Day 3 - DeSmet South Dakota - By The Shores of Silver Lake, Little Town on The Prairie, The Long Winter, These Happy Golden Years

We woke up in DeSmet and hit the town in time to catch a tour at the Ingalls Historical Society.  We visited the surveyors’ house where the family first stayed when they came the area.  For those of you who remember the book, this was the only lodging in the area when they arrived.  That being the case, every traveler who arrived during that time ended up camping out with them in this tiny house.  Next we visited an old school house like the one Laura attended and saw a school house that was just like the Brewster School, where Laura had her first teaching job when she was just 15 years old. Believe it or not, they used one room schools in this area until the 1950’s!

The last stop on the tour was a visit to the house that Pa and Ma lived in after moving off the farm.  This house still has lots of items that had belonged to all of the Ingalls family.  Pa had wanted to move west after the girls grew up but Ma was tired of that and they ended up in this house in town until their deaths.  David was able to play Mary’s pedal organ.  We found out more about the history of the family that wasn’t in the books.  Mary never got married.  Laura married Almonzo and had two children; a boy who only lived 12 days, and Rose Wilder Lane. Rose, the only grandchild of Ma and Pa had one pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage.  Carrie and Grace both married later in life but neither of them had children.  It was interesting to see that Ma and Pa who had 5 children, including a boy Charles who died at 9 months, and the four daughters, ended up with no great grandchildren. So the family line ended with Rose.

At 11:30 Glenn thought we were done in De Smet but one of the tour guides at the Ingalls home mentioned the Homestead on the edge of town as a family friendly place to visit.  We decided to check it out and that turned out to be the highlight of the day for us. This is the actual 160 acre homestead that the family settled on and had to live and farm for 5 years in order to prove up on their claim.  The homestead site included a replica sod home, claim shanty, and many other buildings that were important to the life of a homesteader.  The kids were able to pump water from the well.  They thought that was pretty fun!  The replica of the home they lived in showed us how poor they really were.  After moving to the homestead Pa built a 10’x14’ one room home.  The next year he added another 10’x14’ section to the house that he made into 2 bedrooms.  That is what they lived in for a number of years.  Laura taught school so they could afford to send Mary to a school for the blind.  When Mary returned they planned a surprise, a pump organ. So Pa added a new 12’x16’ room to house that. The kids were able to wash clothes on a wash board, run them through the wringer and hang them on the line.  David, who is now doing his own laundry, was not impressed by that setup. The kids both played the pump organ. They also made a typical toy of the era, a button on a string that doubled as a necklace. I can’t imagine them giving up the GameBoy for that.

Does David count?

We went to the barn and practiced lassoing a fake cow, drove a covered wagon, rode a pony, played on a stage coach, and petted the miniature ponies.  They also had a lot of barn cats and the kittens that the kids couldn’t stay away from.  On the wagon, we went to an old schoolhouse that had been moved from the neighboring Johnson Farm.  The kids dressed up in typical school clothes and a renactor played the role of school teacher.  We also checked out ten acres of corn and ten acres of oats that were planted on the land.  I found out they use that to feed to the farm animals.  They were actually cutting the oat field and Glenn was able to snag some.  Since he has oatmeal 6 days a week for breakfast, he was curious to see what he was actually eating.

Notice how attentive David is?

We then went into a tool/equipment building where Nicole was able to make a corn husk doll and both kids made an eight foot rope they were allowed to keep.  They also worked a piece of equipment that took the dried corn off the husks, and were able to grind wheat into flour.  There was also a demonstration of what it took to make the hay twists.  During the “Long Winter” when the trains could not run and the town was not able to get food or coal, they had to learn how to twist hay to make fuel for their stoves.  This is all that kept them warm.  They worked so long and hard at this that their hands would become chapped and bleeding.  They also had to grind their seed wheat into flour using a coffee grinder which was a long and tedious process. The bread wasn’t all that great, but it got them through that winter and no one died in De Smet because of their resourcefulness that winter.  Other towns were not as fortunate.  

Before leaving De Smet we drove out to see Silver Lake that was mentioned in the books.  We also went to the cemetery where all the Ingalls were buried except Laura and Almonzo.  If you have read the books you would have recognized many of the names in the cemetery; Boast, Loftus, Gilmore, etc.