Laura Ingalls Wilder Let a Stranger Draw Pa, Ma and Mary. What She Said When She Saw Them

Garth Williams drew the Little House on the Prairie pictures you grew up with. In 1947, he drove west to meet Laura Ingalls Wilder. 📖 Bring a little of this world home | THE PRAIRIE HOMESTEAD LIBRARY (three designed volumes + two printable bonuses): https://prairiesecrets.com Tonight, the true story of the artist behind the 1953 Little House books: Pa and his fiddle, Ma, Mary, Laura and Carrie, the dugout on Plum Creek. Before he drew them, Garth Williams carried the wounded through the London Blitz and drew Stuart Little for E. B. White. Then, in the autumn of 1947, he drove to Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri, to meet Laura, then eighty, and Almanzo Wilder. Almanzo warned him about the Dakota blizzards. Laura said she would go. So he went to the Verdigris River, to Plum Creek at Walnut Grove, Minnesota, and to De Smet, South Dakota, leaving just ahead of a snowstorm. He asked Laura whether she wanted portraits of her family. What she told him, what he got wrong on the prairie, and the telegram she sent six years later are the heart of this story, told from Garth's own accounts, Ursula Nordstrom's letters, and Laura's own words. A calm, carefully researched history for sleep. No music stings, no jump scares, just one gentle voice and a true story from the Little House world. If you drift off before the end, that is exactly what it is for. ☕ These long nights run on coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/MaazYT · https://ko-fi.com/knightslumber 📜 WHAT THE RECORDS SHOW • Born in New York City in 1912. Trained as a sculptor in London. British Prix de Rome, 1936 • Red Cross ambulance service in the London Blitz. Wounded by a bomb blast • Stuart Little, 1945: E. B. White had seen his drawings in The New Yorker • 1946: Ursula Nordstrom offered him all eight Little House books • Autumn 1947: Rocky Ridge, the Verdigris River, Plum Creek, De Smet and a snowstorm at Sherburn • About five hundred pencil drawings on tracing paper, most made in Italy • August 1953: Laura's telegram, sent collect: "Mary, Laura and their folks live again in these illustrations" • 1954: he designed the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal ⏱ CHAPTERS 00:00 The Road Out of De Smet, 1947 01:51 Ursula Nordstrom's Offer: Where Are the Talking Animals? 03:38 Garth Williams, a Farm Boy in New Jersey 10:39 The London Blitz and Churchill's Letter 15:11 Stuart Little and E. B. White 19:00 Laura Ingalls Wilder's Detroit Speech, 1937 29:36 Rocky Ridge: Meeting Laura and Almanzo Wilder 35:05 Pa's Fiddle and What Laura Said About the Faces 40:41 The Verdigris River: Kansas, Not Oklahoma 44:47 Plum Creek: The Hollow in the Creek Bank 49:44 De Smet and Aubrey Sherwood 53:52 The Wrong House on the Ingalls Homestead 58:55 The Snowstorm Drive to Sherburn 1:06:50 Charlotte's Web and Charlotte's Face 1:12:14 Almanzo Wilder's Death, 1949 1:20:36 The Telegram, August 1953 1:24:01 The Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal 1:28:00 Laura Ingalls Wilder's Death, 1957 1:31:06 The Rabbits' Wedding and Bedtime for Frances 1:40:54 Back to De Smet and Walnut Grove, 1986 1:45:16 The Road Home 🔎 SOURCES AND FURTHER READING Every date and quotation was checked against these sources. The full list of 40 sources is pinned in the comments. • Garth Williams, Illustrating the Little House Books, The Horn Book, 1953: https://archive.org/details/hornbooks... • Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom: https://archive.org/details/deargeniu... • Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: https://archive.org/details/prairiefi... • William Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography: https://archive.org/details/laurainga... • A Little House Sampler: https://archive.org/details/littlehou... • Michael Sims, The Story of Charlotte's Web: https://archive.org/details/storyofch... • South Dakota Historical Society Press: https://pioneergirlproject.org/2024/0... ⚖ WHERE THE RECORD IS THIN Garth remembered leaving in early September 1947, but an editor's letter of September 18 shows he had not yet met Rose, so the trip began later. The house he photographed near De Smet was built after the Ingalls family left, and the Amati label in Pa's fiddle is borrowed. One biography says General MacArthur cabled Laura in 1951; Caroline Fraser found no evidence he did. ▶ Watch next, the full Ingalls family story:    • How the Real Ingalls Family Ended: What Li...   Disclosure: narrated with an AI voice. Research and script were prepared with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. 💬 Where are you listening from tonight, and what time is it there? Tell us in the comments. 🌙 Best with headphones or a low speaker, lights out. Goodnight. #LittleHouseOnThePrairie #LauraIngallsWilder #HistoryForSleep #GarthWilliams #BoringHistory Join this channel to get access to perks:    / @officalboringhistory