Profile and Interview of Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1949

The following is an article printed in the Kansas City Star, Kansas City, MO. April 10, 1949. Pages 4D and 7D. Retrieved from Genealogybank.com.

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[April 19, 1949] - 

The Famous Author of the "Laura and Mary" Children's
Books, Mrs. Laura Wilder of Mansfield, Mo., is Shown
In Her Farm Home in Front of a Scroll Given Her By Seattle
School Children. A Similar Scroll, Presented By
California Readers, Is on the Bookcase.

A MISSOURI WOMAN'S BOOKS ARE FAVORED BY CHILDREN

World Acclaim Has Come to Laura Ingalls Wilder of Mansfield, Mo., Whose Writings Cover Pioneer Life in the Middle West.

BY CHESTER A. BRADLEY. (A Member of The Star's Staff.)

MANSFIELD, MO., April 9. -- Stories of Middle Western American pioneer life which were written here on a school tablet with a pencil are being read around the world and by millions of Americans. Their author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 82, is known and loved by countless school children. Their parents also like her "Laura and Mary" stories.

By all standards Mrs. Wilder is a famous American author. Nevertheless, she is unaffected and as unassuming as in her earlier days here when she helped "pull a crosscut saw" on Ozark timber.

This month the city of Detroit is paying high tribute to Mrs. Wilder. It is naming one of its new branch libraries for her. Other such libraries there bear some of the most famous names in American history. 

Mrs. Wilder is the author of eight books that tell a story of everyday life in early Western America, extending from Wisconsin to the Dakotas and including ventures into the Indian territory of Kansas. Seven of the volumes are "Laura and Mary" stories, these characters being representative of Mrs. Wilder and a sister named Mary. The other book in the series is the story of a year in the boyhood life of her husband, Almanzo Wilder, who is 92 and a native of New York. 

Most of the Materials for the 50-Year-Old Wilder Home
Came From Their Farm ... The Large, Old-Fashioned
Chimney Opens into a Large Living Room Fireplace,
Reminiscent of the Pioneer Period of Which Mrs. Wilder
Has Written So Often.

Live In Distinctive Home.

This Ozark town of a little more than1,000 population is 250 miles southwest of Kansas City. The Wilders live a half mile east of it. Their unpretentious, 2-story, white frame house sits on a hill overlooking U.S. highway No. 60. It has a vine-covered stone chimney, tall and wide. Inside the home it is connected with a large fireplace in the living room--a room at once distinctive to a visitor because of its beamed ceiling and liberal use of woodwork, all white oak cut on the farm and shaped into lumber by the Wilders years ago. Except for the siding, most all materials used in building the home came right off the farm.

The living room also has several wall cases and shelves for the many books of the family library and there are framed scrolls and other pieces of art, written or painted in tribute to Mrs.Wilder's stories.

Mr. and Mrs. Wilder have lived in this home on the land they call Rocky Ridge farm since they moved here in a covered wagon from De Smet, S.D. in 1894. A drought lasting nearly three years had ruined most everything and everybody in the Dakotas, so the Wilders set out for the Ozarks, then known as "the land of the big red apple," seeking a new start in life.

They lived here in town for awhile, then acquired forty acres nearby, including a tree lien on the place. That proviso of the deal required that they carry out the terms of the former owner--to plant apple trees. The Wilders did, some ten acres at first, and their orchards were tended well enough that production reached proportions of carload shipments to Memphis, Tenn. and other markets. Mrs. Wilder recalls that spraying was virtually unknown and unneeded in those days.

By the hardest work in their earlier years here--Mrs. Wilder remembering well having helped to pull a saw on timber--they expanded their farm to more than 200 acres, had many chickens and dairy cattle and kept farm work going until recent years.

"We worked hard, but it was interesting and didn't hurt us any," Mrs. Wilder says.

She Raised Chickens.

Their farm was made one of the most successful hereabouts. Mrs. Wilder raised the chickens and her husband handled the cows. Once they had a contest, she says, as to whether cows or chickens brought the biggest returns.

"We had to work against each other trying to prove our point," she adds with a brightening of the eyes, adding quickly that the contest "ended in a draw."

The Wilders take pride in their long years of work and in the success they made on their Ozark farmland. Mrs. Wilder is much less willing to talk of her success as a writer or of any claim to fame. She disdains having any display made over her writing, although it has attained a place that brings fan mail from Japan, Sweden, and other countries as well as points all around America.

Her first writings were for newspapers and magazines, usually on poultry, or farming and rural subjects. It was not until 1932 that her first book was published and this event was more or less unexpected as far as she was concerned.

"Pa" Ingalls, her father, was a pioneer hunter, trapper and Indian fighter. He guarded property of the Chicago-Northwestern railroad in the days it was being built, had many adventures in the Middle West and became one of the founders of De Smet, S.D. 

Time after time she had heard him tell of his experiences and her own part in the family activities are worth reading, as proven by book sales today.

"These were family stories and I believed they should be preserved," Mrs. Wilder said, "so I wrote some of them down and sent them to my daughter Rose, so she could keep them. I also suggested she might want to use some of them in her writings." 

Rose Wilder Lane, her daughter, who lives in Danbury, Conn., already was nationally known as a reporter and author.

“Rose wrote back, some time later,” Mrs. Wilder continued, “that an editor had said the stories could be published if I would put some meat on the bones; so after that I started doing just that.”

“I wrote between washing dishes and getting dinner, or just any time I could,” she added. “But sometimes I got stumped on a phrase or a chapter. Maybe the way to do it would not come to me until after I had gone to bed and then I would think of something in the middle of th enight.”

Thus the many duties of an active farm wife took on new chores, but highly worthwhile ones.

She used an ordinary pencil and school tablet. Her manuscripts were sent to New York for typing, and all business connected with the work of publication was and is handled by her agent. He is George T. Bye, former Kansas Citian, who handles the writing of Mrs. Franklin D. (Eleanor) Roosevelt, and other celebrities.

Favorite Among Children.

Harper & Brothers of New York published the first book by Mrs. Wilder and all the others in the series. Chicago school children in 1947 selected Mrs. Wilder as their favorite author. She was honored in a special radio broadcast there. A plaque in the home here contains signatures of many Chicago children who took part in the events. Similar plaques have come from the Association of Children’s Librarians of Northern California; also one from Seattle, representing children and librarians of the Pacific Northwest.

Her books are very popular with Kansas City Public Library patrons. “Pa’s Fiddle,” well known in the books now is in the state museum at Pierre, S.D., but is played every year in a special annual concert there.

Mrs. Wilder was born at Pepin, Wis., on February 7, 1867, and a portrait of her father is drawn in "Little House in the Big Woods." Other titles in the series, all true stories, she says, are "Little House on the Prairie" (the family in the Indian Territory of Kansas); "Farmer Boy (Mr. Wilder's boyhood), "On the Banks of Plum Creek" (Early Minnesota); "By the Shores of Silver Lake" (Dakota territory); "The Long Winter" (one even worse than the recent one in Missouri); "Little Town on the Prairie" (in Dakota), and "These Happy Golden Years" (Laura, who was a school teacher at sixteen, meets Almanzo. Sleigh rides and buggy rides figure in the romance. Following marriage in South Dakota in 1885 they go to make their home in a little house on the claim they acquired.)

With fame and extra cash from book royalties in recent years, most persons would say the golden years are certainly continuing, but writing success has its drawbacks these days, Mrs. Wilder finds.

Hit By Income Tax.

She doesn't talk in figures of the money she has received for her books, but she says:

The more I wrote the bigger my income tax got, so I stopped. Why should I go on at my age? Why, we don't need it here anyway."

The latter statement was in regard to her complete satisfaction with the simple, comfortable life in the home she has known for more than half a century. The Wilders sold their farm with the provision they could occupy the home until “I just finished planting the potatoes,” said Mr. Wilder as he entered the home to greet visitors. Despite “not being strong” and his 92 years he is most alert to the current scene. Both the Wilders, however, complain of not being able to get help, "either inside or outside the house."

Detroit is planning appropriate ceremonies for the dedication of the library named for Mrs. Wilder. Officials there are eager for Mrs. Wilder to take part, but she says "definitely" she will not. It would be too much of a trip for Mr. Wilder, she adds; also, while she feels well, and certainly looks it, she says, "I'm too nervous" for anything like that. 

Her last public appearance as an author was in Detroit six years ago when she took part in book week events there.

Ralph A. Ulveling, library director of Detroit, said recently that "we believe her books will live and will be read with interest a hundred years from now just as they are today. If our prediction is correct we will naturally take particular pride in having been the institution that led the way in bringing her permanent recognition among the American men and women of letters."

Others honored similarly by Detroit libraries include such famous Americans as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas A. Edison, Ulveling noted. Seldom has the city so honored any living person.

"In choosing the name of Mrs. Wilder," Ulveling said, "we did so because we felt that she was a Midwestern writer who in her series of books has presented an invaluable social history of this great central portion of the country. While some historians, and they have an important place present the great sweep of history, bringing out the political and the military influences, Mrs. Wilder has directed attention to the commonplace things, the way of life of people. Thus she has preserved a portion of our history which is the part that is most likely to be lost in the course of time. She has done this beautifully, ably and understandingly, and like so few writers she has done it in a way which is interesting both to children and to adults.

Photograph of 1920-1930 Nurse's Uniform

This is a photograph of a woman named Maude Elizabeth Haas Williams, born April 8, 1907, dressed in her nurse uniform.  She met her husband, Clarence H. Williams, when he was admitted to the hospital where she worked.  They married August 3, 1935 in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Based on the dates of her life I would estimate that this nurse's uniform is circa late 1920s and/or early 1930s.

The Tragedy of the American Buffalo

Very large pile of American buffalo skulls, photo taken 1870.  Source: Wikipedia.

The word "pile" seems a hopelessly inadequate description for this image.

The American Buffalo almost went extinct in the nineteenth century due to people over-hunting them for food, clothing, and sport.  Only a few small herds managed to escape the extermination, creating a severe genetic bottleneck.  Worse, scientists have recently discovered that the genetic makeup of the majority of these herds are contaminated with cattle DNA.  (Unlike the progeny of donkeys and horses, the offspring of cattle and buffalo are generally fertile.)

The following is from the second chapter of The Overland Stage to California by Frank A. Root, published in 1901.   This chapter is actually about the Prairie ("the Great American Desert", as he refers to it), but talks in great detail about buffalo, which I have excerpted and arranged here.  Root was in Kansas Territory in the 1850s and '60s and drove overland stagecoaches during that time, and his book recounts many of his firsthand experiences.  You can view the book on google books for free if you wish to read this chapter, or the book, in its entirety.

CHAPTER II.

THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT, HOME OF THE BUFFALO. 

The first buffaloes I ever saw were in the streets of Atchison.  It was in the early '60s, during the war; but after that I saw them on several occasions.  These were domesticated and yoked together, having been driven in by a ranchman from the Republican valley, hauling produce to the Atchison market.  They attracted considerable attention from the business men.  They seemed to travel all right, were extremely gentle, and, under the yoke, appeared to work quite as nicely as the patient ox.  Nothing particularly strange was thought about the matter at the time, when there were immense herds of buffalo roaming wild on the plains of western Kansas; but I never, after that year, saw any of the shaggy animals yoked and doing the work of oxen. 

The number of buffalo in the great West less than half a century ago was roughly estimated at from ten to twenty millions. Careful authorities put the number at fifteen millions.  They once existed in New York, a number of buffaloes having been killed in the western part of that state, near where the bustling commercial city of Buffalo is built, which will perpetuate the name of the now practically extinct American animal.  In western Pennsylvania, near the salt-licks, a number of buffaloes were found; and according to an early explorer, a few head were found in ... large numbers in Virginia.  According to early writers, they were found in the Carolinas and along the northeast coast of Georgia, the only record known of their existence on the Atlantic seaboard.  East of the Mississippi, they ranged south as far as northern Alabama and were found in places throughout Mississippi and Louisiana.  Large numbers abounded in Texas.  They were also found in the northern provinces of Mexico, New Mexico, a portion of Utah, and also in Idaho, Washington, and in the arctic circle as far north as Great Slave Lake.  ...   

A HERD OF BUFFALO ON THE PLAINS IN WESTERN KANSAS
Pg 26 of The Overland Stage to California by Frank A. Root (pub 1901)

History informs us they were found by Coronado on his march northward from Mexico as early as 1585, between the Missouri river and the Rocky Mountains; later they were found by Lewis and Clarke, Zebulon M. Pike, and Long, in the early part of the present century; still later by Fremont and others, who made tours of exploration through the great West.  Often they were seen by tourists and hunters in immense herds, numbering hundreds of thousands. ... 

... Daniel Boone, the famous Kentucky hunter, once found a herd of buffaloes in his state which numbered 1000 head.  That was then believed to be a big herd but it was not then known that there were herds numbering millions of buffalo grazing on the plains embraced in the region known as the "Great American Desert," lying between the Missouri and the Rockies. 

The pioneers of Kansas, particularly a number who settled on the frontier--along the upper valley of the Smoky Hill, Republican, Solomon and Saline rivers--practically owed their lives to the existence of the buffalo.  For years in the '60s a goodly portion of the meat consumed by those early settlers was cut from the carcass of the noble, shaggy animal which so long existed as monarch of the plains.  Thousands of people who at an early day went overland to Utah, Oregon and California drew their supply of meat from the buffalo.  Where this life-preserver was found, it was known that, by following their paths, nearby water would be found.  The principal article of fuel found on the frontier for cooking the meat of the buffalo was the dried excrement of the animal, known in early Kansas and Nebraska parlance as "buffalo-chips."  The buffalo was one of the noblest of all animals.  It seemed indispensable.  It furnished man with an abundance of the most wholesome meat; the hide was made into shoes and garments worn during the day, and it made a comfortable bed and supplied warm covering in or out of doors at night. 

The building of the Pacific railroad was made possible at so early a day simply because the buffalo existed.  From the mighty herds the vast army of railroad builders drew their daily supply of fresh meat, and thousands of the animals were annually slaughtered for food while pushing to completion, in the '60s, the great transcontinental line.  For a few years in the '70s the railways did an enormous business carrying East train loads of hides and buffalo bones, these for a number of years being the principal articles of commerce gathered from the plains.  For years the great West resembled a charnel-house. Losing their crops, the pioneer settlers gathered up the bleached bones that covered the land, and they were shipped to the carbon works in the East, for the sale of which enough was realized to enable them to pull through another season. ... 

... The last herd of buffalo I ever saw in the wild, native state was in the fall of 1870.  It was along the Kansas Pacific railroad, near the head waters of the Smoky Hill river.  The railroad had just been built, and the animals seemed terribly frightened at the cars.  In their mad race westward along the railroad, they actually kept up with the passenger-train, which was moving along from fifteen to eighteen miles an hour.  The race became exciting, and all the passengers--many of whom had never before seen a buffalo--held their breath in suspense.  It was noticed that the animals never changed their course, but kept steadily coming nearer the train, apparently determined to cross the track at the curve a short distance beyond.  Not caring for a collision which might possibly derail the train, the engineer gave up the race and whistled "down brakes," stopping within a few rods of the animals to let them cross.  A parting salute was given by some of the passengers, who emptied the chambers of their six-shooters among the beasts, but which they did not appear to mind any more than a blast from a toy pop-gun.  While these animals used to cover the prairies and plains of western Kansas and Nebraska in countless millions, hardly one of them is now left to remind us of the once noble and powerful herds originally known in the great West as "crooked-back oxen." 

The best meat we used to get on the frontier in the early days was buffalo.  The markets at Atchison, Leavenworth, Topeka and a number of other Kansas towns, as early as 1857 and for some years following, were often supplied with buffalo meat, brought in from central Kansas.  No beef, it was said, could excel, even if it could equal, that of the buffalo; especially the hump upon the shoulders, which was invariably spoken of as a choice morsel."  Rich, juicy buffalo steaks and superb roasts were as common in the '60s on the plains as were other fresh meats in the best of well-regulated city markets. ... 

... What a shame, what an outrage on civilization! that the buffalo ... was so ruthlessly slaughtered.  Millions of the shaggy beasts were indiscriminately shot down by the white man in the '60s and '70s apparently just for the "fun of the thing." 

I remember well in the early '60s, while residing at Atchison, when long ox trains, loaded exclusively with buffalo hides, frequently were brought in from the plains by freighters.  The wagons were unloaded on the levee and the skins shipped on board steamboats down the Missouri river for St. Louis and Cincinnati.  Later, I saw hundreds of wagon-loads of these skins on the plains, in 1863-'65, when riding on the overland stage along the Platte and Little Blue rivers.  Several years afterward such trains were frequent sights at various towns on the Missouri.  Most of the wagon trains bearing the cargoes of untanned robes from the "Great American Desert" were from the Platte valley; some bound for Omaha, some for Nebraska City, some for St. Joseph, and most of the balance for Atchison and Leavenworth.  Hundreds of wagon-loads of the skins from the plains went into Kansas City from the "Old Santa Fe Trail." ... 

... According to a writer in Harper's Magazine a few years ago, Fort Benton--a military post about 2500 miles up the Missouri from St. Louis--in 1876 along sent 80,000 buffalo hides to market.  Toward the close of their career on the plains the animals had divided into two great herds--the southern and northern.  The great southern herd, however, was the first to go, being practically extinct at the close of 1872.  A few straggling herds only, after that date, were to be found.  The early '80s was about the last seen of the wild buffalo of the plains, which a quarter of a century or more before was so numerous between the Missouri river and the Rocky Mountains.  The greatest slaughter of the beasts was in 1872-'74, when, it was estimated, the number slain ran up into the millions. 

Hundreds of the best shots from all over this country and Europe, in the early '70s, were on hand to take a farewell hung before the shaggy bison became extinct.  Scores of noted Nimrods came from England, Scotland, Russia, and Germany--in fact, from almost every part of Europe.  The Grand Duke Alexis, youngest son of Emperor Alexander, of Russia, with quite a numerous retinue, came with a party from St. Petersburg, and went on a tour through "Buffalo Land" in the winter of 1871-'72. ...  

... During the immense overland traffic in the early '60s, portions of the plains were fairly white with bones of the buffalo.  The animals had first been killed by the Indians for their food and robes, and later, millions of the shaggy beasts had been indiscriminately slaughtered by the white man just for sport, their carcasses left a prey for the wolves, and their bones to bleach by the wayside.  In the '50s and '60's their bones were scattered promiscuously in center localities for hundreds of miles in central and western Kansas, and between Fort Kearney and Julesburg along the Platte, as far back from the river as the eye could reach.  

No one seeing the apparently endless mass of bones even dreamed that any use would ever be made of them; but after the completion of the Union Pacific railway and its branches across the "Great American Desert," and, later, the building of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe line into the Southwest, an immense new industry was early inaugurated in Kansas.  Kansas was the natural home of the buffalo, and, during the '70s, hundreds of merchants in the western part of the state had a regular trade established and did a lively business buying and shipping buffalo bones to Eastern markets.

My Painting of my Great-Grandparent's House in Somerset

This is a photo of my great-grandparent's farm house on Hwy 27 in Somerset, Kentucky.  My grandfather and a few of his siblings were born in this house, and my great-great grandfather died in the back room of this house.  I'm not sure when it was built, but it was already built when my great-grandparent's purchased the farm in the 1920s.  My family's cemetery is also on this property.

This is my painting of it I just finished a few weeks ago...
















Previously:
Click here for a list of my other Pulaski/Rockcastle/Laurel County KY articles

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Photographs of Bakery on 5th Street, Charlotte, NC

These are photographs that were in my husband's late uncle's possession, of 'The Ideal Bakers' Mayer & Haas Bakery, on 5th Street in Charlotte, N.C.

June 31st - Gravestone

       CLACKUM

William Clackum  |   Jane Clackum

June 31, 1850      |   Sept 13, 1852

May 28, 1904      |   May 10, 1931

    Gone, but not forgotten

Gravestone located in Citizens Cemetery, Marietta, GA

William's birthdate according to this gravestone is June 31, which is not a real date. I think it should say June 3, 1850. In the book The First Hundred Years: A Short History of Cobb County, in Georgia by Sarah B. G. Temple, published in 1934, there is a transcription of all graves in this cemetery, Citizens Cemetery, Marietta, at that time. She transcribes this grave as: "W. R. Clackum June 3, 1850 May 28, 1904". 

Although the book was published in 1934, the author undertook the task of trying to compile and publish a comprehensive transcription of all cemeteries in Cobb County at the time, which likely took several years to accomplish.    Jane Clackum's grave is not listed in the book despite dying in 1931.  It is reasonable to assume she died during the same time period as the author was transcribing these graves and therefore didn't make the book. Perhaps there was a different headstone at that time for William, and it was replaced when Jane died to give them a joint headstone. Reasons I think there was a different headstone is because the birth date differs, and secondly, his name is not transcribed in Temple's book as being written out William as it is in the above pictured headstone. Instead his initials are given, whereas his middle initial does not even appear on the present gravestone.