America on the Move
Laura Ingalls Wilder - A Journey from South Dakota to Missouri, 1894
When most people think of Laura Ingalls Wilder, they conjure up a young, fictionalized version of the author—a persona created in Little House on the Prairie, and other beloved children’s books that portrayed the hardscrabble life of an American pioneer family in the late-nineteenth century. We catch a glimpse of the real Laura Ingalls Wilder as a young wife and mother, in a diary that she kept during the summer of 1894 when she, her husband, Almanzo, and their seven-year-old daughter, Rose, moved from South Dakota to Missouri.
The Wilders’ move came after years of hardship in De Smet, South Dakota—drought and crop failure, a case of diphtheria that left Almanzo physically debilitated, the devastating loss of their infant son, and an accident that caused their house to burn down.
Throughout the 650-mile journey that took six weeks, Laura chronicled the weather, the people, and the places they saw. Her diary reflects how her spirits lifted as they moved away from the harshness of the dusty prairie into a lavish landscape of trees and fruit. And it reveals, not just her own journey, but a whole country on the move—trails clogged with covered wagons—hundreds of people leaving heartbreak and disappointment behind, daring to hope for a better life on the road ahead.
ON THE WAY HOME, The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, page 40
As she traveled, Laura wrote her diary in pencil in a little five-cent memorandum book. Years later, her daughter Rose edited the diary, added an introductory “setting,” and published it in 1962 under the title ON THE WAY HOME—The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894. This typed manuscript was produced as part of the publication process.
National Archives, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, West Branch, Iowa
© 1962, 1990 Little House Heritage Trust. Used with permission.
Excerpt:
August 20: Got a good start at 7:30 but the roads are awfully stony. Crops are poor. Everyone tells us they never get rain here when they need it. . . .
Excerpt from: ON THE WAY HOME, The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
© 1962, 1990 Little House Heritage Trust. Used with permission.
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ON THE WAY HOME, The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, page 41
As she traveled, Laura wrote her diary in pencil in a little five-cent memorandum book. Years later, her daughter Rose edited the diary, added an introductory “setting,” and published it in 1962 under the title ON THE WAY HOME—The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894. This typed manuscript was produced as part of the publication process.
National Archives, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, West Branch, Iowa
© 1962, 1990 Little House Heritage Trust. Used with permission.
Excerpt:
August 21: . . . Met a family of emigrants who have spent the last two months traveling in southwest Missouri. They do not like it at all down there . . .We passed another covered wagon stopped by the road, and those folks are on their way to Missouri. The whole country is just full of emigrants, going and coming.
August 29: . . . Parts of Nebraska and Kansas are well enough but Missouri is simply glorious. . . . The sky seems lower here, and it is the softest blue . . . It is a drowsy country that makes you feel wide awake and alive but somehow contented. . . There are masses of blackberries, and seedling peaches and plums and cherries, and luscious-looking fruits ripening in little trees that I don’t know, a lavishness of fruit growing wild. It seems to be free for the taking.
Excerpt from: ON THE WAY HOME, The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
© 1962, 1990 Little House Heritage Trust. Used with permission.
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“Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield after Almanzo had cleared a good deal of the land,” photograph by Laura Ingalls Wilder, ca. 1910
Laura and Almanzo bought land, cleared it, built a house (“We cut and planed and fitted every stick of it ourselves,” Laura said), and lived out their long lives on the farm they called Rocky Ridge.
Courtesy of Laura Ingalls Wilder Home Association, Mansfield, Missouri.
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Laura Ingalls Wilder as a young woman, not dated
Courtesy of Laura Ingalls Wilder Home Association, Mansfield, Missouri
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