


Ingalls wrote of Wilder's character in The Long Winter. They moved to the Dakota Territory from Walnut Grove, Minnesota, when Charles Ingalls took a temporary job with the railroad.

The Ingalls family had been one of the first settlers in the area, before the town was formally organized. It was in De Smet that he first met Laura Ingalls. Wilder settled on his homestead with the intent of planting acres of seed wheat which he had cultivated the previous summer on rented shares in Marshall, Minnesota. In 1879, Wilder, his older brother Royal, and older sister Eliza Jane moved to the Dakota Territory, taking claims near what would later become the town of De Smet, South Dakota. Moving west, they settled in Spring Valley, Minnesota, where they established a farm. The Wilder family left Burke in 1870 due to crop failures. The original order of publication was changed by publisher Harper with the subsequent release of the illustrated 19 editions.

Hitting bookstore shelves in 1933, it was followed by Little House on the Prairie in 1935. Almanzo also learns to deal with being bossed around by his older siblings, particularly his strong-willed sister Eliza Jane, who would later become a schoolteacher of his future wife.įarmer Boy was the second book published in the Little House series. Among other things, he begins attending school when not needed at home for farm work, learns to train and drive a team of oxen, attends a county fair, and enjoys a mid-19th century Fourth of July celebration in the town of Malone. Almanzo is characterized as a quietly courageous, hardworking man who loves horses and farming, and is also described as an accomplished carpenter and woodworker.įarmer Boy recounts events of Wilder's childhood, starting when he was weeks shy of his ninth birthday in 1866. He also appears briefly in chapter 28 ('Moving Day') of By the Shores of Silver Lake. As part of her Little House series of semi-autobiographical novels, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote a book titled Farmer Boy about Wilder's childhood in upstate New York he would subsequently become a recurring character in the later Little House books in which his wife wrote about their courtship and subsequent marriage, in The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, These Happy Golden Years, and The First Four Years respectively. Almanzo James Wilder ( / æ l ˈ m æ n z oʊ ˈ w aɪ l d ər/ February 13, 1857? – October 23, 1949) was the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the father of Rose Wilder Lane, both noted authors.Īlmanzo James Wilder is said to have been born on February 13, 1857, at Wilder Homestead outside Malone, New York, as the fifth of six children born to farmers James Mason (1813–1899) and Angelina Albina (née Day) Wilder (1821–1905).
