Laura and Almanzo Wilder wedding

Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder met when Laura was 15 and Almanzo was 25.

Laura and Almanzo Wilder wedding

Fifteen-year-old Laura Ingalls was working as a teacher when she met Almanzo Wilder, who was 25. Three years after meeting, on August 25, 1885, the couple married in South Dakota and began their life on Wilder’s property, where they worked on their own farms.

As a curious fact, at the wedding between Laura and Almanzo Wilder, Laura declared that she was not going to pronounce the word obey in her wedding vows. “I can’t make a promise I won’t keep,” she told her future husband. This was a fact that surprised those present, since at that time it was “normal” for a woman to declare this on the day of her marriage.

Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder wedding

The first years of Laura and Almanzo’s marriage were complicated, since in December 1886 their daughter Rose was born, and in 1889 their second child died 12 days after birth. Around the same time, Almanzo suffered a life-threatening attack of diphtheria that left him partially paralyzed, although he eventually regained almost complete mobility in his legs.

Due to a fire, Laura and Almanzo lost their barn and their home, which led them into a severe economic crisis, physically ill and unable to make a living from the produce harvested from their land. Because of this situation, the couple had to move to Almanzo’s parents’ home in Minnesota, where they were able to stabilize. In 1984 the couple moved to Mansfield, Missouri.

Thanks to her knowledge of agriculture, the Wilders were able to build a poultry farm, a dairy farm and an apple orchard, which helped them grow financially and get out of debt. Laura even became an advocate for several regional agricultural associations and was recognized as an authority on poultry farming and rural life.

Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder were married for 64 years; Almanzo died at the end of 1949, while Laura Ingalls passed away in 1957, three days after her 90th birthday. Despite the age difference and the difficulties they presented, the couple remained faithful to their marriage, fulfilling the famous phrase ’till death do us part’.

Little House books

In the late 1920s, Laura began writing about her childhood, turning stories about her experiences into works of fiction. When she was 65, she published her ‘Little House in the Big Woods’ series, a work that presented the fictionalized version of herself at the age of 4. This series of nine books sold more than 60 million copies.

The popularity of the books grew over the years after Laura’s death, spawning a mass-marketed million-dollar franchise under MacBride’s impetus. The results of the book series have been so great that they made a television series and additional spin-offs under the MacBride and Abigail names.