How Did Pa Ingalls Feed Five People on a Failing Prairie Farm?

On television, Charles Ingalls built a happy life on Plum Creek. In real life, grasshoppers ate two harvests in a row, so he bought that land from the government for $413 and sold it the very same day for $400. We pulled the real numbers behind Little House on the Prairie: the "free" land of the Homestead Act, what it actually cost to start a farm in the 1870s, one acre of wheat, Oleson's store credit, Ma's eggs, Mary's doctor bills, the grasshopper plague, Laura's $25-a-month teaching job, a real National Archives homestead receipt with Charles Ingalls's name on it, and who finally got rich from the Ingalls family story. When you watched this show as a kid, did the Ingalls family look poor to you, or just normal? Tell me in the comments. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Four Hundred Dollar Farm 0:44 Walnut Grove, 1874 1:34 The First Little House 3:17 Free Land Isn't Free 4:34 Plum Creek 5:19 One Acre Of Wheat 6:42 Every Other Job 7:50 The Hundred Dollar Job 9:19 The Oleson Ledger 10:40 Ma's Eggs 12:11 The Doctor Bill 13:22 Hail On The Wheat 14:08 The Grasshoppers 15:26 What The Show Left Out 16:20 The Railroad 17:05 Laura's First Paycheck 17:55 The Receipt 19:03 The Land That Ended 19:27 Who Got Rich 20:36 The Last Receipt SOURCES Little House on the Prairie (NBC): pilot movie (1974), S02E18 "The Long Road Home", and scenes from the official NBC clip compilations (hailstorm, quarry job, seed corn, egg selling, Mary's eye doctor) Homestead Act of 1862; Cleaveland & Linsenmayer, "Charles Ingalls and the U.S. Public Land Laws" (Pioneer Girl Project); State Historical Society of North Dakota U.S. National Archives, RG 49 "Register of Final Homestead Receipts" (Prologue blog, "A receipt for that little house on the prairie", 2014) Walnut Grove history: Ingalls Dugout Site (purchase for $413 and sale to Abraham Keller for $400, July 1876) USDA NASS, Crop Production Historical Track Records (U.S. all wheat, 1874–1876) National Park Service, "1870 Catalogue of Goods" (Montgomery Ward 1872 and other price lists) Minnesota Historical Society (MNopedia): Rocky Mountain locust plague, 1873–1877 Iowa College for the Blind records; Pioneer Girl Project (Laura's teaching contracts, $25/month) Seattle Times (1999): Mansfield library lawsuit over Little House book rights BLS CPI (via officialdata.org) for today's dollars: $1 in 1876 ≈ $31 today Wheat income is an estimate from national averages, not the Ingalls family's own records. The railroad pay of $50/month is from Laura's novel "By the Shores of Silver Lake". CREDITS Stock footage: Pexels (OUTPUT\stock_credits.txt). Music: Kevin MacLeod "George Street Shuffle" (incompetech.com, CC BY 4.0), Freedom Trail Studio "Swing Theory" (YouTube Audio Library). Homestead register image: U.S. National Archives (public domain). This video is commentary and analysis for educational purposes. Short clips are used under fair use. Not affiliated with NBCUniversal or the producers of Little House on the Prairie. #LittleHouseOnThePrairie #ClassicTV #MichaelLandon