Laura Ingalls Wilder's Childhood Home

home is the nicest word there is [Music] a little sweet simple things of life we'll try the real [Music] there's no great loss without some small gain remember well and bear in mind a constant friend is hard to find all right [Music] it's a sunny side School built in 1872. fan that is really cool okay built for 32 students but sometimes as many as 50 would crowd in here smell the wood yeah and this is kind of like giving me major flashbacks of when we're in this met so the teacher that taught in this school was named Lillian Jones she was 18. and her students varied in age from five right up until 17. yeah that's teaching somebody who's just a year younger than you and she earned 25 a month for four months of the year and that was it but remember Laura was a teacher at the age of 15. yeah that's true that's where it's weird in one sense where back then you grew up fast you know you had to help around the farm you know get a teaching job you had to be a contributing member of society at a young age so that was uh that was pretty cool kind of something we're lacking in this day and age um big time but pretty little school what I well I can't wrap my head around is obviously you've got the different age groups so different levels of teaching you've got the five-year-olds that are maybe just learning to read yeah and then you've got the 17 year olds that are starting to look you know or doing a second language or whatever they were taught yeah so it was very much a one-on-one I would imagine yeah you'd think you'd have to do a curriculum for the different age groups but not just that but also for the different mentality because you might have a five-year-old that's the equivalent of a 10 year old and you'd have maybe a 17 year old who wasn't particularly well educated yeah so hmm I love these old schools I love the old Blackboard I love the cursive writing yeah because it is it does give you that sense of I know it's it's a recreation but you kind of get the feel of yeah this is the original school it was just moved to this location so this is uh the nurses caught us and back in those days you didn't actually have to a medical license to prescribe medicines um look at the size of that book I remember my dad used to have books like that from years ago in the in the pharmacy and a lot of these bottles my dad had an old collection of bottles and uh oh he used to my dad was a compound pharmacist true story and then over on this side you've got uh looks like the coat closet with the uh the heating that'll keep it nice and tasty yeah it already is nice and toasty in here some extra books so look at them I like the map up on the uh the wall there [Music] so this is another little building that they've relocated to this side it is an original post office yeah Wayside Kansas ah love that creaky door [Music] [Applause] this is where you would chat to somebody yeah and see if your box was number 22. all right I know I got stuff in there give it to me and then you've got this here so like I guess to be kind of like lockers you get your own little codes huh so yeah I know these are cool at least I remember having one of these books and looking through it same kind of uh picture on the front too and they've even got a little bed in here for them to take a nap well I wonder what they have lived here could have been oh no they've got no kitchen area but it would have been nice and toasty in here now also you have this fire right next to all the mail they had to be careful so this was uh built in 1885 and it was used right up until 1977. by the looks of this interesting and here we have it first cabin of the Little House on the Prairie that's I mean just the size of it looks so small this isn't the original cabin this is a replica and they based it on what Laura had said in her books had written about it and also Carrie was born here okay now they didn't stay at the location for very long only 18 months and Laura would have been about two and a half when she came here Mary would have been about four and a half years old so very very young yeah but that this would be more and Parr the baby Laura and Mary nice and cozy right up next to the fire yeah but I love how we've seen this in different types of structures in Minds things like that just the natural Timbers you know they leave the bark and everything on it and it's just it's because the smell too it just I love the smell and obviously with the wood burning stove and look how they would have cooked yeah so that's not just the fire that's where you yeah all of their cooking pots cast iron yeah everything's based around it but it does it makes everything more cozy too I mean you just you do have that cozy feeling here we just you feel safe look at the curtains yeah the Ditty windows and the nice curtains there I guess I could have woven them on well that's cotton one of those were so I don't know whether or not is that a silk yeah uh yeah because it yeah silver cotton do they spin there and the chairs that is that's really cool oh washing board you imagine doing everything by hand yeah and then that was their washing machine yeah by return just very simple yeah nice in some ways I don't know whether or not I would uh well if you lived in back in those days you wouldn't know any difference yeah exactly now so that's uh well horseshoe in her books they do she does talk about three pet um meals horses and they don't know whether or not that could possibly be one and they don't know whether a cabin was actually located because Paul didn't file any land registry yeah uh because of what was going on with the natives and the government at the time which is why they only stayed here 18 months and hightailed it back to their hometown nice and then you've got all these different animal traps hanging up yeah there's a bunch I wonder if these were found on the property or they're just uh A Relic they wanted to show off well when they left here they left everything they even left the door unlocked for the next Traveler to call home but they do know that this is the area because also a well is built over the back so we'll take a look at the well here it is filled in yeah so a hand dug well and it says it's 20 feet deep and rimmed with rot and it provided researchers with an anchored to determine the location of the original cabin I was going to say no trip would be complete but it's locked [Music]