Laura Ingalls, the author of the popular Little House books, married Almanzo Wilder in Dakota Territory on this day in 1885. The couple was married near present day De Smet, South Dakota. Laura herself had come to Dakota Territory with her family in 1879 after her father was offered a job as a railroad manager. The Ingalls, along with their friends, the Boasts, became the first residents of De Smet. The family decided to stay in Dakota even after the railroad left, and took out a homestead claim of 160 acres. Laura attended school in De Smet until the age of fifteen, when she was granted her own teaching certificate. She took a job at the Bouchie School, twelve miles distant. Almanzo Wilder volunteered to take Laura home each weekend in his sleigh, and the two soon became a pair. Laura wrote the story of Almanzo in a later novel, Farmer Boy. Her own adventures are documented in the Little House series, and also in her novels, On the Banks of Plum Creek, Little Town on the Prairie, and These Happy Golden Years.

Sources:
http://www.gale.com/free_resources/whm/bio/ingallswilder_l.htm
http://webpages.marshall.edu/~irby1/laura/life.html

--Jayme L. Job

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