Laura's Album: A Remembrance Scrapbook

Little House on DVD  available from Amazon.com

Laura Ingalls Wilder Country: The People and places in Laura Ingalls Wilder's life and books

Ancestry of Laura Ingalls Wilder

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Pictures of Lansford and Laura Ingalls' gravesites in Burnett County, Wisconsin (Laura's grandparents)

Introduction:

This is a genealogy of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family. There are 1670 people listed herein, the greatest portion of them with the surname Ingalls. Also followed are the Quiners (Ma's family), and the Wilders (Almanzo's family). The emphasis was on those with the surname Ingalls.

The Ingalls family in America started about 1628 with two brothers, Edmund and Francis, arriving from England to Massachusetts. From them, most Ingalls in the USA are descended. Laura Ingalls Wilder is descended from Edmund Ingalls.

As many people as are listed here, this is not a complete listing of all the Ingalls descendents, nor is it error-free. Use this genealogy as a guideline to aid your own research rather than an absolute source. As far as was possible, info and family links have been checked and rechecked for accuracy from available sources. The nearer generations, in the 1800s, are more accurate, those further back less clear. Many others have researched various lines of these families and shared their work, which is gratefully acknowledged. This genealogy not only compiles but expands upon prior research and contains much never before presented material. I had hoped to do a grand unified genealogy of all the Ingalls descendents, but was ultimately daunted by sheer numbers--the Ingalls have been having families of often ten-plus children per generation in America for 375 years, with many, many first names repeated in every family making it extremely difficult to determine who was who.

There are two ways to approach this ancestry, which includes 57 separate, linked, web pages. One way is to follow the ancestry by using the parent/child links backward and forward through the generations.

The other way is to browse through page by page using the navigation buttons at the bottom of the screens. You can also see what the buttons are by holding your mouse over them:

Home	Start	Next	Previous	End

I suggest you also browse through the pages. I have added many notes on people, and indicated who is mentioned in Laura's books, and where (identified by book cover illustrations). There are also census and biographical notes throughout. One family I was interested in tracking down was another Ingalls family in Pepin, Wisconsin at the time Charles and Caroline Ingalls lived there--they turned out to be distant relatives of Laura's family, as did an Ingalls family in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The Ingalls had big families and pioneering spirits--they spread at the forefront of migration across the country.

You'll also find the fate of cousin Lena, of the black ponies in "On the Shores of Silver Lake," a US Senator named Ingalls who may have inspired the move to Kansas in "Little House on the Prairie," and Civil War participants from a Union general to Uncle George Ingalls who may have been a deserter. Another relative was the 20th US president.

Much of the material presented here was found due to the excellent resources of Ancestry.com. This is a subscription service with an enormous amount of resources, including the entire US census, and a wondrous historical newspaper collection.

You can find the Ingalls history, or your own, through Ancestry.com. This site was constructed using Ancestry Family Tree software offered for download. You can construct your genealogy offline, insert photos, generate a variety of printed reports, produce a Gedcom file, and webpages. The hope is that you'll then share your genealogy online at Ancestry's Family Trees.

My own family history was also produced with these tools (See: Deb's Family History). I learned though Ancestry.com's resources that my own family, and Charles Ingalls' parents lived only a few miles apart, at the end of their lives, in northern Wisconsin. Next time I'm there I plan to visit the cemetery and take photos of Lansford and Laura Ingalls' gravesites.

From Ancestry's historical newspaper collection, I read about the troubles in the Indian Territory in Kansas, and the complete lack of sympathy the settlers (squatters, they were called) got from eastern newspapers, the grasshopper plague of "On the Banks of Plum Creek," as well as the blizzards of "The Long Winter" than shut down the railroads, the story of the Benders, outlaws like Jesse and Frank James who roamed many of the same areas where the Ingalls lived and traveled, and many other historical events surrounding Laura's family and their lives.

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