Caroline Ingalls - Biography - Freddie Ingalls

Freddie Ingalls

Freddie died at age 9 months. He was born November 1, 1875, in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, and died August 27, 1876, in South Troy, Minnesota, of undetermined causes. In her unpublished autobiography Pioneer Girl, Laura remembers that "Little Brother was not well" and that "one terrible day, he straightened out his little body and was dead". Wilder scholar William Anderson noted, "Nearly forty years after Freddie's death, Ma mourned him, telling relatives how different everything would be 'if Freddie had lived'." Laura Ingalls Wilder never mentioned him in her books, but he appears in Old Town in the Green Groves, a Laura's Lost Years novel by Cynthia Rylant. The history of Freddie is also mentioned in "The Lord Is My Shepherd, Part 1", an episode of the Little House on the Prairie series. Certain circumstances and consequences of his death (appearing in the Part 2 episode) were, however, fictionalized, including his death when he was only a few weeks old.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's only son also died at only a few weeks old, of unspecified causes. He had not been named and he is not buried with his parents in Mansfield, Missouri. Instead, "Baby Son of A.J. Wilder" is buried with his maternal grandmother and aunts in the De Smet, South Dakota, cemetery.

Like her mother and grandmother, Laura's only surviving child Rose Wilder Lane had a son who was stillborn or died shortly after birth around 1910. Rose had no more children; supposedly, the end of the pregnancy required Rose to have an operation that left her unable to have more children. She eventually divorced her husband, Gillette Lane, around 1915 or 1916. Although she was a prolific writer, Rose never wrote about exactly what had happened to her son, or even when he was born. His death was so painful, as were those of Freddie Ingalls and Baby Son Wilder, that Rose did not want to speak about the loss. Only decades later would she write in a letter to a friend that she had never forgotten him.

The Ingalls family traveled by covered wagon from Wisconsin; Kansas (Indian Territory); Burr Oak, Iowa; and Minnesota. In 1879 they settled on a homestead near De Smet. When Charles and Caroline Ingalls decided to sell their farm because of the persistent pattern of dry years of weather, combined with Charles Ingalls' advancing age and inability to take care of his large acreage, he built the family a home on Third Street in the town of De Smet in Dakota Territory. He made his living primarily as a carpenter from that time onward until his death of heart disease at age 66, a normal lifespan for an adult male at that time.

After her husband Charles' death, Caroline rented out rooms in her home for income. De Smet residents remember Caroline sometimes sitting outside with her blind daughter Mary. Although they attended church, Caroline was a very private person who rarely left home. She was deeply religious and Mary's blindness was an extreme blow to Caroline's hopes for her bright daughter.

Caroline died at age 84, and was buried at De Smet Cemetery along with her husband, daughters Mary, Carrie, and Grace, and unnamed baby grandson. Laura did not attend her mother's funeral, neither in fact did she ever see her again after the death of "Pa" (Charles Ingalls).