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​​[00:00:04] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show, and I am so excited to have the opportunity to have John Notgrass join me today and have a conversation about one of my favorite authors, Laura Ingalls Wilder. I’m excited for you all to join us for this conversation. I’ve been waiting months for this. I’m going to let John introduce himself.

[00:00:26] John Notgrass: Sure. Hi, Gretchen. Great to be with you today. I am John Notgrass. I live in the St. Louis area. I am the son of Ray and Charlene Notgrass, who taught me and gave me a love of learning when I was growing up in their home, and I’m thankful for the opportunity I have now to spend time with my children and teach them to enjoy some of the things I love.

It’s funny that our children don’t always love the same things that we love, and so that can be disappointing sometimes. Something that we get excited about, our children don’t quite have the same passion. That’s one of the beauties, too, of being individuals created in God’s image. Each of us has our own unique talents and opportunities and interests. Part of our job as parents is to help our children identify that for themselves.

I live in the St. Louis area with my wife and our two kids, who are 12 and 9, and I love to talk about history. That’s one of my passions. I work with Notgrass History, but I enjoy learning about history even when I’m not on the clock, even just on the side. One of my other passions is historic dancing. I really enjoy English country dancing and contra dancing. I’m in a group where we dress up in historic costumes and demonstrate dances for groups. Even when I’m in my free time, I like to learn about history and share about history with other people. I love to talk about Laura Ingalls Wilder, which is our topic for today.

[00:01:48] Gretchen: That’s really interesting about your dancing. Do your children participate in that as well?

[00:01:54] John: The 12-year-old is starting to come to a few of them and is showing a little interest. My 9-year-old likes to dance at home, but is still shy about dancing in public. [chuckles]

[00:02:04] Gretchen: All in good time, right?

[00:02:05] John: Yes.

[00:02:06] Gretchen: It all comes together. John, tell me how, being the child of historians, obviously, there’s no way you could escape a love of history, but how did you develop this particular love for Laura?

[00:02:22] John: I’ve been fascinated with the lives of individual people. I’ve enjoyed reading biographies of people, some famous people, some not so famous people over many years of my life. In the early 2000s, I started developing historical programs where I dressed in costume and told the story of different people. One of those is about my grandfather’s World War II experience. We have his actual uniform that he got at the end of his service in World War II, and he took lots of photographs while he was in the army in New York and Europe. I put together a program where I tell his story. I’ve done other programs about Charles Wesley, the hymn writer, and King Alfred, the Saxon king from the Middle Ages.

Then a few years ago– I’d been interested in Laura for a long time, but I especially got interested in the music that she talks about in her books. She mentions 127 different songs, which span a wide time period and a wide variety of genres. Her dad, Charles Ingalls, was an amazing musician who learned lots of tunes. There was no recorded music at that time. You had to either listen to somebody else play the song or get the sheet music. Sheet music was extremely popular during Laura’s life. One song might sell hundreds of thousands of copies around the country. That was a popular way for people to learn about new songs and to have those distributed around the country so people could learn them and perform them at home.

In 2020, right before the pandemic, I had developed this program where I put together pictures that our family had taken during our travels around seeing the sites where Laura lived and then combining songs with that. That was just a way for me to express my interest in music and then try to communicate some of the lessons that Laura Ingalls Wilder had shared during her life. I’ve enjoyed sharing that with several groups over the past few years, building on decades of interest in Laura since my mom read the books to us when we were homeschooling.

[00:04:22] Gretchen: I think my image of Little House with the bread baking and the family sitting around and reading together was what I expected homeschooling to be. It’s not what my actual experience was, but my kids all do have fond memories of reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I thought my last child, who’s 19 years younger than my eldest, would have forgotten those books because we read them when he was very young. He spit out about nine things at the dinner table last night that he remembered from the book. I thought, okay, we really did a good thing here because he was about four when we read through them the last time. That was very cool. Where shall we go today? You have a PowerPoint to share with us.

[00:05:05] John: Sure. I have some slides I’m going to share. If you’re watching on video, you can enjoy the pictures. If you’re listening just the audio, I’ll try to make sure you don’t miss anything important by explaining what we’re talking about as we go through it.

Laura published her first book, Little House in the Big Woods , when she was 65 years old. I think that’s a great lesson to any of us that it’s never too late to pursue a dream or to try something new. I really admire Laura for putting herself out there. When she wrote the first book, she didn’t know if anybody would read it, but it immediately caught on and became extremely popular. Her publisher wanted her to write another one. Then eventually there was a series of books that we know and love as the Little House books.

Little House in the Big Woods came out in 1932, talks about her early childhood in Wisconsin. Farmer Boy came out the next year talking about her husband Almanzo’s experience growing up in New York. Little House on the Prairie describes their move to Kansas. That came out in 1935.

If you study the real life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, you’ll see that some of the details in the Little House books do not exactly match up. Laura and her daughter Rose, who helped her put the stories into sequence, they did change some of the timelines, some of the details. Laura said that the core things, the things that she talks about in the book, were based on what actually happened. There are some chronological differences that you’ll see if you dig into some of the details of her life.

They moved to Kansas when she was about two years old, and so she makes herself a little older in the book, just to describe their interactions with the Osage people there, some of the feelings. Then they actually moved back to Wisconsin for a while before settling in Minnesota, which she talks about in On the Banks of Plum Creek.

Laura and Mary, the older sister, were both born in Wisconsin, and then Carrie was born while they lived in Kansas, and then they settled in Minnesota. Then Laura does not talk about a difficult time in her family’s life when they lived in Iowa for a while. That summer before they moved to Iowa, she had a little brother, Freddie, who died when he was just a few months old. She chose not to write about that part in her book. Her youngest sister, Grace, was born while they lived in Iowa.

Then they headed out to Dakota Territory, what became South Dakota, which she talks about in the next four books, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, and These Happy Golden Years.

It’s fascinating that all of these books came out during the Great Depression and World War II. I imagine a lot of people reading those and finding some comfort, getting away from some of the difficulties they were facing during that time and thinking back to what may have seemed like a simpler time, a more idyllic time.

Of course, for the people who lived in the past, they didn’t think of themselves as living in the past, as David McCullough says. They were living in the present, and so they didn’t know what was coming up and how things would change technologically or socially. It’s sometimes easy to look at the past with rose-colored glasses and forget about some of the difficulties, the diseases and the grasshopper plagues and all the difficulties that people faced back then. There were also beautiful things, too, even in the midst of those difficulties, as we see in the Little House books about Laura’s family struggling together, learning together, moving around the country together, and making lots of beautiful memories together.

You can visit many of the sites around the country where Laura and Almanzo lived during their lives, and our family has made wonderful memories traveling to most of these sites. We’ve had four different generations over the years, from my mom’s mom down to my children and my nieces and nephews have been to various sites. That’s been a fun part of our family story for going on 30 years now, that we’ve gotten to make those trips together. Here are some pictures from our time doing that.

I really appreciate the people who work at these historic sites. Many of them are volunteers who just are dedicated to preserving the story of Laura and Almanzo and their families and trying to help us understand what it was really like to live in those places.

[00:09:23] Gretchen: Which created the most memories for you, or which did you find the most fascinating of all those different ones?

[00:09:29] John: Yes, I’ve gotten that question before. It’s hard to pick a favorite. If you were only able to go to one site, I would say Mansfield, Missouri, where Laura and Almanzo lived for most of their married life together. That’s one wonderful place where you can see lots of family artifacts and see copies of Laura’s book in different languages. They have the biggest museum, the most going on there.

Almanzo’s home in New York is also a wonderful place. That’s one that’s been preserved on the same location and it’s much as it was when Almanzo lived there. You get a glimpse of what life was like in the 1860s when Almanzo was growing up there. Of course, the sites in Kansas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, all have different things to recommend them too. If you had to pick one, I would say the one in Mansfield, Missouri. That’s where I got to go with my kids a few years ago after we read the books together as a family. That was special to take it and see it through their eyes and just to hear their little voices talking about Laura Ingalls Wilder was a special part of my life.

[00:10:40] Gretchen: Awesome.

[00:10:42] John: Laura’s dad, Charles, was born in New York in 1836. His family moved to Illinois when he was about 10, and then they settled in Wisconsin. That’s where they met the Quiner family. Caroline Lake Quiner was born in 1839 in Wisconsin, and her dad died in a shipwreck on Lake Michigan when she was only five years old. She had that tragedy early on in her life. Her mother remarried and had more children, who were Caroline’s half siblings. She grew up there.

Then the Ingalls family and the Quiner family got to know each other going to dances and spelling bees and other social activities, go sleigh riding. They got to know each other so well that three sets of siblings got married within three years. Ma’s brother Henry married Pa’s sister Polly in 1859, and then Charles and Caroline married in 1860, and then Eliza Quiner and Peter Ingalls married in 1861. Laura had quite a few double first cousins, and she talks about some of them in the books. That’s the fun that three sets of siblings married each other from those two families.

That was right before the Civil War. Laura was born after the Civil War, but the Civil War did have a dramatic effect on Laura’s family. Her uncle Joseph, Ma’s brother, enlisted in the Union Army and marched off to the Battle of Shiloh in April of 1862. He was wounded and died of his wounds a few weeks after the battle.

Again, we all face a variety of difficulties. As my family has gone through difficulties and people I know, sometimes we want to compare our difficulties to say, well, what I suffered isn’t as difficult as what this other family suffered, or maybe we think what we suffered is more difficult than what this other family suffered, but all of our grief is real and it’s important for us to acknowledge that. I’m sure Ma losing her brother and her family, that was a tragedy that affected so many families during the Civil War where a young man went off to war and didn’t come home alive after the war.

Pa also had three brothers who enlisted. We don’t know exactly why Pa did not enlist. The Union did need men to stay at home and work on the farms and do other jobs. About 40% of young men in the North served in the military during the war, and the other 60% were doing other jobs at home.

You may remember in Little House in the Big Woods Laura talks about her uncle George who was a colorful character. She talks about how he ran off to join the Army as a teenager. Again, the chronology is a little unclear. There were a lot of young boys as young as 10, 11, 12 who did leave home and serve as drummer boys in the military. So it’s entirely possible that George was one of those.

Laura said Charles later said it seemed like his brother George, it was hard for him to accept that he was back home and he had to live a normal life again after serving in the Army and being able to go around raiding and taking supplies off the farms. It was hard for him to adjust. We might call that PTSD now. Again, that was something that was harder for people to recognize and talk about back then, but it certainly has affected people throughout American history and world history. People who face the difficulties of war, it does leave long lasting effects on people.

Pa and Ma, Charles and Caroline, settled in Western Wisconsin and they built a little cabin. This is a reconstruction cabin, which is located on their original land. It’s close to where Laura was born. Mary was born in 1865, and then Laura was born in 1867 there. The four girls who grew up, I mentioned their brother, Freddie, who died when he was young. My wife and I lost our son Avery when he was 16 months old, and that’s another way I feel a connection with Pa and Ma, just having gone through that loss of a young child.

You wonder what they might’ve been like when they grew up and wondered how things might’ve been different. One time Ma said, if only Freddie had lived, everything would’ve been different. As if somehow that would’ve helped smooth out some of the difficulties they faced. I can sympathize with Ma’s feeling there, just that the tragedies and difficulties we go through do leave a lasting effect on us and they help shape us and sometimes they can pull us down, sometimes they can help make us stronger. Again, we need to give each other grace as we go through those and as we support other people who are going through tragedies.

They didn’t have cell phones so they couldn’t just snap pictures all the time. Getting their picture taken was a special occasion. Here are a couple of pictures showing the girls around the time they lived in Minnesota, the second time. This is the late 1870s. Apparently, these pictures were taken at the same photo studio, so I don’t know why they put Grace over by herself instead of getting all the girls together. Maybe that’s how the photographer wanted to do it. You had to sit still to get your picture taken, so maybe Grace was a little rambunctious there.

[00:15:46] Gretchen: Maybe what you don’t see is there’s somebody behind there holding Grace nice and tight so she stays in place.

[00:15:54] John: I want to talk a little bit about some of the influences that I see on Laura’s life and education. Sometimes we have a split view that education is something that happens over here and then everyday life, the rest of life is somehow over here. That education, or schooling, if we use the word school, whether it’s homeschool, public school, private school, whatever it is, school seems like this thing that’s separate from real life, but education is one aspect of our overall life. All the things, so many things in life affect us and influence us. I just want to talk about that.

Sometimes, I think academics are important, definitely, but sometimes we can put so much emphasis on that one aspect of education that we miss some of the bigger picture. Those of us who have good homeschooling experiences recognize that there’s a richness to life that you’re learning even when you’re not reading a book or doing something formal in academics.

Church was definitely an important part of Laura’s life. It seems like her family did not go to church regularly when she was young, when they lived in Wisconsin and Kansas, in part because there may not have been an organized church close to where they were, but it seems like Pa and Ma particularly were on a spiritual journey as they grew as adults and as individuals. Church did become a more important part of their life. When they lived in Walnut Grove, they helped to establish a church. Laura talks about how Pa donated money. Instead of buying himself new boots, he donated money so the church could buy a bell. That bell is still in Walnut Grove. It was moved to a different church, but it’s still there, and you can see it and hear it ring. So church was an important part of their family life for many of the years that Laura was growing up.

They did not have a lot of books, which is hard for me to imagine. My family, growing up, my parents had tons of books. My wife and I have shelves full of books, many of which we have not read in a long time. Books are so accessible now, it’s hard to imagine a time when they were not, but when you’re moving around by wagon, you don’t have a lot of space to carry heavy books with you.

One book that Laura does talk about is the big green book that Pa read. This is a photograph, this is not the Ingalls’ actual copy, but this is another copy from the time period. It was published in 1871, and it had these amazing woodcut illustrations showing polar regions, tropical regions, just all sorts of interesting things that, again, they didn’t have Wikipedia, they didn’t have access to seeing these places through photographs, but they could learn about them through these illustrations. That was a book that Laura enjoyed listening to and looking at the pictures.

Books back then had extremely long titles, like this one, the full title is The Polar and Tropical Worlds, A Description of Man and Nature in the Polar and Equatorial Regions of the Globe.

Another fun story is that Ma’s brother Tom gave Ma a copy of a novel called Millbank by Mary Jane Holmes, it was also published in 1871. Mary Jane Holmes is not really remembered today, but in the late 1800s, she was an extremely popular author who sold millions of copies of her novels. Later on some literary critics poo-pooed her as writing fluffy novels for women, but she was extremely popular at the time. Ma was a little concerned that novels might not be appropriate for children to read so Ma read the book out loud to the family, and they enjoyed that story.

They didn’t have a ton of books, they did have some periodicals that they had access to periodically. The Youth’s Companion was an extremely popular one, which was published for over 100 years, from 1827 to 1929. President Theodore Roosevelt was a few years older than Laura, but he remembered reading The Youth’s Companion when he was a kid. It came out regularly, it had stories, activities, projects for families to work on, inspirational messages for children. It had a spiritual component, but it had lots of just fun, practical things for families to do together. The Ingalls always enjoyed when they had access to The Youth’s Companion.

[00:20:11] Gretchen: My mother was born in 1917. When we read through the Laura Ingalls Wilder book the first time, I asked her if she remembered, because she was born in Missouri, and actually right outside St. Louis in Kirkwood. She said she had vivid memories of her four brothers waiting to have that arrive so that they could read it together as a family.

[00:20:40] John: That is so fun. Ma was a very fashionable lady, so she enjoyed when she got access to Godey’s Lady Book, which was also a long-running publication published from 1830 to 1896. It had these– some of them were colored illustrations of different fashions and tips and techniques for women who were sewing at home and also stories and other information for the family to enjoy together. That was another popular resource they had.

Another great way that the Ingalls taught their children and built community was through a fraternal organization, the Independent Order of Good Templars. I did not know much– I did not remember hearing about this until I was digging into Laura’s life. This was founded as a temperance organization, and their goal was to have a world free from alcoholic drinks. That was their main focus. It was one of many organizations like that who recognized the dangers that saloons were causing in communities, and they thought it would be good if the government just abandoned that and would not have alcohol.

The Independent Order of Good Templars, they joined it. This is not the Ingalls membership certificate, but just an example of the elaborate illustrations. This is one of many organizations like this. The Masons are perhaps the most famous, which was for men. The Independent Order of Good Templars was open to men and women. They had meetings where people could get together to talk about their mission but also have fun together.

People have commented about our society today, how there aren’t a lot of social organizations like that. A lot of them, the ones that still exist, most of the members are older, and it’s harder to bring young people into those organizations. Even churches, some churches struggle with that too, keeping the younger members and building that community where different sorts of people, different ages, different backgrounds, can come together and have a shared mission.

Of course, in the books, when they lived in De Smet, South Dakota, Laura talks about the literary society where they had the spelling bees and performances and just another way for people just to get together, to enjoy being together.

Ma had been a schoolteacher briefly before she married Pa, and so Ma thought that going to school was important when they had that opportunity. You can visit the school building in De Smet where they went. They started in 1880, right before the Long Winter kicked in and made it impossible to go to school. This is a picture showing the snow during that Long Winter, and up to 11 feet of snow fell, which blocks the railroads from being able to deliver supplies.

As I alluded to before, that’s another thing that really shapes our history, our experience, is the difficult things we go to. A lot of times these are outside of our control, whether it’s wildfires in California that so many people are facing now, or a pandemic like we all live through with COVID. These things happen, and we have to figure out how to adapt, how to adjust our lives, how to persevere, how to support each other. The way we as parents respond, is an example to our children.

Particularly in the Long Winter, Laura does not mention in her books that her family actually had three extra people living with them during the Long Winter. There was another man who worked for the railroad, and he had a pregnant wife. While he was working on the railroad, he asked Pa and Ma to let his wife live there for that summer before the Long Winter. Then when fall came, he kept postponing finding a place for them to live, and so they got trapped when they were at Pa and Ma’s house. Maggie had her baby that summer. So it was George and Maggie and their baby living with the Ingalls during the Long Winter.

Then in the book, Laura chose just to focus on her nuclear family, but she talks in her memoir, Pioneer Girl, about how George was very rude, and he didn’t help Pa with the chores, and he tried to sit close to the fire and eat more than his share of food. He promised Pa that he would pay him back. He wanted to be like a border, and he would pay Pa when he got a job next year. He was very unpleasant to be with. Pa and Ma showed amazing charity to Maggie and the baby, and tolerated him during that Long Winter. That had an impact on Laura and her sisters as they continued to grow.

[00:25:09] Gretchen: I would think so, particularly in that situation where you have a guest that you can’t ask to leave because the weather precludes it. [laughs]

[00:25:19] John: Mary did go to the Iowa College for the Blind, where she spent seven years going through their program. She was a very good student and learned practical skills to help her as a blind person when she came back to South Dakota.

The music. I have to talk some about the music. This is Pa’s actual fiddle that you can see if you go to the museum in Mansfield. It still works. It’s still played annually. They have an event there where someone will play Pa’s fiddle, and that’s a beautiful connection with the past. As I mentioned, just the variety of music that Laura learned, I feel, was an important part of her education.

There were songs like The Battle Cry of Freedom, which was written during the Civil War, which was an extremely popular song in the North that Laura talks about Pa playing. She talks about various songs which came from minstrel shows. Wait for the Wagon was one that was published in 1851.

Uncle Sam’s Farm was written by the Hutchinson Family Singers, who were one of the rock stars, if you want to say, of the 1840s and ’50s. They traveled around the country performing. They traveled in the United Kingdom with Frederick Douglass. They were abolitionists and temperance advocates, and they infused a social message into their performances, believing that things could get better and that we should work together. Uncle Sam’s Farm is a fun song about how the United States has plenty of room for immigrants to come from around the world, set up farms. “Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm” is part of the chorus of that song.

[00:26:54] Gretchen: One of the things that I’m struck by as you’re putting up the sheet music is the fact that sheet music was an art form. Look at how beautifully the titles were written and prepared. My husband’s great uncle was a musician, and we have several pieces of sheet music of his from between 1905 and 1915. We don’t see that kind of art anymore. It’s really fascinating to see.

[00:27:27] John: If you listen on Spotify, you just see that little square picture, but you don’t get the full experience.

Stephen Foster is the person who Laura– she mentions more of his songs than any other. He died before she was born, but he had a lasting influence on American music. He was really the first American songwriter who figured out how to earn a living by writing songs. He wrote many songs during his life. He had a troubled life at the end and struggled with alcoholism. Again, there’s some sadness there. One of my favorite songs he wrote is Nelly Was a Lady, about a man mourning his wife who has died. That’s a beautiful, poignant song that Laura mentions.

Oft in the Stilly Night was written by an Irish poet, Thomas Moore. Some people have said that this was Abraham Lincoln’s favorite song. It’s a very plaintive song also. The sheet music I have pictured here is from Australia, which again shows the worldwide reach of songs that were written in one part of the English-speaking world that could spread all over the world.

Another favorite of mine is The Sweet By and By, a hymn written in 1867. This was one of my grandfather’s favorite songs. It’s been special to me over the years. Laura describes this as Pa’s favorite hymn, and so they sang it at his funeral. It was very important to her and to her family.

[00:28:50] Gretchen: I have vivid memories of that particular song. My mother in her later years developed Alzheimer’s and lost her ability to communicate, but could still sing. That was one of the songs that she loved to sing.

[00:29:07] John: Yes, that’s a beautiful one. Just a little bit about Laura and Almanzo. When Laura first met Almanzo in De Smet, she didn’t really think of him as a potential suitor because he was ten years older than she was. She was friends with some of the other young men like Cap Garland. She felt closer to them and thought about them as potentially being her beau. Almanzo was persistent, and he got to know Pa, and then got to know the whole family. Eventually, Almanzo persuaded Laura through his courting and his kind attention that he would be a good match, and so they got married in 1885.

Here’s a beautiful picture of the Ingalls family. Laura and Almanzo had some really difficult years early in their marriage. Their daughter Rose was born, and then they had a son who was born who died at just twelve days old. Then their house and barn burned down. They had crop failures. They had disease that afflicted both of them, and Almanzo had a permanent limp from the sickness he had. They moved to Minnesota to live with Almanzo’s parents, and then they moved to Florida to see if the climate was better. They didn’t really like Florida, so they came back to South Dakota.

This picture shows Pa and Ma and the four daughters. Mary has come back from college, and this was a special time for them all being in De Smet together before Laura and Almanzo decided to move to Missouri. They moved there with their daughter Rose, and they built a house, and if you visit there, it looks almost exactly as it did when Laura and Almanzo lived there. They actually cut the lumber and did most of the work on the house themselves. It is well built and has lasted a long time.

Their daughter Rose grew up to be a prominent journalist and author. She talked to Herbert Hoover and Henry Ford. She was a mover and shaker. She got to know some prominent people back in the early 1900s. She traveled to Europe after World War I, working with the American Red Cross, and wrote about the experience of people recovering after World War I. She was an interesting person. She lived in California for a while after she got married to a man named Gillette Lane.

Laura went out to visit them in 1915, which was fascinating to learn about. She wrote a series of letters to Almanzo, which were published as the book West from Home, which is a beautiful collection to read, getting insights into Laura. Some of her early writing before she started writing the Little House books. I like this picture of Laura and her son-in-law Gillette in the Redwood Forest north of San Francisco.

She was attending the Panama Pacific International Exposition, which was one of the many world fairs that was going on in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Rose and Gillette lived on a place called Russian Hill, which was named for the graves of some Russian sailors who were buried there. She was a very good writer. This is looking from Russian Hill out over the buildings that were being constructed for the Panama Pacific Exposition.

You can see the Golden Gate in the background. There was no Golden Gate Bridge there at the time. That was built in the 1930s. You had to take a boat to get from one side of the bay to the other.

This map shows an overview of the exposition. It was a huge area. Different states, different countries had buildings. There were various places for a parade. Airplane expositions and races. Just all sorts of things going on. Here’s an illustration showing the buildings. Almost all of these buildings were designed to be temporary. They put a lot of work into building them, knowing that they were going to tear them down at the end of the show. In the lower right corner, you see the arch with the little rotunda area. That’s the only one that is still there. It has been rebuilt, restored. That’s the only part that is still there today.

Missouri had a building about metals and mines from Missouri. Laura particularly enjoyed the Samoan dancers, which she saw. There was an area called the Joy Zone. Laura was very frugal. There were lots of opportunities to spend a dime or a quarter, but she kept her money and didn’t want to spend a lot on all the amusement rides and games that were available there.

One of the amazing things to consider is at night at the exposition, they had a huge light show with fireworks. That tall tower on the left had glittering things hanging from the roof and the columns, which sparkled in the light. That would have been amazing to see. Laura talks about that. What a beautiful sight that was at the exposition.

Another reason Laura went to California was to work with Rose on building Laura’s own writing skills. She had started writing a few articles for a newspaper called the Missouri Ruralist. She thought that spending time with Rose– and Rose also knew some other authors and book illustrators, publishers in California. Laura got to meet some of Rose’s friends. Evidently, they spent some time helping Laura work on her writing skills. Again, Laura was in her 40s at this time. Again, that’s an example of Laura being open to learning, open to improving her skills.

After Laura came back from California, she became a regular columnist for the Missouri Ruralist and published dozens of articles over the next seven years or so. She became the editor of the home department for the newspaper and was very well known among the readership as a homemaker, a farmer’s wife. Some of her articles she signed like that instead of using her name.

The picture on the left shows Almanzo with one of the apple trees at their farm. The other one shows an article that Laura wrote for the Missouri Ruralist. That was a way for her to articulate her thoughts, develop her writing skills as she continued on in her life.

Just a few things about what happened to the rest of Laura’s family. Pa and Ma continued to live in De Smet. They built a home. They moved off the homestead claim and built a home in town. There’s my two sisters and I when we went there many years ago. Pa died in 1902. Then Ma and Mary continued to live there. Mary made a beautiful comment about her relationship with Ma. Ma, as she got older, she had difficulty walking. Mary was blind. Mary said that she was Ma’s feet and Ma was her eyes. They had a beautiful relationship in their later years.

Ma died in 1924. Then Mary died in 1928. That prompted Laura to reflect on her life. She started writing an autobiography called Pioneer Girl, which was never published. She wrote that after Mary’s death. That laid the groundwork for the Little House books that came later.

Her sister Carrie. Carrie joined a tennis club in De Smet. Eventually she married a widower with two children. They lived in western South Dakota. Carrie also worked for newspapers for several years. She acquired her own homestead before she got married. Her stepson Harold helped to work on Mount Rushmore, on carving Mount Rushmore. That’s an interesting connection that her family had.

Carrie’s daughter had several children. They had several children. There are no direct descendants of Pa and Ma. There are descendants through Carrie’s stepdaughter Mary who have lived in California and South Dakota and other places around the country since then. There’s that connection to going back to Carrie.

Grace seems like she was a fun person. I love this picture in the middle of Grace with the fun hat. It was taken at an angle like that, which is fun to think about. People like to be silly and have fun back in the early 1900s, too. People are people. Grace also worked for newspapers for a while. She wrote articles. Then she married. They had a farm in South Dakota. They lived fairly close and kept in touch with Ma and Pa and Mary over the years. Carrie and Grace both lived to see Laura start publishing the Little House books and were aware of her success doing that.

I like this picture of Laura and Almanzo. They went back to De Smet in 1939 for what was called the Old Settlers Days. Laura did some research, talked to some of her old friends to get some information as she was working on the last couple of books in the series. They were honored as founders of the town, as old settlers.

One of Laura’s articles that she wrote for the Missouri Ruralist after World War I struck me. I’ll quote some of that, talking about Laura’s perspective. She says, “Here and there, one sees a criticism of Christianity because of the things that have happened and are still going on. ‘Christian civilization is a failure,’ some say. ‘Christianity has not prevented these things, therefore it is a failure,’ say others. But this is a calling of things by the wrong name. It is rather the lack of Christianity that has brought us where we are. Not a lack of churches or religious forms, but of the real thing in our hearts. . . If we are eager to help in putting the world to rights, our first duty is to put ourselves right, to overcome our selfishness and be as eager that others shall be treated fairly as we are that no advantage shall be taken of ourselves; to deal justly and have a loving charity and mercy for others as we wish for them to have for us.”

I think that’s a beautiful message for us today. It’s easy for us to blame somebody else for the problems going on in our home or our country or our community. We need to take responsibility. Yes, I as an individual, none of us as an individual can fix all the problems going on. If I practice real Christianity, if I have the real thing in my heart, and I look to deal justly and have a loving charity and mercy to others, and even for people I disagree with.

That’s the hard thing. It’s easy to have charity for someone that you like and that you agree with. It’s harder to show charity and understanding towards somebody that you disagree with and that you think maybe is doing something that’s even wrong or dangerous. Still having that wanting justice, fairness, and charity as we try to work through how to live together as a society. That struck me as a beautiful message.

[00:39:19] Gretchen: You found this message in the Missouri Ruralist. Had you read all the things that she had published in that periodical?

[00:39:27] John: We got a book many years ago that was a collection of articles. I read through a lot of them several years ago, probably 15 or 20 years since I read that. I have read quite a bit of what she wrote there.

[00:39:39] Gretchen: She writes in a compelling way that makes you want to continue to read. Her ideas and her storytelling is marvelous.

[00:39:49] John: Yes. She really developed that skill, over those seven, eight years when she was writing for the newspaper. I’m going to sing one song that she talks about, which she used as the title for one of her books, These Happy Golden Years. I’ll share this, and then we’ll wrap up this part and then talk about some more questions and other things people want to share. This is Golden Years Are Passing By from 1879.

[sings]

Golden years are passing by,

Happy, happy golden years,

Passing on the wings of time,

These happy golden years.

Call them back as they go by,

Sweet their memories are,

Oh, improve them as they fly,

These happy golden years.

Golden years, golden years

Happy golden years

Oh, improve them as they fly

These Happy Golden Years

Golden years are passing by,

Precious precious golden years

let no idle hour be spent

With sorrow, grief and tears

Ah! The good we all may do

As the moments pass

To your nobler self be true

Reward will come at last

Golden years, golden years

Happy golden years

Oh, improve them as they fly

These Happy Golden Years

Golden years are passing by

Fleeting, fleeting swiftly on

Life is but a passing hour

Before we know ’tis gone

Soon the parting time will come

Day by day it nears

Have you done your duty well

These happy golden years?

Golden years, golden years

Happy golden years

Oh, improve them as they fly

These Happy Golden Years

[00:42:27] Gretchen: In four years of hosting, I have never had a song sung, and I think we have missed an opportunity here, John. That was amazing. Thank you. It gives insight into. The words in that song are applicable to us today. We’ve lost that sentiment, and that’s a shame.

[00:42:52] John: One of the questions somebody asked in the notes for the webinar is about what message Laura might have for us as homeschool parents today. Another thought that came from one of her Missouri Ruralist articles is for me a wonderful way to think about life. She said, the true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes. Surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.

When my wife and I lost our son Avery, one thought that stayed with me is that every day is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Even if it seems mundane, it seems boring, it’s a special opportunity that we have to love the people that God brings into our lives. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, what seems normal today could be gone tomorrow. I love that idea.

When I was young, I wished that I could be older, that I could move on and do more in my life. Now that I’ve gotten older, I tell people I’m halfway to 90 now, I’m 45. Sometimes I wish I could go back to the carefree days of my youth. Each of us is moving through life. There are different seasons of life. There are things that are hard about each stage, but there are also things that are beautiful about each stage. As Laura said, we take joy in those moments of beauty, those things just each day as it comes. That’s what a life is built of. A life is built of those little moments that come about in each day.

[00:44:26] Gretchen: I think I would only like to go back to my younger self if I could take the wisdom that I have now. [laughs] Then that might be fun. I love the fact that I am where I am. I think you offer wise words of wisdom to our viewers to be able to savor and appreciate these times. I know, looking back on my 21 years of homeschooling, I didn’t realize it was going to pass so fast. I miss those days. I really do. I miss the days when all my children were at home. I only have three here now, but I do miss those days.

We had a bunch of questions, and I hope you’re open to me asking some of these questions. One of them, I think, based on your study of Laura, is the question that I know is in the heart of many parents, but one of our parents who registered asked, how do you motivate your child to write? What kind of lessons did you learn from Laura as far as writing motivation?

[00:45:31] John: There are things that we want our children to learn. There are things that we, that we think our children need to learn. Yet we also need to recognize that they’re not at the same place as each other. If you have more than one child in your family, you realize very quickly that they’re not the same and that they learn at different paces. They acquire skills at different paces. We need to accept that that’s okay. That what was easy for one child at five years old, it may take another child until they’re 8, 9, 10. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean one child is better or smarter or dumber. Each child is different.

That’s one thing that I think my parents learned working with us and that I’ve seen talking to other families is that it’s okay for each child to go at their own pace. If it’s a real struggle to try to get your child to write a five-paragraph essay, maybe they just need to write one paragraph. Maybe they just need to write one sentence today. Or maybe they need to do it in a different format. Maybe they could record their thoughts on a phone or record it using audio to speak it instead of trying to write it. That might be an easier way for them to communicate their thoughts.

There are other questions I know about reading. Laura’s family did not have a lot of books for each child to be able to take a book and go read by themselves. A lot of the time they were reading together as a family. they had one copy of Youth’s Companion, and they would have to share that. They’d have to take turns reading an article. Like Dwight Eisenhower’s family. He told a story about when he was a boy, his parents would have each child read a section of the Bible. They’d pass the Bible. Each boy would read a few verses and then pass it on.

That learning together as opposed to trying to require each child to measure up to some preconceived expectation, but learning together as a family, maybe two of your children can work on activity together instead of just feeling like all the responsibility weighs on one person. Then, as parents, we can try to spend individual time with each of our children. That gets hard as children have more complex needs. If you have a lot of kids in your family, that can be difficult. I think that’s important that we don’t– again, there’s a tension between trying to have high expectations for our kids, but also having realistic expectations. Not trying to push them faster than they’re ready to go. That’s a difficult balance.

Sometimes, I know with my own kids, they can be dragging their feet. I know they’re capable of doing it, but getting that motivation can be challenging, I understand. I think part of it is just looking for out-of-the-box ways of accomplishing the same goal. If our goal is for our children to be able to have good reading comprehension and also being able to communicate clearly, there are lots of ways that you can do that.

There are children who struggle with dyslexia or whatever it is. They struggle to read the words on their page. There’s nothing wrong with listening to an audio book. It’s not like that’s a less valuable way to learn, to digest information, and to acquire it. Then over time, as they continue to work on their ability to comprehend the material, then maybe that will translate into being able to read the printed words more easily.

Then the same with writing. Again, there are lots of ways to communicate your thoughts. You can do it through drawing a picture, writing a poem, singing a song, making a video. There are lots of ways to get kids to be creative that may not fit the traditional academic track.

[00:49:09] Gretchen: I think you’ve given us some terrific inspiration here. Now, you mentioned that through the Notgrass History website you have some resources about Laura Ingalls Wilder. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

[00:49:21] John: Yes, we’ll share the link in the show notes. As I said, we’ve been to several of the locations, and we filmed video there with our family at the locations talking about Laura. Those are available for free to watch on YouTube and on our website. We also have some activities, some interactive printables and projects to work on, some fun things related to Laura. We have a recipe for a gingerbread cake that Laura liked to make. We have the ingredients and instructions on how you can make that. We also have a list of Bible verses that were important to Laura. She had a little note written in her Bible, some of the passages that she turned to for comfort. We have just some free downloads that you can access.

We do also have a more in-depth unit study that I created. I had a lot of fun putting it together with lots more historical photographs. I have links to all of the songs that I could find. It’s over 100 of the songs I have. Some of them are old recordings, like going back to the 1920s. It gives you a taste of what it might have sounded like for Pa to play those songs. Some old-timey recordings on up to modern renditions. I think that’s a great way to really try to understand the world of Little House is by listening to the music that was so important to the Ingalls. I have links, photographs, and videos, more information about the places Laura lived and the people she loved. We’ll have a link that has information about all of those resources.

[00:50:47] Gretchen: That’s wonderful. I think that gives us the opportunity to take the wisdom and the stories that Laura told to the next generation. I’m really delighted tat you at Notgrass have decided to do that for us. What a wonderful gift. I’m excited to check out those resources. As you mentioned, we will have those in the show notes. I can’t believe we’re almost at the top of the hour. In your study of Laura Ingalls Wilder, what are two or three things that you have found the most beneficial? What has she taught you that has stayed with you?

[00:51:25] John: Every person makes a difference and can make a difference. It’s easy to focus on presidents, military leaders, famous rock stars, singers. It’s easy for us to put a lot of attention on them. Some of them are great examples that we can learn from, but also just the everyday people in our lives.

When I went to visit the Mansfield site, I got to meet a woman who had known Laura when this woman was a little girl. Just that connection. To this woman Laura was just their neighbor. They brought milk and eggs to her house. They just knew her as just a regular person. I love that. Laura loved to get mail from fans and she would write letters back to fans. She seems like just a beautiful person who cared about others and wanted to make the world a better place.

Most of us will not become authors who sell millions of copies of books. That’s okay. Because if we’re a good neighbor, if we’re a good member of our family or church or community, we can make a difference right where we are. That’s one thing that I think is important, that even though Laura was famous as an author, she was also just a neat person who cared about her neighbors and her family and community.

[00:52:46] Gretchen: That is a wonderful message to be able to take away from. In your study of Laura, did you ever dig into the books that Rose Wilder Lane wrote?

[00:53:01] John: I have not read any of Rose’s books. I’ve done some research on how Rose helped Laura. Rose did help Laura craft the stories into a version for children. I’ve done some research on that. I have not personally read any of Rose’s books. I may do that at some point, but I’ve just been focused on Laura up to this point.

[00:53:22] Gretchen: I think when we finished our whole exploration of Laura Ingalls Wilder, we felt a little bereft as a family. Then we wanted to go find more books. We learned a little bit about Rose Wilder Lane. We read her books, and they were lovely, but they didn’t have this same quality of enraptured storytelling that Laura was able to bring. I think maybe Rose’s journalistic influences made her become a little bit more cut and dried than her mom was as far as the way she wrote. John, in these last couple of minutes, what closing words would you have for our audience today?

[00:54:05] John: There is some sadness in the relationship between Laura and Rose. They worked together on the Little House books, but they did have some tension, too, and they disagreed on some things. Sometimes Laura persuaded Rose to see it her way. Sometimes it seems like Rose influenced Laura to take it her way.

Rose did not have the same sort of faith that Laura did. Rose seemed to be– she was interested in spiritual things. She was interested in Islam and in Christianity. She was interested in the philosophy of life, but she apparently didn’t have that personal faith that motivated her the way Laura did. That’s one sadness.

We as parents, we can’t control how our children turn out. We love them, we teach them, we guide them, but, ultimately, we have to leave them in the hands of God that he can direct them the way he wants. I guess the trials that Laura went through, both as a child and as an adult, losing her son and the suffering she went through with Almanzo, none of us hopes that we’re going to go through those trials. When we do, I believe that Laura found a strength in her faith and trust that God could guide her through that, even though things weren’t as rosy and wonderful as she might have hoped in the past. That’s something I hold on to. Even though life doesn’t always turn out the way we hope it will.

[00:55:32] Gretchen: Absolutely. I want to thank you for spending this time with us. This was all I expected it to be and more. I thank you so much for spending this time with us today. In our show notes for our audience, we will have links to all the things that John has spoken about today. There is a wealth of information out there. If you have not had the opportunity to experience Laura’s books, I want to encourage you to take that opportunity, because they are amazing.

John, thank you so much for sharing this time with us today. I know I speak for our audience when I say that we so much appreciate everything that you shared with us.

[00:56:14] Voice-Over: Thanks again for joining us. We’re glad to be a part of your educational community. You can help us grow our community even more by rating, reviewing and subscribing to the show wherever you may be hearing this. Don’t forget that you can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. We’ll see you again next time. Until then, keep building strong foundations for lifelong learning.

[music]