Wilder Homestead

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) was an American author, best known for her Little House on the Prairie books series.

She was born to a family of settlers that often moved across America’s heartland until they settled in De Smet, South Dakota. Only then, 12 years old Ingalls had begun her formal education, and just before her 16th birthday, while still in high school, she began to work as a teacher in one-room schools. At 18, she married Almanzo Wilder, settled in a new home north of De Smet, and worked together on their farm. Over time, she became an expert on rural living and poultry farming and received invitations to lecture on these topics.

At 44, after publishing an article in the Missouri Ruralist, she was offered a position as an editor and a columnist; she wrote about current topics and her thoughts about the increasing opportunities women had during that time. Following the economic crisis of 1929, along with the personal loss of her mother and sister, Ingalls started to write her childhood memories. In 1932, at the age of 65, she published the book Little House in the Big Woods, which became the first of the eight Little House on the Prairie series.

The second book in the series, Farmer Boy, published in 1933, follows her husband’s childhood in the Wilder Homestead in Malone, NY.

On June 5th, 1987, the Almanzo & Laura Ingalls Wilder Association (ALIWA) was incorporated to preserve the original childhood home as a historic site that includes a museum, an educational center, three barns, a working 19th-century farm, and a picnic pavilion on 84 acres of farmland. The museum exhibits a collection of period artifacts and farming tools and provides information about Ingalls, the Wilder family, and 19th-century farming life.

The Wilder Homestead hosts various events during the summer, including the Celebration of Youth & Morgan Horse Event, the Scottish Fling festival, and the Harvest Fest & Civil War Living History.

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