This is the first book in a series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote semi-fictionalized accounts about her childhood from memory. I have read the first three. Let’s get the rest of the confession out of the way: I did not read these as a child, nor was I glued to the TV set watching the TV show in the 1970’s. While they are certainly great books for children, I appreciate them as an adult for all of the detail they provide. Also, they are quick, easy reads. What they do not provide, since they are written for children, is any information regarding politics or the economy. Also, no sense of why the family is located where they are, or where they originated. However, there is a lot of information about what the family ate, and how they acquired the food. There is also some information about clothing and cooking methods, not to mention the names, and occasionally lyrics, of some of Pa’s songs.
The first book is set around 1870 near Pepin, Wisconsin. It covers a year in the life of the Ingalls family, detailing the cyclical nature of their lives, and how that is affected by the seasons. If you had ancestors living in Wisconsin, Minnesota, or the Dakotas, during the early years of settlement up to the early 1900’s, especially if they were not in one of the larger cities or towns, these books would give you an insight into their day-to-day lives. They are great books for children of all ages, and I especially recommend the publications with the illustrations by Garth Williams.
The list of her other books include Farmer Boy (about her husband, Almanzo’s youth in upstate New York), Little House on the Big Prairie (their time in Kansas), On The Banks of Plum Creek (Minnesota), By The Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, These Happy Golden Years, and The First Four Years. The last five are set in Dakota Territory. These books are widely available in book and ebook form, and should easy to find at your local library or bookstore.
If you want more information about Laura Ingalls Wilders’ life, she has a page on Wikipedia, and there is the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum in Mansfield, MO. The website is www.lauraingallswilderhome.com. There is also a museum near Pepin, the closest town to where Laura was born in 1867. The link for that is www.lauraingallspepin.com. The cabin has been rebuilt, but the surrounding countryside is now more farmland than woods. I believe the TV show picked up the story after the move from the Big Woods.
If this was your family, how would you research them? Find where your ancestors lived on a map, then look at a map from around the time they lived there. Did they move from one place to another? What route and mode of transportation did they use? You can track their journeys by the census, which will tell you if children are born in different states, and possibly by land purchases. If you don’t currently live near the “old homestead”, find out what you can online. If you can visit, even better! Have any “pioneer” recipes been handed down? There is a “little home on the prairie” cookbook, if you want to try making some of the foods.