WEBVTT - 5. This American Life 0:00:00.760 --> 0:00:08.080 I love this sign of Laura and Almonzo's height. 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:09.639 Almonzo was only five four. 0:00:10.200 --> 0:00:13.160 So here's the great irony of Laura Ingalls Wilderla. On 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:15.840 the one hand, part of the deep magic she works. 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:20.200 The reason so many people, including me, are devoted to 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:22.759 her from childhood is that she's a real person. 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:24.079 I want to stand up against it. 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:28.160 All right, So Laura was four eleven, you're a few 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:29.560 inches taller than Almonzo. 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.720 Wow, the story she wrote actually happened. 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:34.400 Well. 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:37.600 Laura talks about it's half pint. She always talks a 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:39.000 lot in the book about how short she is, and 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:39.479 then when she. 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:41.960 Went to teach school for the first time, how much 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:44.959 how tiny she was in comparison to the students. 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:49.959 She had to teach. You open her books and it's 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:52.560 as though you step into her world and then walk 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:56.400 along with her every step of the way. Eventually her 0:00:56.480 --> 0:01:01.400 story becomes your story, and then you can go out 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:03.720 on the road you can see it all for yourself. 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:08.720 But that really puts it in quick roast. On the 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:15.480 other hand, she's a real person with serious flaws. Discovering 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:19.080 this can be jarring, Like, do you remember the first 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:21.679 time it occurred to you? Your parents were actual people 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:26.120 in the world, with hang ups and flaws in questionable views. 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:31.880 It's shocking and it can be destabilizing. This, I think 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:34.520 is sort of similar to the experience of coming up 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:36.520 against Laura as an actual person. 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:40.600 I had a fantasy as a young child that like, 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:41.680 this was their life. 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:43.320 This was just like Saran Rep. 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:46.600 I was just staring straight through something into the full 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:48.160 life of Laura Ingalls. 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:51.360 That's writer Rebecca Treister, who, like many of us growing up, 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:55.280 myself included, understood the Little House Books to be a 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:59.920 true account, and who, like many of us, was shocked 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:01.840 to discover this wasn't the case. 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:06.000 We went to hear this presentation from a local historian 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:08.440 at a local libraryan Syracuse, and the thing that I 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:10.919 remember most about that was that it was the first 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:12.680 time it was ever explained to me that there'd been 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.960 this gap where baby had died right when where Mary 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:20.320 had gone blind, and this period didn't appear in the books, 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:23.079 and I was kind of gobsmacked by that. 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:28.800 Discovering that there were parts of Laura's life she hadn't 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:31.639 told us about sort of felt like finding out your 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:35.600 parent had a secret family somewhere else, another life entirely 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:39.520 that you knew nothing about. But this revelation comes to 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:44.080 all Little House readers at some point. Maybe it's rereading 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:46.280 the Little House Books to your children because you remember 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:49.400 them as sweet and cozy and safe, and then you 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:53.600 open them up and holy crap, ma said what. Or 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:57.400 maybe thanks to some solid therapy, by the end of 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:00.720 book four, you're beginning to suspect Pop might not actually 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:04.680 be the dazzling hero you've been led to believe. And 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:09.360 then as you go along certain scenes, ones that have 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:13.960 been there all along, start to jump out, like holy cow. 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:18.320 Their lives are filled with danger and deprivation. There's real starvation. 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:23.840 What about those plagues of grasshoppers? Or maybe return to 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:27.200 the Long Winter as I did recently and quickly being 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:30.520 in to wonder if in fact this is a lost 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:32.160 horror story by Stephen King. 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:38.480 The extreme poverty that the family suffers in the book 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:43.080 is softened by Wilder's own affection for the character of 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:48.280 Paw and by the pioneer stoicism and optimism with which 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:52.240 the Ingalls family faces every new challenge. 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.000 I don't think it's possible to fully understand how well 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:59.480 the Little Housebooks were crafted until you realize what was 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:03.520 actually going on, both in Laura's immediate world and in 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:06.440 the America she was living in. Was Laura just trying 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.000 to soften her life story for young readers, or was 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:11.680 she driven by a desire to redeem her beloved father 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:14.280 while also attempting to heal a whole lot of her 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:19.279 own childhood trauma. In this episode, we're going to fact 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:25.480 check Laura, what was true, what was truly fiction, and 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:30.080 what was left out entirely. I'm Glennis McNichol, and this 0:04:30.520 --> 0:05:10.280 is wilder. Despite my childhood desire to reshelve the Little 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.839 House Books into the nonfiction section. Little House on the 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:18.800 Prairie is not a documentary. There is actually a reason 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:23.040 it's fiction, many reasons, And the truth is, if it 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:25.760 was a documentary, I'm not sure many of us could 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:31.120 stand to watch it. Laura and Rose didn't just change 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:36.520 a few details. They switched entire timelines, cut out huge chunks, 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:43.120 combined people, added pets and scenes that didn't actually exist. 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:47.000 If you're a lover of the books, consider this a 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:51.279 trigger warning. If you love Jack the Dog, maybe stop 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:55.400 here before we get into the bigger questions of why 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:58.960 and what else was happening in America outside the Little Houses. 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.080 We're going to walk through the basic chronology of what 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:05.840 actually happened in Laura's life versus what the books said 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:06.400 was happening. 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:07.960 Oh that. 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:13.000 The Little House is no longer in a Big Woods. 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:15.320 It's Enrolling Farm County. 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:16.920 Little House has neighbors now. 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:20.200 Joe and Emily and I have arrived in Pepin, Wisconsin, 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:23.960 birthplace of Laura Ingles Wilder and the setting of her 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.280 first book, Little House in the Big Woods. Unlike the 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:31.120 rest of the Ingles houses, Pepin does not feel remote. 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:34.039 Many of the towns along the river here are holiday destinations. 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:37.760 There's a winery in Pepin. Even on a weekday it 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:41.080 feels bustling. The Little House in the Big Woods is 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:42.640 about a ten minute drive out of town. 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:44.920 It's so tiny. 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:47.880 Yeah, I mean, it's a replica, but it still really 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:52.479 is little. When you get there, there's just a little 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:57.200 log cabin and a very large plaque. The plaque reads 0:06:57.240 --> 0:06:59.120 a lot like the opening of Little House in the 0:06:59.120 --> 0:06:59.720 Big Woods. 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:02.320 Once upon a time, a little girl lived in the 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:05.640 Big Woods of Wisconsin in a little gray house made 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.479 of logs. Writing about herself in her life here, Laura 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:11.240 Ingles Wilder thus began Little House in the Big Woods, 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:13.920 the first of her famous Little House books. 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:17.600 But read further and the facts start to diverge from 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:21.320 the stories readers are familiar with from the books. Laura 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:25.000 was born here on February seventh, eighteen sixty seven. Late 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:26.880 in eighteen sixty eight or in the spring of eighteen 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:29.760 sixty nine, the Ingles family left Wisconsin and traveled by 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:33.400 covered wagonto Kansas. They found Kansas to be Indian Country. 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:36.640 It wasn't Kansas at that point, it was Osage Indian territory. 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:40.480 So shortly after Carrie was born in August eighteen seventy, 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:42.880 Charles Ingles brought his family back to the Little House 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:45.720 near Peppin so Little House in the Big Woods the 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:50.080 book is based on their second sojourn in Wisconsin. And 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:53.600 then because she the same house, and because she wrote, 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.559 did you get all that? Let's go over the story 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:59.680 of Laura's first year's point by point, as I did 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:06.280 with Oh, the Ingles family actually lived in the Big 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:08.080 Woods twice? 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:09.760 How does that work? Explain that? 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:10.040 To me? 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:14.160 She was born there and then when she was about 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:20.760 three years old, Paw relocated them to Indian Territory, which 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:25.960 was the Osage Diminished Reserve and what is now known 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:30.119 as Kansas And they stayed there for about a year 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:34.400 and then they returned to the Big Woods when Laura 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:38.040 was about four, and that's where the series starts. 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:40.840 Okay, that makes sense to me. 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:41.200 Now. 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:45.800 The reason the series starts there is because they didn't 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.520 envision this to be a series of books. They thought 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:53.040 it would be one story and that this was a sweet, 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.840 sort of fairy tale story set in the Big Woods. 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:01.360 So what she's writing is true. But where it gets 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:05.480 complicated is as we know that book was a success, 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:08.640 so when she comes back to write about them being 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:13.120 in Indian Territory so called, they have to sort of 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:17.839 finaggle the timeline and make her older in that book 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:19.280 than she actually was in. 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:22.920 Real life, right, so that it makes sense to go 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:24.400 from Big Woods to the prairie. 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:27.240 Right. Okay, So in real life when they lived in 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:32.040 Indian Territory, Laura was only three and Carrie wasn't born yet. 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:37.400 In the book version, she's six or seven, and Carrie 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:41.880 is a baby. And this is where it gets a 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:46.959 little tricky, because how much can a three year old 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.240 remember about their life sixty years later. 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:55.760 So whose memories are they? Whose stories are they? Are 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:58.960 they Laura's? Are they pause stories? Are they mas stories? 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:02.640 And that's the cup location with memoirs, And this is 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:07.920 fiction written very similar to a memoir, And yes, whose 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:08.640 story is this? 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:12.320 That's yeah? And then don't you bring Rose into the 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:15.800 equation as we have done, and it gets more complicated right. 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:18.040 Right from the very beginning, it was a mix of 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:18.800 fact and fiction. 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:23.720 So if Little House is a mixture of fact and fiction, 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:27.240 how do we separate one from the other. To what 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:29.880 extent can we trust the memories of a sixty five 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.480 year old woman, particularly around events that occurred when she 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:38.000 was quite young. Caroline Fraser pulled us. A prize winning 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:41.800 author of Prairie Fires, a biography of Laura Ingleswilder thinks 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:44.760 Laura was actually blessed with an extraordinary memory. 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:50.920 It's probably a combination of direct memories and reconstructing from 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:57.000 stories she heard. But I think she absolutely remembered going 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:00.800 across the planes, looking out the you know, sort of 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:05.360 hole in the wagon cover and seeing these prairies. 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:09.160 Caroline's referring to the opening chapters of the book Little 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:11.880 House on the Prairie, which in real life took place 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:15.280 when Laura was three years old, because. 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:19.040 I think she totally remembered the scene where they crossed 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:23.679 the river and Pau almost loses control of the wagon 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:25.480 and they're nearly swept away. 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:31.040 It's understandable Laura would remember that. And following this scene 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.520 is an even longer one where beloved family dog Jack 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:36.920 goes missing and is presumed dead. 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:38.480 He's not. 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:47.080 He returns, much to everyone's joy. Okay, are you ready? 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:52.199 It's time to talk about Jack the dog. Throughout the 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:55.760 early books, Jack functions as Laura's protector and best friend. 0:11:56.600 --> 0:12:01.000 He understands her, he was, she writes as especially Laura's 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:04.640 own dog. The opening of the fifth book, by the 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:08.960 shores of Silver Lake, in a chapter titled grown Up, Jack, 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:13.160 now weary from all his travels, dies in his sleep. 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:17.760 Pa assures a devastated Laura that Jack has gone to 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:21.720 the happy hunting grounds. Good dogs have the reward. He says, 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:25.640 Jack's death is a sign for the reader too. Laura 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:29.840 is no longer a child. She's thirteen. Now she's going 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:35.960 to have to fend for herself. This is all made up. 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:40.000 Jack, as he appears in the Little House Books, is 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:43.880 essentially all fictional, and for me that was like devastating. 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:48.360 That's Pamela smith Hill. She's a biographer of Laura and 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:52.760 edited the annotated Pioneer Girl. We talked extensively about Pioneer 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:56.160 Girl in episode two. It's Laura's original memoir for grown 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:59.440 ups on which the children's books were eventually based, and. 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.679 There page two or three of the manuscript I found 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.840 out that Paw traded Jack along with the ponies. 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:10.960 Let's return to on the Banks of Plum Creek. It's 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:13.720 the fourth book in the series, and it's pivotal in 0:13:13.760 --> 0:13:18.160 the fact versus fiction discussion. When the book opens, Laura 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:21.160 is eight years old. The Ingles have just arrived in 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.880 Walnut Grove from Indian Territory. Remember the part at the 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:27.600 beginning when they pull up to the dugout and Paw 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:31.520 trades the ponies Pet and Patty for Oxen. Laura's so 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:35.400 sad to see Pet and Patty go. While in real life, 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:39.959 Pa also traded away Jack. Research suggests it was Rose 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:44.280 who turned Jack into a reoccurring character. In reality, Jack 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:46.600 was likely based on a number of dogs Rose and 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:50.040 Laura both owns during their life. Jack is actually one 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:53.000 of two composite characters that play significant roles in the 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:57.160 Little House series and in Laura's life. The other one 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:01.199 is none other than Laura's iconic arch nemesis, Nellie Olsen. 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:04.960 Nellie Olsen might have been the original mean Girl, but 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.040 she was not actually a real person. She is a 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:11.720 combination of three different mean girls. Laura encountered in her youth, 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:15.680 Nellie Owens, who actually was the daughter of the mercantile 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:19.480 owner in Walnut Grove, a girl named Stella Gilbert, and 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:23.920 finally Genevieve Masters, who was the wealthy daughter of Laura's 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:28.320 school teacher and a member of the Masters family. Remember 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:33.000 that name. On the Banks of Plum Creek alternates between 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:35.840 Laura's struggles as the new girl in school and the 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:40.120 Ingles battle against the natural elements. Halfway through the book, 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:42.880 just as the Ingles are about to harvest a bumper 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:46.840 crop that will finally bring them financial security, plagues of 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:51.840 grasshoppers arrive and destroy everything. Listen to how Laura describes this, 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:54.800 and then imagine having this happened to you as a child. 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:59.480 Something hit Laura's head and fell to the ground. She 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:02.440 looked down and saw the largest grasshoppers She had ever seen. 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.600 They came thutting down like hail. Their body hit the 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:10.600 sun and made darkness. The rasping whirring of their wings 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:13.560 filled the whole air, and they hit the ground and 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:18.360 the house with the noise of a hailstorm. If you 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:21.760 read this book as a child, those grasshoppers are etched 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.640 into your memory, believe it or not. In real life, 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:31.400 it might actually have been worse. Enormous grasshoppers really did 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:35.000 destroy sections of Minnesota between eighteen seventy three and eighteen 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.600 seventy seven. The grasshoppers Laura is writing about other Rocky 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.680 Mountain locusts. They're extinct now, but they measured an inch 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:43.680 and a half long. 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:51.920 The one that hit Plum Creek was the single largest 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:56.400 locust swarm in recorded human history. 0:15:57.160 --> 0:15:59.200 That's environmental historian Chris Wells. 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:06.200 Was one hundred and ten miles wide, eighteen hundred miles long, 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:10.880 and between a quarter mile and a half a mile deep. 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:20.160 That is a area equivalent to Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:23.760 New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:26.760 Vermont com mine. 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:31.400 These swarms didn't just happen once. They happened four years 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:35.480 in a row, and though it definitely sounds biblical, this 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:38.680 wasn't an act of God. It was partly a man 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:43.920 made environmental disaster created by homesteaders manipulating the land for farming. 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:47.280 So it's a combination of people plowing new land and 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:53.400 growing crops and a drought hitting that created sort of 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:59.040 ideal circumstances for the Rocky Mountain locusts to thrive. They ate, 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:04.520 and they ate the leather off of handles. People tried 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:07.800 to protect their gardens with gunny sacks and stuff. They 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:10.919 just ate the gunny sacks and everything inside it. I mean, 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:14.679 you're just talking about having to cover your eyes to 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:19.280 walk around outside to keep the bugs from flying into them. 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:24.960 Railroads having to discontinue service for stretches because so many 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:29.800 grasshoppers got smushed under the wheels that they became too 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:34.320 slick to operate the trains safely. It's hard to describe 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:36.439 the magnitude of these things. 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:42.679 It's not that what Laura describes isn't nightmarish, but somehow 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:46.879 knowing the facts outside her experience of them, knowing just 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:51.000 how terrible it all was, underscores Laura's version in a 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:54.600 way that makes her ability to survive all the more 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:59.000 moving and impactful, and her ability to write about it 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:03.680 in the manner she did all the more impressive. Laura 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:06.919 ends Plum Creek, as she does every book, with a 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:10.800 note of hope. But the truth was things were about 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:14.600 to get even worse. Between the end of Plum Creek 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:17.320 and the opening of the next book, by the Shores 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.479 of Silver Lake are two years of Laura's life that 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:24.800 go untold. She's ten when we leave her and twelve 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:27.679 when we find her again. And it's these two missing 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:31.560 years that first flag to attentive readers something might be 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:36.320 a miss. The truth is these years were so terrible 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:39.200 Laura was never able to figure out how to write 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:42.960 about them for children. But where did the family go 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:45.320 and what happened to them? 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.480 Emily were in Iowa. You hit a new state that 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:58.440 sciences Iowa state line. 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:02.400 Roun Emily, Joe and I have just arrived in Burr Oak, Iowa. 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:04.640 There's a sign that says museum tour begats at brick 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:07.400 building across. 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:12.600 So far this feels like the smallest, most remote place sweement. 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:16.440 Yeah, it has those same flowers, those same orange browns. 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:17.959 Oh Yeah, which that's what I mean. 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:21.200 I wonder if there's too right? Can you guys just 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:22.439 walk down the middle this street for me? 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:27.600 Are you wondering? Wait? What is Burroke, Iowa? There's no 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:30.800 little house anywhere in a place called burr Oak, Iowa. 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:36.720 You are correct. Burr Oak is an incorporated community located 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:41.119 three miles across the Minnesota state line. In eighteen seventy six, 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:44.960 when Laura was nine years old, after two years of 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:49.879 devastating grasshopper plagues, the Ingles family relocated from Walnut Grove, 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:53.800 two hundred and twenty four miles east to Burr Oak, 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.360 Hoping to regain some financial stability. The family went there 0:19:58.400 --> 0:19:59.440 to help run a hotel. 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:03.200 So before we go over to the hotel, just point 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:05.280 out a few things. The Ingles actually lived here in 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:09.280 three different places, starting with a hotel that will be touring. 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:10.200 That's our museum. 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:12.680 Burr Oak has turned the side of the hotel into 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:15.520 a Laura Ingles Wilder Museum, and we're on a tour 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:17.400 of it today with a woman named Barbara. 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:21.480 That's our museum. And then where our construction is taking 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:26.359 place in that empty lot, they lived above a store 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.240 Kimball's store. They ranted rooms up there after they moved 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:30.800 out of the hotel. 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:35.760 In the books, Laura thrives on isolation. She hates being 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:41.120 in crowded places. She and Pa love space. But at 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:44.520 the hotel in burr Oak, the Ingles lived in close quarters, 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:49.720 which oftentimes exposed them to situations that were unsafe, especially 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:51.000 for young girls. 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:54.399 And am i correction thinking they moved out of the 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:58.600 hotel next door because someone had tried to shoot his wife, 0:20:58.720 --> 0:20:59.280 or the wife. 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:01.560 Had tried to shoot the husb that had already happened. 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:04.520 That had already happened. It was not a safe space 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:07.600 necessarily for it. The rough crowd that frequented the hotel 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:10.800 they were living and working in frightened both Laura and Mary. 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:14.600 Even so, the Ingles stuck it out. They desperately needed 0:21:14.600 --> 0:21:16.400 the money they hoped bur Oak would bring them. 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:20.080 They were very overworked and underpaid, and after three months 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:22.640 actually they had been paid it all after three months 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:26.440 of their work. Caroline in a restaurant downstairs in the hotel, 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:29.600 and then Charles for all of his work, so they 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:31.560 knew they were being taken advantage of. 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:34.560 The entire family was put to work in the hotel 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:38.000 including Laura, who was just nine years old. 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.040 Laura wasn't specific about other than what her chores were 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:45.200 and Mary's chores were, and Caroline was running the restaurant, 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:48.760 and it's downstairs. We believe their living space was downstairs. 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:53.200 Mary and Laura washing dishes for the restaurant, setting tables, 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:55.120 sweeping floors, making beds. 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:57.960 We get no sense of this in the books, which 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:01.159 focused almost exclusively on the word Laura does at home 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:04.520 to help the family, but in actual fact, in addition 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:07.720 to all these chores, Laura was also employed at the 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:11.760 hotel as a companion for younger children and aging residents. 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:15.840 The Stedmans that owned this hotel and the Ingles had 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:19.120 come here with them to work together, had a baby 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:23.840 that they were supposed to babysit right thank you with 0:22:23.920 --> 0:22:27.439 the promise of payment by Christmas time, and Missus Stebman 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:28.840 never paid them. 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:33.040 Working hard and not getting paid was a reoccurring issue 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:35.240 for the Ingles in Burr Oak, and it made their 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:40.960 tenuous financial situation even worse. Laura, however, despite her young age, 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:45.760 soon established a reputation as a reliable caretaker. She was 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:48.359 so good at this work that one family asked if 0:22:48.400 --> 0:22:53.440 they could keep her. Literally, this is doctor Starr. 0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:57.879 I think I believe Laura was talking about the doctor 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:01.200 in another context in Pioneer Girl, but she does mention 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:04.320 Missus Starr, who had gone to Ma and asked if 0:23:04.320 --> 0:23:08.200 they could adopt Laura as their own daughter. She wanted 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:11.760 to help her and had her heart set on Laura. 0:23:12.000 --> 0:23:15.880 I I'm terrified that was even over here, right, even 0:23:15.960 --> 0:23:17.640 understand that that was a possibility. 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:22.440 The Stars offered Laura pretty close music, lessons and education, 0:23:23.040 --> 0:23:25.520 who wanted to leave Laura share the property when they died, 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:27.960 just as they would their own girls. 0:23:29.119 --> 0:23:31.920 I love the way Laura talked about it. Ma thank 0:23:32.040 --> 0:23:34.640 Missus Star, but said that she and Pap couldn't possibly 0:23:34.680 --> 0:23:35.159 spare me. 0:23:37.119 --> 0:23:40.880 It is impossible to imagine Pa or Ma ever being 0:23:40.960 --> 0:23:44.240 willing to give up any of their children. One thing 0:23:44.280 --> 0:23:47.880 we do know without question is that Laura was adored, 0:23:49.000 --> 0:23:52.760 but no doubt their quest may have seemed doubly nightmarish 0:23:53.200 --> 0:23:56.040 when you know that the Ingles had only recently lost 0:23:56.080 --> 0:24:00.520 a child on their way to burr Oak. Charles and 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:04.919 Caroline's only son, Charles Frederick Ingles Junior, known to the 0:24:04.920 --> 0:24:08.000 family as Freddie, was born in Walnut Grove in eighteen 0:24:08.080 --> 0:24:11.920 seventy five and died ten months later en route to 0:24:11.960 --> 0:24:17.400 Burr Oak. He's buried somewhere near South Troy, Minnesota, although 0:24:17.480 --> 0:24:21.840 no one knows exactly where. No mention of Freddy is 0:24:21.880 --> 0:24:25.280 made in the Little House Books. It seems Laura couldn't 0:24:25.320 --> 0:24:29.760 bear to relive it. Even in her adult memoir Pioneer Girl, 0:24:30.160 --> 0:24:37.040 she only manages a few lines. Laura writes, little brother 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:40.800 got worse instead of better, and one awful day he 0:24:40.920 --> 0:24:48.760 straightened out his little body and was dead. Six months 0:24:48.760 --> 0:24:53.280 after Little Freddie's death, Grace is born, and somehow her 0:24:53.359 --> 0:24:58.280 name makes more sense knowing about this loss. After nearly 0:24:58.320 --> 0:25:00.919 a year in Burr Oak, on able to dig themselves 0:25:00.960 --> 0:25:03.960 out of the financial hole they were in, Pod decided 0:25:04.000 --> 0:25:08.200 to relocate the family back to Walnut Grove, and then 0:25:08.240 --> 0:25:14.680 everything got worse, much worse. Not long after they returned, 0:25:15.720 --> 0:25:17.200