Laura Ingalls-Wilder, or Little Chapter on the Prairie

Who doesn't know the Little House on the Prairie series, which has moved so many homes since 1974 ? Who has forgotten the lessons in humanity that Charles Ingalls taught his daughters, especially Laura, who seemed to have a special relationship with her father ? But did you know that Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the autobiographical novels on which this series is based, was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star (OES), an appendant body to freemasonry open to women ? And did you know that Laura Ingalls Wilder's family was deeply involved in the Masonic world ? Let's follow Laura Ingalls Wilder and discover the Little Chapter on the Prairie !

The life of Laura Ingalls Wilder 

Laura Ingalls Wilder's life, like that of so many American pioneer families, was quite eventful and difficult. Laura was born in Pepin, Wisconsin on 7 February 1867. She was the second of five children : Mary Amelia, Laura Elizabeth, Caroline Celestia (known as Carrie), Charles Frederick (who died in infancy) and Grace Pearl. Her family, modest and seemingly unremarkable, was nevertheless deeply rooted in American history : her father, Charles Philipp Ingalls (1836-1902), was a descendant of the Delano family, from whom U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) would descend, and he was also a distant relative of U.S. President and former General-in-Chief of the Union armies Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) ; and her mother Caroline Lake (1839-1924), born Quiner, was a direct descendant of Richard Warren, one of the Pilgrims who landed on American soil with the Mayflower in 1620.

The family left Wisconsin in 1869 and moved briefly to Missouri, then to Kansas in 1870, returning to Wisconsin in 1871. In 1874, they settled in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, where most of the TV  series takes place.

Two consecutive years of food shortages prompted the family to move to Burr Oak, Iowa, in 1876, where they worked in a hotel for about a year. They returned to Walnut Grove in 1877, where Charles became a butcher and justice of the peace. In 1879 he got a job with the railroad and the family moved again, settling in De Smet, Dakota. Charles, Caroline and their daughter Mary, now blind, lived out their lives there.



Charles and Caroline Ingalls family. In the middle, standing, Laura.

It was in De Smet that the Ingalls children finally got regular schooling, but Caroline had been a teacher, so they were not left uneducated. And in December 1882, Laura became a teacher herself, although she was not yet 16. She taught for two years, but in 1885 she married Almanzo Wilder (1857?-1949), the brother of her former teacher, and had to give up her teaching career. At that time, married women were not allowed to teach.

On 5 December 1886, Laura gave birth to little Rose, but fate continued to take its toll on the young couple. In 1888, a severe bout of diphtheria left Almanzo partially paralysed and forced him to use a cane for the rest of his life. In 1889 the couple had a second child, who died twelve days after birth. A series of disasters followed: fires destroyed their barn and then their house, and several periods of drought... In 1890, indebted and exhausted, the Wilders moved in with Almanzo's parents in Spring Valley, Minnesota, and then to Florida, where they hoped the climate would be kinder to Almanzo. The climate proved too wet, and in 1894 they moved to Mansfield, Missouri.

In Mansfield, their lives finally improved : having acquired undeveloped land near the town, they first sold timber before developing apple growing, dairy farming and chicken rearing. In this way they achieved a level of prosperity they had never known before. Laura became involved in the town's community, acting as spokeswoman for the farmers' associations, and was recognised as an expert in chicken breeding.

In 1911, the Missouri Ruralist newspaper asked Laura to write an article, which led to her becoming a regular columnist for some fifteen years. Her articles covered topics as diverse as family life, farm conditions, the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, the First World War and the advancement of women.

In 1930, Laura submitted an autobiographical manuscript about her childhood, entitled When Grandma Was a Little Girl, to her daughter Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968), who had become a writer and journalist. Rose Wilder Lane's publishers, Harper & Brothers, showed great interest, suggesting only that the story be expanded and the title changed to The Little House in the Big Woods. Under this title, Laura Ingalls Wilder's first autobiographical novel was published in 1932. Seven more books followed between 1933 and 1943, making up the Ingalls family saga. The title of the third book, Little House on the Prairie (1935), became the generic title for the entire series. Several other writings by Laura Ingalls Wilder were published after her death, including her diary for the period between De Smet and Mansfield and The First Four Years (1971), considered the ninth volume of the saga.

Laura's literary successes put the Wilders out of their financial misery for good, and they lived out their remaining years in Mansfield. Having sold most of their farm, they retained only a small amount of livestock, flowers and vegetables. Almanzo Wilder died in 1949 and Laura, who suffered from severe diabetes and heart problems, followed him on 10 February 1957. Both are buried in Mansfield.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Family and the Masonic World 

As we shall see, several members of Laura Ingalls Wilder's family belonged to Freemasonry or a society inspired by Freemasonry. This aspect of the family's history is little known to the general public and deserves a little more attention.

Obviously, the Ingalls family's incessant travelling was not conducive to sustained involvement in any association. But by 1879 the family had finally found some stability in De Smet. In 1885, Charles Ingalls was admitted to De Smet Lodge as a Mason. His wife Caroline and their daughter Carrie joined the Eastern Star in 1891. In 1893, Charles Ingalls and Laura were initiated into the Eastern Star Chapter. 

Laura attended the De Smet Chapter for only one year as she and her husband left the town in 1894. But she continued her involvement in Mansfield and joined the town's Eastern Star Chapter in 1897. She held Chapter officer positions more than twenty-five times and was Digne Matrone (Chapter President) three times. Her husband, Almanzo, was initiated as a Mason in Mansfield in 1898 and joined the Eastern Star in 1902. They didn't leave until 1931, probably because they were unable to pay their dues after the Great Depression of 1928.

It seems clear that the Eastern Star values of "family, faith, education, charity, courage, independence, patriotism, strength and self-improvement" were the values that Laura Ingalls Wilder upheld throughout her life, even before she joined the Order. And she continued to promote them in other clubs to which she belonged. 

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Political and Religious Consciousness

These values also guided her civic engagement and political sensibilities. A Democrat, she distanced herself from the party in the wake of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal to counter the effects of the Great Depression of 1928. She criticised him for interfering too much in people's private lives and, together with her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, can be counted among the pioneers of the American libertarian movement of the 20th century.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was also a champion of women's rights and was very much a woman of her time. Interestingly, Laura's initiation into the Eastern Star took place in the same year that Maria Deraismes and Georges Martin initiated sixteen women in Paris, laying the foundations for co-Freemasonry. She was also an outspoken opponent of racial segregation and caused a scandal in Mansfield by publicly shaking hands with a coloured man, which was unheard of at the time.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's attitude to religion is also very interesting. She was a woman of faith who prayed every day, read the Bible regularly and attended Methodist Church services every Sunday. Yet neither she nor her husband were ever official members of the Methodist Church, or any other church for that matter. Laura Ingalls Wilder seems to have been a very independent woman who had no intention of submitting her faith to any ecclesiastical authority. She seems to have achieved the perfect marriage of traditional community values, which we would readily describe as conservative, with a libertarian sensibility, independent of any ideological shackles. Wouldn't that be a sign of a truly Masonic approach ?