Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I suspect they had a x related genetic disorder. Ma, Laura and I think Rose all had still born sons or ones who died in infancy. Not having sons definitely had a negative impact on their financial condition. Plus Pa’s really obvious adhd and then a string of bad luck with weather.

I think leaving out the particularly depressing parts was absolutely a common thing for almost all people born before maybe 1950. How many of you have grandparents that suffered through the Great Depression or survived/fled the holocaust and how much did they talk about the really awful stuff, versus talking about the happy memories, or even telling the “it was tough but we banded together” type stories? Or grandparents who lost a young child and never told the surviving children about it? My grandmother was raised by a woman who lost almost all her family in the Irish famine and probably spent most of her childhood starving (and possibly in a work home) but never said word one about that to her grandchildren. She talked about the herbs and flowers they had, the language, etc etc. No one taught the Irish famine in school back then so my grandmother didn’t even know to ask her grandmother to talk about it. The view was that it didn’t help anybody to relive all the worst memories.

But even with that said, the books are pretty horrific. When her dad left to go find work and they didn’t hear from him for months and months and probably thought he had died and they’d never know how/when/where, and he almost froze to death/starved getting back to them…. Or the story where they all had. Cholera or whatever and were dying in their beds all too weak to stand and get water until a doctor just happened to be passing by and stopped in their cabin? That’s insane.

No. It is much more plausible instead of a genetic disorder, both Laura and Carrie suffered from severe malnutrition in their childhoods. Laura was under 5 feet and Carrie was around 4'8". They almost starved to death in the Long Winter and had no Vitamin C or D for months. They lacked protein and amino acids from meat, dairy, eggs. Records show a lot of frontier children were shorter than their same aged peers in the East.

But Rose also had a stillborn son. Out of 5 children of Ma, one one was a boy and he died in infancy (genetic odds would suggest she might have miscarried other male fetuses). Laura also had a son that died after 12 days. It’s likely Laura also had miscarriages as she had only 2 children in four years which wouldn’t be typical in that time period, absent miscarriage. She didn’t have more pregnancies after Almonzo got diphtheria so it’s possible that made him infertile.

Their height was certainly affected by malnutrition but that wasn’t that oddly small back then. My own grandmother, born in the 19th century, had great nutrition and never reached over 5’1”. And in the old photos she towers over her own grandmother, who despite surviving the Irish famine as a child, went on to have 9 children. I have my great grandmothers wedding dress from the 1890s and it looks like a little child’s. That’s very common with antique dresses. They were tiny! I don’t think that has much to do with fertility.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I suspect they had a x related genetic disorder. Ma, Laura and I think Rose all had still born sons or ones who died in infancy. Not having sons definitely had a negative impact on their financial condition. Plus Pa’s really obvious adhd and then a string of bad luck with weather.

I think leaving out the particularly depressing parts was absolutely a common thing for almost all people born before maybe 1950. How many of you have grandparents that suffered through the Great Depression or survived/fled the holocaust and how much did they talk about the really awful stuff, versus talking about the happy memories, or even telling the “it was tough but we banded together” type stories? Or grandparents who lost a young child and never told the surviving children about it? My grandmother was raised by a woman who lost almost all her family in the Irish famine and probably spent most of her childhood starving (and possibly in a work home) but never said word one about that to her grandchildren. She talked about the herbs and flowers they had, the language, etc etc. No one taught the Irish famine in school back then so my grandmother didn’t even know to ask her grandmother to talk about it. The view was that it didn’t help anybody to relive all the worst memories.

But even with that said, the books are pretty horrific. When her dad left to go find work and they didn’t hear from him for months and months and probably thought he had died and they’d never know how/when/where, and he almost froze to death/starved getting back to them…. Or the story where they all had. Cholera or whatever and were dying in their beds all too weak to stand and get water until a doctor just happened to be passing by and stopped in their cabin? That’s insane.

No. It is much more plausible instead of a genetic disorder, both Laura and Carrie suffered from severe malnutrition in their childhoods. Laura was under 5 feet and Carrie was around 4'8". They almost starved to death in the Long Winter and had no Vitamin C or D for months. They lacked protein and amino acids from meat, dairy, eggs. Records show a lot of frontier children were shorter than their same aged peers in the East.

Anonymous wrote:I think PPs are overly harsh on Almanzo who was severely disabled from a bout with diptheria and yet ultimately does make a successful life for his family in Missouri. He also allows his wife to work as a journalist and a bank loan officer and ultimately to publish books (even though during much of her work life, they don't desperately need her income), which was pretty uncommon in those days. They raise a feminist libertarian daughter. I think Almanzo was actually pretty progressive for the time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I suspect they had a x related genetic disorder. Ma, Laura and I think Rose all had still born sons or ones who died in infancy. Not having sons definitely had a negative impact on their financial condition. Plus Pa’s really obvious adhd and then a string of bad luck with weather.

I think leaving out the particularly depressing parts was absolutely a common thing for almost all people born before maybe 1950. How many of you have grandparents that suffered through the Great Depression or survived/fled the holocaust and how much did they talk about the really awful stuff, versus talking about the happy memories, or even telling the “it was tough but we banded together” type stories? Or grandparents who lost a young child and never told the surviving children about it? My grandmother was raised by a woman who lost almost all her family in the Irish famine and probably spent most of her childhood starving (and possibly in a work home) but never said word one about that to her grandchildren. She talked about the herbs and flowers they had, the language, etc etc. No one taught the Irish famine in school back then so my grandmother didn’t even know to ask her grandmother to talk about it. The view was that it didn’t help anybody to relive all the worst memories.

But even with that said, the books are pretty horrific. When her dad left to go find work and they didn’t hear from him for months and months and probably thought he had died and they’d never know how/when/where, and he almost froze to death/starved getting back to them…. Or the story where they all had. Cholera or whatever and were dying in their beds all too weak to stand and get water until a doctor just happened to be passing by and stopped in their cabin? That’s insane.

It was malaria.
The Dr. wasn't a random passerby. He was a black man and a Dr. to the local Indians. He knew families in the area were getting sick from malaria and made his rounds on the frontier properties.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP. But weren't the debts mostly related to the farms not working out? I don't think Charles had much other skill to offer. You will remember the many disasters they experienced with weather and crops.

As for alcoholism, I'm not going to condone it but that was pretty much the most common escapism/entertainment they had.

I've been doing my European genealogy and they were pretty much living the same life ... hand to mouth farmers with a tendency towards alcoholism. Moved to the U.S., became factory workers, got compulsory public education, started bettering themselves and joined the white collar world. I think this was a ubiquitous part of the Agricultural Revolution transition.

PP here. From what I remember, there were issues where Pa would be too drunk to harvest their crops, and the whole family would have starved if not for the help of others. The debts came because he was a terrible businessman.

The real problem, though, is this idealized version of what prairie life was like. The "Good Old Days" fallacy, similar to what we do with the 1950s. It sets people up to think we need to go back to those times.

Which is why there's a growing number of men (and sadly, women) who want to revoke women's rights, because they think that they would be successful and their wives would support them and everyone would be happy if only we could go back to those times when people had zero other options. See: MAGA.

When the reality is that most men wouldn't be successful, women would be trapped in abusive marriages, children would die and be abused, substance abuse and mental health disorders run rampant, and most would be in poverty.

I would fully support a historically accurate version. Show people what life was really like and that the American Dream wasn't a reality. We want progress, not reverting back to the past.

It sounds like you need to move to the politics forum.


Have you ever been farther west than Virginia or visited any western location beyond Chicago or LA? Gone camping? Driven through the Dakotas or Kansas? Spent a winter day with a broken heater?

What those pioneers did was extraordinary.

I am from the west and have camped and hiked etc. I agree it’s extraordinary which is precisely why there is a danger in romanticizing all that because people then think things were better. Some things maybe were (no worried about microplastics in our brains!) but many were not. I’m reminded of the pbs reality show that put modern families out there to live like pioneers for something like 60 days. The men all found it a great vacation from the stress of modern life. The women all despaired of the fact that the women’s work was literally never done.. Then men basically worked with the sun. But the women needed to be up first to feed the men and work after dusk to clean and get things ready for the next day. Washing took forever. Cooking took forever. Everything took forever. And at least those women weren’t pregnant, which the pioneer women often were. There was one census in the late 19th or early 20th century where they asked women how many children they’d birthed and how many were still living. Just scanning those pages is heart breaking. And that doesn’t even include the endless miscarriages due to back breaking work, contaminated food/water, and viral disease. There’s a reason that young women flocked to the cities when industrialization happened — even working in a dark, dangerous mill was better than this.

The Little House books 100% focused on how hard the pioneer life was for women in particular.

That was one of the main themes woven throughout every novel.

Ma worked way harder than Pa. That was clear in every book.

Pa also worked damn hard though. It's crazy to say that anyone farming on the prairie had it easy. (And note that in the PBS show, the men who took the seriously the dictate of how much firewood they needed to cut ahead of the winter did not find fake prairie life to be very pleasant.)

Recall that LIW wrote that Pa usually didn't play the fiddle at night except in the winter, because he was too tired.

Pa was a loser who moved the family multiple times to get out of debts and unpaid bills. Because he was a feckless boy-man, his wife had to live in a series of increasingly worse hardship locations.

Exactly. Not sure who these posters are who think he was so intelligent. He could have stayed in Wisconsin on the land he owned surrounded by family. It was fertile land with a reliable climate. He bought 80 acres of land (he went in on 160 acres with his Ma's brother) for around $167 in 1863. He sold the land in 1868 for $650 dollars with a promissory note and 7% interest. He left for Missouri and bought land but that venture was not successful so then he squatted on Indian land in Kansas. Eventually the military made the settlers leave.

Then man who bought Charles Ingall's property never paid so he got his land back in 1871. By then the value had increased even more so he could have stayed and had successful dairy farm. Instead he sold the land for $1,000. The man who bought that property ended up becoming extremely wealthy. He cleared the remaining land and made money selling the timber. Then he build a dairy farm.

Meanwhile Ingalls took the $1,000 (which was a massive sum back then) and bought the Walnut Grove farm. Within 3 years he had not only lost everything he owed money for lumber for the house he built on the land, property tax, school tax, and to the mercantile. They left at night and moved to Iowa. He ended up owing more money in Iowa and had to leave in the dead of night from there as well to go to back to Minnesota then on to S. Dakota for free homestead land (which couldn't be taken to pay past debts.)

Anonymous wrote:I think PPs are overly harsh on Almanzo who was severely disabled from a bout with diptheria and yet ultimately does make a successful life for his family in Missouri. He also allows his wife to work as a journalist and a bank loan officer and ultimately to publish books (even though during much of her work life, they don't desperately need her income), which was pretty uncommon in those days. They raise a feminist libertarian daughter. I think Almanzo was actually pretty progressive for the time.

Anonymous wrote:I suspect they had a x related genetic disorder. Ma, Laura and I think Rose all had still born sons or ones who died in infancy. Not having sons definitely had a negative impact on their financial condition. Plus Pa’s really obvious adhd and then a string of bad luck with weather.

I think leaving out the particularly depressing parts was absolutely a common thing for almost all people born before maybe 1950. How many of you have grandparents that suffered through the Great Depression or survived/fled the holocaust and how much did they talk about the really awful stuff, versus talking about the happy memories, or even telling the “it was tough but we banded together” type stories? Or grandparents who lost a young child and never told the surviving children about it? My grandmother was raised by a woman who lost almost all her family in the Irish famine and probably spent most of her childhood starving (and possibly in a work home) but never said word one about that to her grandchildren. She talked about the herbs and flowers they had, the language, etc etc. No one taught the Irish famine in school back then so my grandmother didn’t even know to ask her grandmother to talk about it. The view was that it didn’t help anybody to relive all the worst memories.

But even with that said, the books are pretty horrific. When her dad left to go find work and they didn’t hear from him for months and months and probably thought he had died and they’d never know how/when/where, and he almost froze to death/starved getting back to them…. Or the story where they all had. Cholera or whatever and were dying in their beds all too weak to stand and get water until a doctor just happened to be passing by and stopped in their cabin? That’s insane.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP. But weren't the debts mostly related to the farms not working out? I don't think Charles had much other skill to offer. You will remember the many disasters they experienced with weather and crops.

As for alcoholism, I'm not going to condone it but that was pretty much the most common escapism/entertainment they had.

I've been doing my European genealogy and they were pretty much living the same life ... hand to mouth farmers with a tendency towards alcoholism. Moved to the U.S., became factory workers, got compulsory public education, started bettering themselves and joined the white collar world. I think this was a ubiquitous part of the Agricultural Revolution transition.

PP here. From what I remember, there were issues where Pa would be too drunk to harvest their crops, and the whole family would have starved if not for the help of others. The debts came because he was a terrible businessman.

The real problem, though, is this idealized version of what prairie life was like. The "Good Old Days" fallacy, similar to what we do with the 1950s. It sets people up to think we need to go back to those times.

Which is why there's a growing number of men (and sadly, women) who want to revoke women's rights, because they think that they would be successful and their wives would support them and everyone would be happy if only we could go back to those times when people had zero other options. See: MAGA.

When the reality is that most men wouldn't be successful, women would be trapped in abusive marriages, children would die and be abused, substance abuse and mental health disorders run rampant, and most would be in poverty.

I would fully support a historically accurate version. Show people what life was really like and that the American Dream wasn't a reality. We want progress, not reverting back to the past.

Can you provide a source for Pa having a drinking problem?

+1. Pa Ingalls was not perfect, but, I don't remember any mention of a drinking problem in prairie fires.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP. But weren't the debts mostly related to the farms not working out? I don't think Charles had much other skill to offer. You will remember the many disasters they experienced with weather and crops.

As for alcoholism, I'm not going to condone it but that was pretty much the most common escapism/entertainment they had.

I've been doing my European genealogy and they were pretty much living the same life ... hand to mouth farmers with a tendency towards alcoholism. Moved to the U.S., became factory workers, got compulsory public education, started bettering themselves and joined the white collar world. I think this was a ubiquitous part of the Agricultural Revolution transition.

PP here. From what I remember, there were issues where Pa would be too drunk to harvest their crops, and the whole family would have starved if not for the help of others. The debts came because he was a terrible businessman.

The real problem, though, is this idealized version of what prairie life was like. The "Good Old Days" fallacy, similar to what we do with the 1950s. It sets people up to think we need to go back to those times.

Which is why there's a growing number of men (and sadly, women) who want to revoke women's rights, because they think that they would be successful and their wives would support them and everyone would be happy if only we could go back to those times when people had zero other options. See: MAGA.

When the reality is that most men wouldn't be successful, women would be trapped in abusive marriages, children would die and be abused, substance abuse and mental health disorders run rampant, and most would be in poverty.

I would fully support a historically accurate version. Show people what life was really like and that the American Dream wasn't a reality. We want progress, not reverting back to the past.

It sounds like you need to move to the politics forum.


Have you ever been farther west than Virginia or visited any western location beyond Chicago or LA? Gone camping? Driven through the Dakotas or Kansas? Spent a winter day with a broken heater?

What those pioneers did was extraordinary.

I am from the west and have camped and hiked etc. I agree it’s extraordinary which is precisely why there is a danger in romanticizing all that because people then think things were better. Some things maybe were (no worried about microplastics in our brains!) but many were not. I’m reminded of the pbs reality show that put modern families out there to live like pioneers for something like 60 days. The men all found it a great vacation from the stress of modern life. The women all despaired of the fact that the women’s work was literally never done.. Then men basically worked with the sun. But the women needed to be up first to feed the men and work after dusk to clean and get things ready for the next day. Washing took forever. Cooking took forever. Everything took forever. And at least those women weren’t pregnant, which the pioneer women often were. There was one census in the late 19th or early 20th century where they asked women how many children they’d birthed and how many were still living. Just scanning those pages is heart breaking. And that doesn’t even include the endless miscarriages due to back breaking work, contaminated food/water, and viral disease. There’s a reason that young women flocked to the cities when industrialization happened — even working in a dark, dangerous mill was better than this.

The Little House books 100% focused on how hard the pioneer life was for women in particular.

That was one of the main themes woven throughout every novel.

Ma worked way harder than Pa. That was clear in every book.

Pa also worked damn hard though. It's crazy to say that anyone farming on the prairie had it easy. (And note that in the PBS show, the men who took the seriously the dictate of how much firewood they needed to cut ahead of the winter did not find fake prairie life to be very pleasant.)

Recall that LIW wrote that Pa usually didn't play the fiddle at night except in the winter, because he was too tired.

Pa was a loser who moved the family multiple times to get out of debts and unpaid bills. Because he was a feckless boy-man, his wife had to live in a series of increasingly worse hardship locations.

Don't know that he was a loser, but he was definitely a frontier guy looking to serially homestead. The only reason they finally settled down was because Ma put her foot down and said the girls needed to get formal schooling.

So you think that a guy who packed up his family multiples times, sometimes in dead of night, to run out on doctor's bills, creditors/store tabs, and rent is...not a loser?

Anonymous wrote:I suspect they had a x related genetic disorder. Ma, Laura and I think Rose all had still born sons or ones who died in infancy. Not having sons definitely had a negative impact on their financial condition. Plus Pa’s really obvious adhd and then a string of bad luck with weather.

I think leaving out the particularly depressing parts was absolutely a common thing for almost all people born before maybe 1950. How many of you have grandparents that suffered through the Great Depression or survived/fled the holocaust and how much did they talk about the really awful stuff, versus talking about the happy memories, or even telling the “it was tough but we banded together” type stories? Or grandparents who lost a young child and never told the surviving children about it? My grandmother was raised by a woman who lost almost all her family in the Irish famine and probably spent most of her childhood starving (and possibly in a work home) but never said word one about that to her grandchildren. She talked about the herbs and flowers they had, the language, etc etc. No one taught the Irish famine in school back then so my grandmother didn’t even know to ask her grandmother to talk about it. The view was that it didn’t help anybody to relive all the worst memories.

But even with that said, the books are pretty horrific. When her dad left to go find work and they didn’t hear from him for months and months and probably thought he had died and they’d never know how/when/where, and he almost froze to death/starved getting back to them…. Or the story where they all had. Cholera or whatever and were dying in their beds all too weak to stand and get water until a doctor just happened to be passing by and stopped in their cabin? That’s insane.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP. But weren't the debts mostly related to the farms not working out? I don't think Charles had much other skill to offer. You will remember the many disasters they experienced with weather and crops.

As for alcoholism, I'm not going to condone it but that was pretty much the most common escapism/entertainment they had.

I've been doing my European genealogy and they were pretty much living the same life ... hand to mouth farmers with a tendency towards alcoholism. Moved to the U.S., became factory workers, got compulsory public education, started bettering themselves and joined the white collar world. I think this was a ubiquitous part of the Agricultural Revolution transition.

PP here. From what I remember, there were issues where Pa would be too drunk to harvest their crops, and the whole family would have starved if not for the help of others. The debts came because he was a terrible businessman.

The real problem, though, is this idealized version of what prairie life was like. The "Good Old Days" fallacy, similar to what we do with the 1950s. It sets people up to think we need to go back to those times.

Which is why there's a growing number of men (and sadly, women) who want to revoke women's rights, because they think that they would be successful and their wives would support them and everyone would be happy if only we could go back to those times when people had zero other options. See: MAGA.

When the reality is that most men wouldn't be successful, women would be trapped in abusive marriages, children would die and be abused, substance abuse and mental health disorders run rampant, and most would be in poverty.

I would fully support a historically accurate version. Show people what life was really like and that the American Dream wasn't a reality. We want progress, not reverting back to the past.

It sounds like you need to move to the politics forum.


Have you ever been farther west than Virginia or visited any western location beyond Chicago or LA? Gone camping? Driven through the Dakotas or Kansas? Spent a winter day with a broken heater?

What those pioneers did was extraordinary.

I am from the west and have camped and hiked etc. I agree it’s extraordinary which is precisely why there is a danger in romanticizing all that because people then think things were better. Some things maybe were (no worried about microplastics in our brains!) but many were not. I’m reminded of the pbs reality show that put modern families out there to live like pioneers for something like 60 days. The men all found it a great vacation from the stress of modern life. The women all despaired of the fact that the women’s work was literally never done.. Then men basically worked with the sun. But the women needed to be up first to feed the men and work after dusk to clean and get things ready for the next day. Washing took forever. Cooking took forever. Everything took forever. And at least those women weren’t pregnant, which the pioneer women often were. There was one census in the late 19th or early 20th century where they asked women how many children they’d birthed and how many were still living. Just scanning those pages is heart breaking. And that doesn’t even include the endless miscarriages due to back breaking work, contaminated food/water, and viral disease. There’s a reason that young women flocked to the cities when industrialization happened — even working in a dark, dangerous mill was better than this.

The Little House books 100% focused on how hard the pioneer life was for women in particular.

That was one of the main themes woven throughout every novel.

Ma worked way harder than Pa. That was clear in every book.

Pa also worked damn hard though. It's crazy to say that anyone farming on the prairie had it easy. (And note that in the PBS show, the men who took the seriously the dictate of how much firewood they needed to cut ahead of the winter did not find fake prairie life to be very pleasant.)

Recall that LIW wrote that Pa usually didn't play the fiddle at night except in the winter, because he was too tired.

Pa was a loser who moved the family multiple times to get out of debts and unpaid bills. Because he was a feckless boy-man, his wife had to live in a series of increasingly worse hardship locations.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP. But weren't the debts mostly related to the farms not working out? I don't think Charles had much other skill to offer. You will remember the many disasters they experienced with weather and crops.

As for alcoholism, I'm not going to condone it but that was pretty much the most common escapism/entertainment they had.

I've been doing my European genealogy and they were pretty much living the same life ... hand to mouth farmers with a tendency towards alcoholism. Moved to the U.S., became factory workers, got compulsory public education, started bettering themselves and joined the white collar world. I think this was a ubiquitous part of the Agricultural Revolution transition.

I think he did have lots of skills— he was musical and, like Laura, highly intelligent. But they weren’t valued in that environment as nd Orin hurt him. Remember when they spent Laura’s hard-earned wages in a parlor organ? Some of Laura’s bitterness and judgement does come out in the last 2 books.

What gets me is that she really loved her family for all their flaws, but when the books ended she virtually never saw them again in her life. Maybe once after age 20 because almanzo’s farm failed and they had to move. It feels like the books were a way of keeping close with loved ones otherwise lost.

Anonymous wrote:I think PPs are overly harsh on Almanzo who was severely disabled from a bout with diptheria and yet ultimately does make a successful life for his family in Missouri. He also allows his wife to work as a journalist and a bank loan officer and ultimately to publish books (even though during much of her work life, they don't desperately need her income), which was pretty uncommon in those days. They raise a feminist libertarian daughter. I think Almanzo was actually pretty progressive for the time.