Identify the Family in the Census

With these facts, the 1880 U.S. census is a good place to begin the search because (1) Laura at age thirteen is still young enough to likely be found with her parents and (2) it is available for free searching at Family-Search. A search for laura ingalls with head of household charles ingalls returns only one result — the family you are looking for. There is Charles P. Ingalls, farmer, age forty-four, born in New York; wife Caroline L. Ingalls, keeping house, age forty, born in Wisconsin; and the four girls you might remember from the Little House stories, Mary (listed as “blind”), Laura, Caroline (Carrie), and Grace.

A search of the 1870 census at Ancestry.com for charles ingalls born in new york easily finds the family — Charles, Caroline, Mary, Laura, and baby Caroline — living in Rutland, Montgomery County, Kansas. He is indexed as C P Ingles, but helpful researchers have posted his full name as an “alternate name” using Ancestry's record correction feature, which makes him much easier to find. This, again, mirrors the stories told in the Little House books, with the family beginning in Wisconsin (the Big Woods) where Mary and Laura were born, moving to Kansas for a short time (where you found them in the 1870 census), settling on the “Banks of Plum Creek” in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, and then moving on once more to De Smet in Dakota Territory (where they are by the 1880 census).

So why isn't the family found living in Walnut Grove, the location made famous by the television series Little House on the Prairie? Ancestry.com also has state census schedules for Minnesota, so after doing a quick Google search to learn what county Walnut Grove is located in, you can check the 1875 Minnesota census for ingalls in Redwood County. There they are — C.P., Caroline, Mary, Laura, and Carrie Ingalls — living in North Hero Township (remember that from the TV show?). Although the television series depicted the family as living in Walnut Grove well into Laura's adulthood, the family actually lived there for only a few years (1874–1879), as you can see from the census records.

Question Unexpected Results and Discrepancies

Interestingly, going back to the 1880 U.S. census, Grace was listed as having been born in Iowa. Is this a mistake, or did the family really spend some time in Iowa around 1877 when Grace was born? The true story is that the Ingalls family left Walnut Grove in July 1876 to spend the summer with Charles's older brother Peter and his family near South Troy, Minnesota. While there, little Charles Frederick Ingalls, Jr. (baby Freddy), who was born after the 1875 Minnesota state census on 1 November 1875, became very ill and died on 27 August 1876 at the age of nine months. His tombstone in Pleasant Prairie Cemetery in South Troy, Wabasha County, Minnesota, can be found in the online cemetery transcriptions through a search of the Wabasha County USGenWebsite (www.rootsweb.com/~mnwabash/dalecm.htm). The family then moved south to Burr Oak, Iowa, where Grace Pearl Ingalls was born on 23 May 1877. The family missed their friends in Walnut Grove, however, and returned to Minnesota in the summer of 1877, about one year after they left. This just goes to show that using traditional genealogy records can leave important gaps in a family's story, and all clues (such as the unexpected birthplace for Grace) should be followed up.

Don't Overlook Land Records

With all of this westward movement and settlement, it is worth considering that Charles Ingalls might have applied for a homestead or purchased some land. Going to the Land Patent Search (www.glorecords.blm.gov/PatentSearch/Default.asp) of the General Land Office, Bureau of Land Management, a search for charles ingalls in south dakota (where the family finally settled down for good) finds a homestead application filed by Charles P. Ingalls, as well as two filed by Almanzo Wilder, two by Almanzo's sister, Eliza Jane Wilder, and two more by his brother, Royal G. Wilder. None of these had digital images associated with them at the time of this writing, but there was information on how to order a certified copy. The National Archives does have the twenty-four-page Ingalls homestead file (www.archives.gov/genealogy/land/ingalls/index.html) online, however, if you want to check it out for yourself.

Track Down the Parents

Ready to reach back a generation in the family tree, it makes sense to search for Charles Ingalls in the 1860 census in order to find him living with his parents. Because “Ingalls” was commonly misspelled in the previously found records, you might want to do a wildcard search of the 1860 U.S. census for charles ing* born in new york in 1836 +/− 2 years. A likely candidate shows up at the end of the results, Charles P. Ingles living in Concord, Jefferson County, Wisconsin, with his parents Lansford and Laura Ingles. If you remember these names from the television series, you'll know that you have the correct family. But even if you didn't know the names of his parents, other facts help to identify this as the correct Charles Ingalls — the use of the middle initial “P,” the older brother Peter, and his wife, Caroline, snuck in among all of the children of Lansford and Laura Ingles. The name of his mother, Laura, being the same as his daughter, Laura, could be a coincidence, but it also provides a measure of further corroboration.

Confirm, Don't Assume

So how do you know that Caroline Ingles is Charles's wife and not just one of the daughters? Her birthplace of Wisconsin appears to predate the time that the Lansford Ingles family moved from New York to Wisconsin as evidenced by the birthplace and ages of the other Ingalls children. Because family relationships are not listed in the 1860 census, the census record cannot stand as proof on its own (actually no single record ever constitutes “proof”), but further research can help to confirm the assumption that this Caroline Ingalls is indeed the wife of Charles Ingalls.

According to “Important Dates in the Ingalls Family Bible” (www.laurasprairiehouse.com/research/bibledates.html), found through a Google search for ingalls bible records, Charles and Caroline married on 1 February 1860, just a few short months prior to being enumerated in the 1860 census. From this bible listing you also learn that Caroline's mother, Charlotte, remarried to Frederick M. Holbrook on 3 June 1849 (her first husband, Henry N. Quiner, drowned in a shipwreck on Lake Michigan during a violent storm in 1844). With this information it isn't difficult to locate the mother and siblings of Caroline Quiner Ingalls in the 1860 census. Actually, all it takes is a search for quiner in wisconsin to locate them, but knowing that the mother remarried helps confirm that you have the correct family.

Search a Wide Variety of Sources

The online journey into the history and family of Laura Ingalls Wilder could continue for pages. There are still more census records to search for the family. The 1850 census finds Lansford and Laura Ingalls in Kane County, Illinois, and the Quiner/Holbrook family in Concord, Jefferson County, Wisconsin (with Caroline Quiner listed as Caroline Holbrook). The 1930 census finds Almanzo (age seventy-three) and Laura (age sixty-three) on their farm in Pleasant Valley, Wright County, Missouri. A search in the Google News Archive (http://news.google.com) finds an obituary for Laura I. Wilder in the New York Times, as well as a variety of news articles on the life and history of the famous couple. A Google search for lansford ingalls cemetery wisconsin finds Lansford and his wife, Laura, included in the transcriptions of the Orange Cemetery linked to the Burnett County, Wisconsin, GenWebsite. A search of the INGALLS mailing list at RootsWeb turns up numerous posts and tidbits shared by other genealogists researching this family. The NYALLEGA (Allegany County, NY) mailing list also provides similar information. A Google Images (http://images.google.com) search turns up a wide variety of photos on the family.

To conduct thorough family history research on the Internet, you need to search out every last name and detail, and search a wide variety of sources — vital records, census records, land records, obituary and cemetery records, mailing lists and forums, historical newspapers, photos, and the websites of state archives, local historical societies, and libraries. Don't just type in your name and expect to turn up your family history, and don't stop when you don't find anything on your first, second, third, fourth, or even fifth search. Family history research online can take quite a bit of time and patience, but information on just about any family is out there if you keep on trying.