![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It was after a few decades in Missouri that Wilder and Lane began preaching the libertarian gospel of not needing government programs such as farm subsidies or Social Security. Wilder insisted all anyone needed was determination and five acres, while ignoring that her family had 40, and the couple always had second and third jobs.ĭespite their off-the-farm jobs, the Great Depression hit the Wilders hard and Rose's suggestion of selling Laura's pioneer memories as children's literature found a receptive audience. ![]() Wilder would start teaching at country schools at 16. At 18, she married Almanzo Wilder and the young couple in their first years endured a house fire and the loss of their second child as an infant, all the while deep in debt. When their daughter was three, her parents contracted diphtheria, causing Almanzo to have a stroke that permanently impaired him and prompted them to move to southern Missouri in 1894. The Ingalls family would suffer two grasshopper plagues that would take out two years of crops, their oldest daughter becoming seriously ill and then becoming blind, and enduring the brutal winter of 1880-81 in De Smet, South Dakota, where the town's residents almost starved to death. ![]()
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