The Real-Life Settlers Who Inspired ‘Little House on the Prairie’

Broadcast on NBC for almost a decade from 1974 to 1983, Little House on the Prairie remains one of the most popular television serials in broadcast history. Consistently a ratings-winner during its initial run on NBC, it has since been shown worldwide and has never been out of syndication in the almost five decades since it ended. Today, Netflix tackles the classic story with a brand-new show, with all eight episodes now streaming.

Set in the late 1800s, the adaptations follow the ups and downs of the Ingalls family, who live and work on a farm in the real-life town of Walnut Grove in rural Minnesota. Although the original series was filmed in California, the production recreated life on a late 19th century farm in extraordinary detail—no doubt aided by the fact that it was based on a series of best-selling books written by someone who had first-hand knowledge and experience of precisely the ups and downs of frontier life the show portrayed. 

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Real Life

Born in Lake Pepin, in Wisconsin in 1867, Laura Ingalls Wilder was the American author who brought the original semi-autobiographical Little House book series to life, basing it on her own childhood experiences. Although Little House on the Prairie is set in Minnesota, her father travelled with his young family across several frontier states in the mid to late 1800s, journeying by covered wagon from Wisconsin and Iowa in the east, as far as Missouri and Kansas in the south, and deep into Dakota Territory in the north.

The family’s frequent movements and relocations were in part due to the agricultural hardships the Ingalls endured—including blizzards, floods, and even a plague of locusts the struck the Rocky Mountains in the mid 1870s—and partly due to her father Charles’s continual searching for better land and financial opportunities.

Charles’s family before him had long been farmers too, and, like him and his children, they too had often travelled far and wide across the United States in search of better prospects. 

The Struggles of Frontier Life

The world that Wilder presented in her Little House books (and the world that ended up being portrayed on screen in the subsequent television series) is perhaps a more sanitized version of her family’s genuine experiences on the American frontier in the 1800s. In truth, her family experienced crushing poverty (especially after the birth of Laura’s younger sister, Grace), that was worsened by failing crops, high rents, medical bills, and personal tragedy.

Laura’s only brother, Charles, Jr. (known as Freddy), died when he was just nine months old. Financial worries were a frequent cause of strife between Charles and his wife, Laura’s mother Caroline, who was typically far more pragmatic about the seriousness of the family’s situation. At one point, things became so tough that the wife of the family doctor at point offered to temporarily adopt Laura, easing the family’s financial struggles until their medical bills could be settled. Caroline eventually declined the offer. 

The Ingalls’ real-life woes were not unique, however. Frontier times were tough for a great many people, and the hardships of the day were soon being seen in the world and society around the family too. In her definitely-not-for-kids life story Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, Wilder wrote of mobs of local vigilantes, disastrous local love triangles that destroyed families, and tales of domestic violence and abuse.

She even recalled a grisly story of young drunkard who burned himself alive in a local saloon when he accidentally breathed in the fumes of a lit match with a mouthful of whiskey, all but instantaneously scorching his lungs from the inside out. 

Happily, though, Wilder’s Little House books focus chiefly on the calmer, pleasanter, and more bucolic side of frontier life, and as a result swiftly proved immensely popular with readers and critics alike who were drawn to the simple way of life they portrayed.

Having long written for various local periodicals (and working as editor of the Missouri Ruralist for over 10 years), Wilder initially began writing about her childhood experiences at the encouragement of her own daughter in the early 1900s, and eventually published the first Little House book, titled Little House in the Big Woods, in 1932. A further seven titles were published in Wilder’s lifetime, and a ninth—the first draft of a story Wilder had worked on called The First Four Years—was published posthumously, 14 years after her death in 1971. 

Just like the television shows that they inspired, the Little House books remain extremely popular today, and have sold over 70 million copies in more than 100 countries. 

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