THE FINAL STOP ON MY LAURA INGALLS WILDER TOUR!

30 Jul 2021 Leave a comment

by Betty Huffman in Life Style Adjustments, Retirement, RV-ing, Traveling, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

We started full time RVing September 1, 2017. A little less than year later, in the summer of 2018, we were in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.

I have been a lifelong fan of the author Laura Ingalls Wilder who wrote the Little House On the Prairie series of books (and I’m a HUGE fan of the television show!). When I discovered how many of the places were near where we were staying in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa where Laura was born and the family lived, I just KNEW I had to visit each place! Therefore, in the summer of 2018, I started my quest of visiting all locations that had anything to do with Laura or the Ingalls family.

If you are interested in reading those previous posts, you can search this site and find the year 2018. You should be able to find all my posts on this topic between 2018 to 2019. If you are a Laura Ingalls Wilder fan like me, you might really enjoy reading those posts.

This final stop was near Malone, New York. If you’re not familiar with Laura Ingalls Wilder, she married Almanzo Wilder from upstate New York. Well, here is a hint as to where we went:

Yep! If you guessed Almanzo Wilder’s boyhood home, you are correct.

This is the site of the original Wilder family homestead. Almanzo’s father, James Mason Wilder, purchased the property in 1840, cleared the land, and built the buildings. James Wilder and his wife, Angeline, raised six children: Laura (dob: 1844; not to be confused with Laura Ingalls), Royal (1847), Eliza Jane (1850), Alice (1853), Almanzo (1857), and Perley (1869).

Almanzo’s family was considered a wealthy family back in the mid 1800s. I won’t bore you with a lot of narrative about Almanzo’s life (although I did learn a lot from our tour guide!). I will just share some of my photos and add captions when needed.

This is the restored original Wilder house. Those giant trees to the left and the right of the house are over 200 years old, so they were there when the Wilders lived here.
There are several barns, a chicken coup, and a corn crib all surrounding the barn lot. They built the barns this way to provide protection for the animals during inclement weather and winter storms. These are not the original barns (originals were destroyed in a fire), but they are replicas of the barns Almanzo described for his wife, Laura Ingalls Wilder, when she was writing the book Farmer Boy.
Corn crib.
South barn which is quite large houses sheep, cattle, hogs, and a feed room. The small building in the back is the pump house.
View of the barn lot from the south barn.

From this point on, this set of pictures are from the other various barns. I didn’t write down any of the information from our tour guide, so I don’t remember which pics were in which barn. 😬

View of the barn lot from the barn on the other side (from the picture above).

Next we toured the house. This is the original house in which the Wilders lived. It had to have quite a bit of restoration done to it. Dorothy Belle Smith was the person responsible for the discovery and preservation of the Wilder Homestead. This site is dedicated to her.

Again, our tour guide was very knowledgeable about about the Wilders’ lives while living in this house, as well as the extent of the restoration. It was interesting to learn that during the restoration another well was found underneath the pantry. Again, I will just share my photos of the house with an occasional caption.

Kitchen.
Pantry.
Dining room.
Between the dining room and the front parlor was the wood stove used to heat the house. There was a cutout in the wall so the heat would easily disperse between the rooms. This is the view from the dining room.
This is the view from the parlor.
Parlor.
This is Almanzo’s parents’ “master bedroom” which is just off the dining room. One can barely turn around in this tiny room. That blue quilt on the bed is actually Almanzo’s mother’s (it’s only half of the quilt; the other half is at Mansfield, Missouri, in the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum)
This is the guest room, birthing room, or the room for an ill family member.
Next, we went upstairs (basically an attic) to the boys’ room. The boys’ room was the open room into which one walked after climbing the stairs. That opening on the right side of the picture is the stairs which were VERY narrow and VERY steep.
This is the bed in which Almanzo AND his brother slept!
To the left of the boys’ room was the unfinished part of the attic where father and the boys would do their woodworking making shingles and other things for the house and barns.
To the right of the boys’ room is the girls’ room. This was a large room with two beds (one on each side of the room), two closets, and a huge weaving loom in the center.
The loom between the two girls’ beds.
There was a replica of a schoolhouse on the property but it was NOT the schoolhouse that Almanzo attended.

The original schoolhouse where Almanzo attended school was located about a mile away from the Wilder homestead. It was in too bad of shape to even try to move it over to the homestead, so they built the replica. Since I have seen so many schoolhouses from this time period of history, I decided to drop out of the group and tour. We had a really long drive back to the RV, and I knew my husband was getting a little anxious to get “on the road” back to the RV.

So, for now ….. “On the Road Again!”

Betty

Next Stop on the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Route: Spring Valley, Minnesota

13 Sep 2018 4 Comments

by Betty Huffman in Life Style Adjustments, Minnesota, Retirement, RV-ing, Traveling, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

  • As a child, the Ingalls family moved around a lot for various reasons. Here is a list of places and dates (years only) where the Ingalls lived. This list also includes the places Laura and her husband, Almanzo, lived.
      • 1867: Pepin, Wisconsin
      1869: Independence, Kansas
      1871: Pepin, Wisconsin
      1874: Walnut Grove, Minnesota
      1876: Burr Oak, Iowa
      1877: Walnut Grove, Minnesota
    • 1879: DeSmet, South Dakota (in 1881 Laura’s sister, Mary, moves to Vinton, Iowa, to attend the school for the blind located there)
    • 1885: Laura marries Almanzo Wilder in DeSmet, South Dakota
    • 1890-1891: Laura, Almanzo, and daughter, Rose, move to Spring Valley, Minnesota, then to Westville, Florida, because of Almanzo’s health
    • 1892: Laura and family move back to DeSmet, South Dakota
    • 1894: Laura and family move to Mansfield, Missouri (1949: Almanzo dies; 1957: Laura dies. Both are buried in Mansfield, Missouri.)
  • – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
  • We did not visit the places where Laura lived in chronological order. I decided to just blog about the places we visited in the order in which we visited them. So, our next visit was to Spring Valley, Minnesota.
  • Spring Valley, Minnesota, is where Laura Ingalls’s husband, Almanzo Wilder, spent the last part of his childhood. Almanzo was born in Burke, New York, on February 13, 1857. His parents (James and Angeline Wilder) and family moved to Spring Valley, Minnesota, in 1870 when he was thirteen years old to establish a farm. Spring Valley’s historical significance mostly centers around the Wilder family, however, as you can see from the chronological list of places where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived (above), she and Almanzo did live there for a short time.
  • The Wilder family attended Spring Valley Methodist Church. As early as 1858, the church began raising money toward a building while they met regularly in an upstairs hall in town. Construction on the church finally started in 1876 when the lot on West Courtland Street was purchased. James Wilder was among the early contributors. His pledge of $50 was one of the largest amounts.
  • Church records show that pastors or presiding elders baptized and performed marriage rites for Almanzo’s two sisters (Eliza Jane Wilder and Laura Ann Wilder). Records also show that Almanzo and Laura (Ingalls) Wilder attended there in 1890 and 1891.
  • The church’s Victorian-Gothic architecture showcases 21 stained glass windows (Italian stained glass, circa 1715) and beautiful wooden arches and moldings. The church is now a museum which offers guided tours for a nominal fee.
  • The floor which was the sanctuary is filled with a vast array of church memorabilia from the late 1800s and early 1900s. It also has several board displays with information pertaining to the Wilder family and when Laura and Almanzo lived in Spring Valley. The tour guides are VERY knowledgeable and the tour was fascinating.

    • You can see just a FEW of the boards with information about the Wilder family on them. Our guide took us around all the boards and told us all about the Wilder family and Laura and Almanzo.

    • Our tour guide for the upstairs level ringing the church bell.
  • The basement level of the church contains a multitude of varied displays the town’s history. It is by FAR one of the best displays of late 1800s through mid 1900s relics we have ever seen. Some of the things we saw were: an 1874 fire truck wagon, an old chicken incubator that heats with kerosene, a “summer” oven and stove that also heats with kerosene, an old fire extinguisher in the shape of a very large light bulb filled with a chemical to put out a kitchen fire, an old electric permanent wave machine, an astonishing collection of old cameras, and I could go on and on!!
  • I will just let these pictures do the rest of the “talking,” and you can see for yourself.
    • Interesting fact: Richard Sears was a boyhood chum of Almanzo Wilder’s. By 1886 he founded the R. W. Sears Watch Company. When he moved his company to Chicago he became friends with Alvah Roebuck who joined the company in 1893. And, as they say … “the rest is history!” In 1906 a mail order plant was built in Chicago and became the largest business building.
    • The summer stove and stove top summer oven.

    A picture of the Wilder boys (L. to R.: Perley, Royal, and Almanzo) taken in 1891. There were a lot more pictures of the Wilder family in the museum, but this place really didn’t want you taking pictures of the pictures (unless one of your party was standing next to the picture). I guess they just want you to come by and tour the museum yourself some day.

    The Wilder’s home (now a private residence).

    The Wilder’s barn and farm property. The barn is scheduled to be torn down soon (what a shame!) because the present-day owners cannot get insurance for it.

    • I don’t know anything about this building or if it was connected to the Wilders. It was close to the Wilder’s barn and I thought it would make a pretty picture. 😊

    After we left the church, we drove around the town. There were some interesting old buildings in the historic downtown area. There were also some beautiful old homes.

    This corner building was once a store owned by one of the Wilders.

    You can see the Wilder’s church/museum from the main business street.

    This was one of the most beautiful old homes I’ve ever seen. You could tell it had been restored and the brick painted (WHY did they do that?!). I wish I would have taken more pics of some of the other older homes.

    We drove out to the Spring Valley Cemetery where we were told some of the Wilders were buried. We found Almanzo’s brother, Royal’s, grave site, but didn’t find any of the others. Most of the original headstones were difficult to read from age and some kind of fungus or moss-type stuff growing on them. It looked as though Royal’s gravestone had been replaced.

    After that, we headed home to the RV.

    We will be taking another trip on the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Route soon.

    So, for now ….. “On the Road Again!”

    Betty

    %d