Leader office. She, too, lived at home with her parents. Grace was a country schoolteacher, and in 1901 she married a man named Nat Dow.

  In the spring of 1902, things took a sharp turn for the worse. Ma wrote to say Pa was suffering from heart failure. Laura left Rose in charge of the household and quickly got ready to travel back to De Smet. She arrived in time to see Pa, who lingered briefly and then died in June. Ma and all the girls were with him until the end.

  Laura mourned her beloved Pa. She had so many fine memories of him. In all her books, Pa is shown as kind, loving, cheerful, and fun. He told stories. He played the fiddle. He could hunt, trap, and build or fix just about anything. Now he was gone.

  Still grieving, Laura stayed in De Smet for a while before going back home. She missed her father but took comfort in her husband and daughter. Yet Rose was soon ready to leave Mansfield. Her aunt Eliza Jane had invited her to Crowley, Louisiana. If she lived in Crowley, she could go to high school and even study Latin. Laura could see how much the opportunity meant to Rose, so she and Manly agreed to allow Rose t
o live in Crowley for a year. A brilliant student, Rose crammed four years of Latin into one, and she graduated from high school in 1904. At the ceremony, she recited an original Latin poem she had written. Clearly, Rose was a very bright girl, with many opportunities open to her.

  But once she was back in Mansfield, Rose’s opportunities seemed to shrink. Although she was a high school graduate, she could not get a job. Rose wanted to help her parents, who were still struggling to make ends meet. Without a job, that was not possible. And she wanted to go to college. How would she manage that?

  Then she saw her chance. The depot master in town agreed to teach her and his own daughter telegraphy. The electric telegraph was a communication system that transmitted electric signals over wires from location to location that translated into a message. Long before the Internet, fax machines, or the telephone, telegraphed messages were the way people communicated over long distances.

  Rose picked up the skill easily. She got a job as a telegraph operator in Kansas City, Missouri, for $2.50 a week. That was enough money to support herself and to help her parents, too, so at the age of 17, Rose left home.

  SEVEN

  Building the Dream House

  1904−1924

  Rocky Ridge Farm, Missouri

  After Rose moved to Kansas City, Laura and Manly remained in the little yellow house. But when Manly’s parents died and left him $500, they decided to sell it and make some improvements to the house at Rocky Ridge Farm. Laura had so many ideas. She was particularly eager to use the materials found on the land, like the rocks and timber. So she sketched out her plans for a ten-room farmhouse with four porches, a beamed parlor, a library, and a staircase that led to the second level.