The Library of Congress devotes its Today in History page today to Laura Ingalls Wilder. It begins:
On every side now the prairie stretched away empty to a far, clear skyline. The wind never stopped blowing, waving the tall prairie grasses…And all the afternoon, while Pa kept driving onward, he was merrily whistling or singing. The song he sang oftenest was:
Oh, come to this country,
And don’t you feel alarm,
For Uncle Sam is rich enough
To give us all a farm!
Laura Ingalls Wilder,
By the Shores of Silver Lake
And goes on to tell us:
On February 7, 1867, Laura Elizabeth Ingalls, the author of the beloved semi-autobiographical Little House series, was born in Wisconsin, the second daughter of Charles and Caroline Ingalls. The basic facts of her life correspond to those related in her books about her family’s experiences on the American frontier during the 1870’s and 1880’s.
There’s much, much more about the author who was sixty-three years old she started writing about her pioneer childhood.