Little House on the Prairie family tree

Charles Phillip Ingalls, Pa in the books, was born in Cuba, New York, in 1836 and died in De Smet, South Dakota, on 8 June 1902. The Wikipedia article gives two birth dates for him, 10 January and 21 May, and the chart gives only the year.² He worked as a farmer, a hunter and trapper, a carpenter and a justice of the peace, and he kept a general store in 1880 and 1881.²

He married Caroline Lake Quiner, Ma in the books, on 1 February 1860.² The Little House on the Prairie family tree starts from that marriage, which gave Charles and Caroline five children.²

Mary was born near Pepin, Wisconsin, on 10 January 1865. At fourteen she lost her sight after an illness that was then thought to be scarlet fever. A study in the journal Pediatrics in 2013 concluded that the cause was viral encephalitis.³ She studied at the school for the blind in Vinton, Iowa, from 1881 to 1889, never married and died in 1928.³

Laura was born near Pepin on 7 February 1867, the second of the four daughters who lived past infancy, and died at Rocky Ridge Farm on 10 February 1957.¹ Carrie was born in 1870 and died in 1946, and Grace, the youngest, was born in 1877 and died in 1941. Carrie took the married name Swanzey and Grace the name Dow.^2,3

The only son, Charles Frederick, called Freddie, was born on 1 November 1875. He fell ill on the way to Iowa and died on 27 August 1876, before his first birthday.¹ This Little House on the Prairie family tree follows the family record, so Freddie stands in his place among the children.

Laura married Almanzo Wilder in De Smet on 25 August 1885. They called each other Bessie and Manly.¹ Their daughter Rose was born on 5 December 1886 and was their only child to survive, and a son died at three weeks old.^1,2

Rose moved to San Francisco in 1908 and became a journalist and author. She was also her mother’s chief editor on the manuscript Pioneer Girl, from which the books grew.¹ On this Little House on the Prairie family tree the dotted blue line from Rose to Laura stands for that work.

Eight books appeared in Laura’s lifetime and a ninth after her death.¹ Farmer Boy tells the childhood of Almanzo, and the others follow the Ingalls family from Wisconsin to Kansas and Minnesota and on into the years of Laura’s marriage.^1,4

The books change the record in places. Laura is five in Little House in the Big Woods, although she was three at the time, and a letter from Rose says the publisher asked for the older age. In The Long Winter Almanzo is younger than he was.⁴ Little House on the Prairie tells of the months on Osage land near Independence, Kansas, which the family left in 1870.⁴

Many people who look for a Little House on the Prairie family tree are looking for an episode of the television series. The Family Tree is the third episode of the sixth season, first shown on 1 October 1979.⁵

In it the teacher, Miss Wilder, sets her pupils a family tree project, and Albert is unsure who he is. The Ingalls family is about to adopt him when his birth father arrives and claims him.⁵ Albert is a character of the series and not of the books or the real family, so he is not drawn on this chart.

A square is a man and a circle is a woman. A line between a couple with a line down to the children is a marriage, and the children stand in birth order from left to right. A cross marks a death, and the table of the children gives the years from the record.

The gold ring marks the Ingalls family and the blue ring the Wilders. Laura wears the Ingalls ring because she was born an Ingalls, and the marriage line joins her to Almanzo and Rose.

To build a Little House on the Prairie family tree of your own, open the chart in the editor from this page or start from the story charts. The symbols are set out in the genogram symbols.