Laura Ingalls Wilder

Hello! My name is Laura Ingalls Wilder. I'd like to tell you the story of my life as a pioneer girl. I was born on February 7th, 1867, in a little log cabin in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. My family was my whole world: my kind and hardworking Pa, my gentle Ma, and my sisters, Mary, Carrie, and later, Grace. Our life was full of adventure. Pa was a true pioneer, always looking for a new place to build a home for us on the American frontier. He taught me to love the wildness of nature, while Ma taught me the importance of a warm, loving home, no matter how simple it was.

When I was a little girl, around 1869, my family packed everything we owned into a covered wagon and traveled to Kansas, which was then Indian Territory. Life on the open prairie was so different from the woods! We didn't stay long, however. We moved again, this time to Minnesota in 1874, where we lived in a dugout home on the banks of Plum Creek. Pioneer life was never easy. We faced terrible blizzards, prairie fires, and even a plague of grasshoppers that ate our entire wheat crop. One of the hardest times came in 1879, when my dear older sister, Mary, became very sick and lost her eyesight. It changed our lives forever, and I knew I had to work hard to help my family.

Our final move was to the Dakota Territory, near the new town of De Smet. I loved school and studied as hard as I could. I wanted to become a teacher so I could earn money to help send Mary to a special college for the blind. I was so proud when I earned my teaching certificate in 1882, when I was only 15 years old! It was a challenging job for someone so young, but I was determined to succeed for Mary. It was during this time that I met a young farmer named Almanzo Wilder. He would drive his horses many miles in the cold to take me home from my teaching job on the weekends. We fell in love while riding in his sleigh under the wide prairie sky.

Almanzo and I were married on August 25th, 1885. We started our own farm, but we faced many hardships, just as my parents had. A fire destroyed our home, and a terrible illness called diphtheria left Almanzo with a permanent limp. We also had a baby son who passed away shortly after he was born, which brought us great sadness. But we also had a great joy: our daughter, Rose, was born in 1886. Life was still a struggle, so to find a new start, in 1894 we moved to Missouri and bought a piece of land we named Rocky Ridge Farm. It was there, in the Ozark hills, that we finally put down roots and built the life we had always dreamed of.

For many years, I was a busy farmer's wife, but I also loved to write. I began writing columns for a farming newspaper called the Missouri Ruralist around 1911. When I was in my sixties, my daughter Rose, who had become a famous writer herself, encouraged me to write down all the stories I used to tell her about my childhood. I started writing about my life in the little log cabin, our journeys in the covered wagon, and all the adventures and challenges my family faced. In 1932, when I was 65 years old, my first book, Little House in the Big Woods, was published. I never expected what would happen next.

I went on to write a whole series of 'Little House' books, sharing the story of my pioneer family with children all over the world. I wanted young people to understand what life was like for the settlers who built America, and to know the importance of courage, love, and family. I lived a long and full life on Rocky Ridge Farm and was 90 years old when my story on this earth came to a close in 1957. Though I am gone, I am so happy that my stories live on, allowing new generations to travel back in time and experience a little piece of the American frontier with me.