How did the real Caroline Ingalls die?

Q: What happened to Charles and Caroline Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie?

After many moves and attempts, with his familys help, Charles proved up his homestead, but due to health issues, he retired from farming almost immediately afterward. Together Charles and Caroline built up one final home in De Smet, South Dakota.

January 10, 1836

Table of Contents Show

How old was Caroline Ingalls when he died?
What did Laura Ingalls baby brother die of?
What happened to Charles and Caroline Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie?
Are any Ingalls alive today?

On this day Charles Ingalls, (right) made famous in the “Little House on the Prairie” books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, was born in Allegany County, New York.

It was his family’s move from New York to Illinois when he was young that set in motion the frontier saga captured in the “Little House” books. He made the good sense decision to marry Caroline

Quiner, (right) a proper young school teacher from down the road, but Ingalls’ wanderlust soon got the best of him.

The couple’s five children, Mary, Laura, Carrie, Charles Frederick “Freddie” and Grace and their trek through six states fueled the eight original books. In addition, aunts, uncles and cousins populated the pages of the popular

series, inadvertently earning them the posthumous asterisk, “literary figure.”

The stories of the Wilder kinfolk came to a close in 1943 with the publication of “These Happy Golden Years.” It covered the author’s teens in DeSmet, South Dakota, but what happened next to the rest of the family remained a blank. (Right, Laura, 1885)

Older sister Mary, (right) who shared her father’s birthday, got some additional attention in the book. At the time, she was attending the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School in Vinton, Iowa. Losing her sight to a childhood illness, it thought at first to be scarlet fever. Doctors today believe it was rather meningoencephalitis, a viral brain inflammation.

Mary returned to DeSmet and contributed to the family income by making fly nets for horses. Following the death of Charles Ingalls in 1902,

Mary and her mother rented out rooms to stretch their meager resources.

Following Caroline Ingalls’ death in 1924, Mary lived briefly with the youngest sister, Grace Ingalls Dow, a school teacher in Manchester, just down the road from DeSmet. Grace (right) never played a major role in the “Little House” stories, having been just eight when Laura married

homesteader Almonzo Wilder. (Right) She died in 1941 from diabetes at age 64 and was buried in Manchester.

Mary later lived with Carrie Ingalls Swanzey in Keystone, South Dakota. She died in Keystone of pneumonia in 1928.

Portrayed in the Little House books as a bit frail, middle sister Carrie (below) married a 58-year-old Black Hills prospector, David Nevin Swanzey, at 42 after a

career as a typesetter and reporter on a number of small town newspapers. Stepmother to Swanzey’s two children and step grandmother to a brood of grandchildren, she died at 75 and is buried in DeSmet. She was an enthusiastic contributor to Laura’s childhood memoirs.

Carrie’s husband, David, (below) made a name not so much for himself but for a famous American landmark. He reportedly dubbed a nearby stone outcrop Mt. Rushmore for a New York lawyer, Charles

Rushmore, the first major donor to sculptor, Gutzon Borglum’s monument.

Only baby brother Freddie, who died in infancy, is omitted from the “Little House” saga. Perhaps too painful for the author, say Wilder biographers, or too somber a subject for her largely upbeat books. His brief life, however, was portrayed in a two-hankie episode of the television series entitle “The Lord Is My Shepherd.”

Mt. Rushmore before and after the monument

Wilder drew on a number of the extended Ingalls family, including Pa’s sister, Laura Ladocia “Docie” Ingalls Forbes, in several of the early books. Docie’s children by her first husband, August Waldvogel, Lena Evelyn and Augustus Eugene, appeared in “By the Shores of Silver Lake” as the cousins Lena and Jean.

Aunt Docie married Hiriam Forbes after Uncle August died and the couple moved to Nebraska, probably Holt County. She added seven more children to the list of Ingalls cousins. Following Hiriam’s death in 1906, Docia moved to Colorado to be near Augustus Eugene. She died in 1918 and is buried in Colorado. Augustus died in 1945, killed with his 27-year-old son in a tragic car accident.

Not much is written about Cousin Lena. Married to Samuel Heikes, the couple had seven children. She died in 1943 in Dakota City, Nebraska, and is buried in Sioux City, Iowa.

Hazy photo of the aunts, Ruby, left, and Docie.

Another of Charles Ingalls’ sisters, “Aunt Ruby,” Ruby Ingalls Card, was also fictionalized in “Little House in the Big Woods.” The mother of two young children, Ruby moved to Inman, Holt County, Nebraska, to be near Docie. She may have been ill at the time since she died at just 26. She is believed to be buried in Inman.

And then there was “Uncle George,” (right) Pa Ingalls’ youngest brother. He was portrayed in Wilder’s books as “a wild man.” It may not have been much of a fabrication. A runaway at 14, he was a “drummer boy” with the Union Army during the Civil War and may have actually deserted.

He was the father of three children who all died in infancy. Following their deaths, his grief-stricken wife, Julie, was committed to Dunn County Asylum for the Chronic Insane in Red Cedar Township, Wisconsin, in 1888. She died there in 1910

How old was Caroline Ingalls when he died?

84 years (1839–1924)Caroline Ingalls / Age at deathnull

What did Laura Ingalls baby brother die of?

Diabetes ran in the Ingalls family and Laura, Carrie, and Grace all died from the complications of the disease, Dow being the first Ingalls sibling to succumb.

What happened to Charles and Caroline Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie?

After many moves and attempts, with his family's help, Charles proved up his homestead, but due to health issues, he retired from farming almost immediately afterward. Together Charles and Caroline built up one final home in De Smet, South Dakota.

Are any Ingalls alive today?

There are living relatives of Laura Ingalls Wilder, however, none of them are her direct descendants. Laura and her husband Almanzo had two children, only one of whom lived to adulthood. Their daughter, Rose, was also married and had a son, but he did not survive past infancy.