Ernest Hemingway and Laura Ingalls Wilder

Literary Authors and their connections

So what is the name Ernest Hemingway and Laura Ingalls Wilder doing on this blog about Iowa and connections to its history?  As far I know Hemingway spent much of his life in Ketchum, Idaho where he is now buried.  For a time he lived and wrote from his home in Cuba.   
Laura Ingalls Wilder spent most of her growing up years (which she wrote of in her very famous Little House series), in Minnesota and DeSmet, South Dakota.  However, she did live for a time in Burr Oak, IA.  I've written about that connection in earlier blog posts both here and elsewhere:

• Iowa History:  Bits and Pieces: Laura Ingalls Wilder-at Home in Iowa
• McBookwords-Blog: Library of America-Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Laura Ingalls Wilder Letter to Jennie D. Lindquist (October 19, 1953)

And Hemingway - His parents Dr. Clarence Hemingway was a physician, and his mother Grace Hall Hemingway was an accomplished singer and very musical).  The family lived in Oak Park Illinois and often spent time at  their summer home near Walloon Lake in northern Michigan.  Never in Iowa but his grandmother's family, the Hancocks, had lived in Dyersville, Iowa for several years before his grandmother married Ernest Hall (Hemingway's grandfather)  and Ernest Hall tired of the rural life and moved his family, including his daughter Grace, to Chicago and then to Oak Park, Illinois.  Across the street lived the Hemingways and Grace Hall and Dr. Clarence Hemingway married.  Ernest was the second of the Hemingways's six children. There were four girls: Marcelline, Ursula, Madelaine, Carol, and the youngest child, a brother Leicester.  

Ernest Hemingway never did live in Iowa - even for a short time but his mother Grace Hall Hemingway had Iowa roots.  And there is an firmer Iowa connection, a more lasting collection.

 The connection is through Leicester, Ernest's younger brother, and Ernest's younger brother.  Leicester gives Ernest Hemingway the clearest connection to Iowa.  Leicester and his second wife, Doris Mae Hemingway 'nee Dunning had been married since 1956, and at the time of his death (suicide as his brother, father, and sister Ursula ended their lives)  in 1982, Leicester and Doris were living in Miami Beach, Florida where he had been publishing a fishing newspaper for five years or so.  Leicester's funeral was in Florida, but his cremated remains were returned to Iowa for burial in Alden Cemetery, Alden, Iowa, Hardin County, Iowa.  Doris Mae Hemingway died 15 years later (1997)  in Florida and is buried in Alden, Iowa as well.  Doris was raised in the Alden, Iowa area and many of her family members are buried in the cemetery.  So finally a firm connection from Ernest Hemingway to Iowa.

The Iowa Connection - A Passing Relationship

Both Ernest Hemingway and Laura Ingalls Wilder have a brief and thin connections to Iowa - but a connection never-the-less.  Ernest's brother is buried in Iowa, Wilder's youngest daughter Grace was born in Burr Oak, Iowa.  But Iowa was not either writer's residence (for long at least).

So What Is the Connection to One Another -- Hemingway & Wilder?

This question is answered by a little known fact - there are only two Presidential libraries that hold major collections of a literary figures papers and manuscripts.  One is the John F. Kennedy Presidential library in Boston, Massachusetts.  And the other - by now you've probably guessed it, or at least part of it.  

The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa holds the literary papers and manuscripts of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
For information about why Wilder's papers are at the Herbert Hoover library view the September 1, 2019 presentation at the museum :
Hoover Presidential Library. (2019 November 20) Long Way Home: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Sarah Uthoff.  Retrieved from https://youtu.be/ApdkBc29pJQ . 

The Ernest Hemingway Collection

In a blog entry by Stacey Chandler, Reference Archivist at the John F. Kennedy Library, Chandler explains how the personal papers of Ernest Hemingway came to be part of the presidential library. 

Cahdler, Stacey.  (2018 July 18) JFK & Hemingway: Beyond "Grace Under Pressure. The JFK Library Archive : An Inside Look (Blog).  Retrieved from https://jfk.blogs.archives.gov/2018/07/20/jfk-hemingway/

Information about the Ernest Hemingway Collection is explained on the scope of the collection page: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/MEHC#overview

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Collection

Information about the connection between Herbert Hoover, and Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter Rose Wilder Lane is discussed on this page on the Hoover site focused on Lane's connection to Hoover, and the link then to Wilder.  The Rose Wilder Lane Collection, retrieved from 

https://hoover.archives.gov/research/collections/lanecollection

Information about the Laura Ingalls Wilder Collection is explained on the page titled: Rose Wilder Lane and Laura Ingalls Wilder. The page is part of the Herbert hoove Presidential Library and Museum site.  Page retrieved from https://hoover.archives.gov/education/rose-wilder-lane-and-laura-ingalls-wilder.

A brushing glance at Iowa from both Hemingway and Wilder - but their connection to one another as the only literary personalities to be so represented in Presidential libraries is more firmly implanted in the history of our society.

Redwork - and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Bear Paw Quilt

Redwork - and Laura Ingalls Wilder's
Bear Paw Quilt

Quilters look for inspiration in every corner of their lives.  On a visit to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Burr Oak, Iowa - Wilder lived there as a child and visitors will find the museum and visitor center filled with inspiration -- from the redwork that Laura might have stitched onto towels to quilts made with the patterns of the times.

The Ingalls family moved to Burr Oak in 1876 when Laura was just nine years old.  The family lived in the village for just part of the year, in the Master's Hotel  (a bar and tavern and refuge for travelers).  The family helped William Steadman to cook, clean, and do the daily chores.  The family lived in the basement of the hotel, and Ma Ingalls cooked for the traveling guests of the hotel. The museum at Burr Oak (the Master's Hotel) is the only Ingalls family home that is still on its original site.  Burr Oak is where baby Grace was born, however, Wilder did not publish a manuscript detailing her days in Burr Oak but instead incorporated some of the incidents into the stories (On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake) before and after the time the family lived in Burr Oak.
Two other writers have written about the Burr Oak days.  Historian and scholar William Anderson wrote The Iowa Story (Laura Ingalls Wilder Park & Museum, 1989; 62 pages), and Cynthia Rylant wrote Old Town in the Green Groves (HarperCollins, 2007). 
Read more about the Burr Oak Museum on this earlier blog post at http://iowahistory.blogspot.com/2013/09/. 

But back to the quilt inspiration.

When Laura was creating quilt blocks as a child there were not standard names or patterns as have developed in later years.  Researchers who have studied Laura's writings and artifacts at the many museums devoted to her life have consistently mentioned the Bear's Paw as one of the quilt squares she likely would have created for quilts.  So when the Herbert Hoover Museum (in West Branch, Iowa) which holds the Laura Ingalls Wilder (and Rose Wilder Lane) manuscripts decided to hold a quilting bee they solicited quilt blocks from quilters across Iowa (and other states) which were then to be sewn into a  quilt.  They sent out a focus fabric and from there quilters could use their own imagination to piece a block to send back to the museum.

Pattern for the 12 inch block.

I used the focus fabric the museum sent as the fabric #3; and choose a small blue floral for the complementary #4 fabric and for the #6 square.

The 8 1/2 inch square could have been the same fabric as the #3 (focus) fabric but I did not have enough of that for the 8 1/2 inch square.  Scraps of the fabric were all I had left.  I thought about putting a marbleized gray fabric in as the large square but decided that was too blah.  So I choose to use the scraps of the #3 and #4 fabric along with two shades of gray to create a scrappy 8 1/2 inch square.   There is are excellent YouTube tutorials for making a crazy scrap quilt pattern at:

• Missouri Star Quilt Company. (2012 March 12).  The Crazy Quilt - The Ultimate Stash Buster!  Retrieved from https://youtu.be/l9QKruDO8tk.

This one may be easier for the beginner, the pieces are sewn onto a foundation piece:

• Fons and Porter. (2017 August 14).  Sew Easy: Crazy Pieced Quilt Blocks Made Simple. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/fjt4nqrlmdA.  

But the scrappiest crazy block technique is this one -- 

I love this one - so practical, quick - no pattern, no template, just creativity and fun.  You need a foundation piece - muslin, cheap cotton - use 100% cotton.

• rmhitsman.  (2016 January 24).  Crazy Quilt Block.  Retrieved from https://youtu.be/oOczBAtJKHc.  

For my crazy quilt center block (actually taking the place of the #6 fabric) for the Herbert Hoover Museum Quilting Bee I used a piece of white cotton for the foundation and began with a five sided piece of focus fabric.  Then I incorporated the #3 and #4 fabrics, and two shades of gray together.

And finally using the pattern as a guide for how to sew the blocks together I stitched two claws onto the large scrappy square; and then created a strip with the small square and two claws and sewed it onto the side of the large square ... and here is the bear claw all ready to send off to the Herbert Hoover Museum for the quilting bee.

How fun was that?

Give it a try -- make twenty bear paw squares - and make a 4 x 5 block quilt.

Sharron

Quilts in Iowa

The state of Iowa emerged with statehood on December 28, 1846.  However settlers had begun to arrive in Iowa territory prior to that -- the period of time when the area was part of the Northwest territory.  President James K. Polk signed the law admitting Iowa as the 29th state of the Union.  There was a rich history of the plains as many Siouan speaking tribes of Native Americans, along with Caddoan speaking tribes had inhabited the area since prehistoric times.  By the time white settlers began to move into the area the Meskwaki had claimed land in Iowa.  As pioneers began to settle in the mid-1800s, families settled onto the prairie, cleared the land, and began to cultivate the land.  The men and older children worked the fields and tended the animals, the women and younger children tended the home, the garden, and the fires to keep the homestead warm and as comfortable as possible.

One of the activities that occupied the pioneers/settlers, during the winter was making quilts.  Scraps of material were cut into shapes and pieced together to make colorful patterns.  Quilting bees (where a group of quilters would sit around a quilting rack and hand quilt the pieced quilt top to batting and the bottom layer) were held in churches, a neighbor's home, and so forth.Over time many quilts were made and shared.
The picture on the left was taken at the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Burr Oak, Iowa.  Laura and her parental family lived there (1876–1877) for a time and operated the town saloon which also took in overnight travelers. These quilts are period pieces that represent the type of quilt that might have been used in the 1870s.  (Read more about Wilder's days in Iowa here http://bit.ly/wilderiniowa).

Sometime in the mid-1900s the State Historical Society of Iowa joined a larger project to document the evolution of quilt making in the early days of the state ... and up through 1925.  Documentation for some of these quilts can be located at http://www.quiltindex.org/wiki/index.php/Iowa_Quilt_Research_Project

Check out the early quilts digitalized on the Quilt index website.  But even though the history here has a cut-off date of 1925 - that doesn't mean that quilting in Iowa is no longer active.  While there are many quilt collections included in this project (http://www.quiltindex.org/contributors.php) those that are associated directly with Iowa can be found at the State Historical Society of Iowa (http://www.quiltindex.org/contributor.php?kid=18-C5-0).
Among some of my favorites are these patterns:

Each of these quilts and others are shown - and details regarding year, quilter, and so forth are included on the Quilt Index website.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today quilting bees sometimes do take place - often in rural churches, the church ladies hand quilt quilt tops which are brought to them.  The quilts they hand quilt bring in needed funds to their small community.  But these days, many quilts are quilted by machine on contract by quilters who have a long-armed quilting machine in their home or small business location.  On April 15, 2016 a member of the East Iowa Heirloom Quilters, Jennifer McRae, showcased many of her quilts.  The showcase took place at the Hiawatha (Iowa) public library.  The quilts showcased were those that that McRae, her mother, or her daughter had pieced together -- and which McRae or her daughter had machine quilted.

These pictures are from the quilt showcase:

Thank you Jennifer McRae for sharing.  Many more examples of her quilting are showcased on My Dancing Needle webpage at http://mydancingneedle.com.

Those in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City area may also be interested in investigating the East Iowa Heirloom Quilters group http://eihqguild.com.

References:

• Blaski, Steven. "Quilts Reveal Lives of Early Iowans," The Palimpsest: Iowa's Popular History Magazine. 1990 Spring 71(1); p 33.
• East Iowa Heirloom Quilters http://eihqguild.com
• Flanscha, Karan. "Heritage Quilts From America's Heartland: The Iowa Quilt Research Project," Lady's Circle Patchwork Quilts. April/May 1996; pgx. 5-12. 
• Iowa History: Bits and Pieces: Laura Ingalls WIlder - at home in Iowa. (2013 Sep 15).  Retrieved http://bit.ly/wilderiniowa. 
• My Dancing Needle.  (2016) http://mydancingneedle.com. 
• Schmeal, Jacqueline Andre. Patchwork: Iowa Quilts and Quilters. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2003. 158 p. 0877458650
• The Quilt Index - Collection: State Historical Society of Iowa.  Retrieved from http://www.quiltindex.org/contributor.php?kid=18-C5-0 
• The Quilt Research Project. Retrieved from  http://www.quiltindex.org/contributors.php.
• The Thread That Remains, Patterns From Iowa’s Past. Des Moines: Iowa Quilts Research Project, 1990. Small exhibit catalog.

Laura Ingalls Wilder - at home in Iowa

Laura Ingalls Wilder - Prairie Girl

Laura Ingalls Wilder (February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957) began her children's writing career when she was well into her 60s.  The books based on her life in Pepin, Wisconsin; Walnut Grove, Minnesota; Indian Territory (Kansas); and DeSmet, South Dakota have been the subject of numerous articles and titles.  William Anderson is a noted Wilder expert; but Iowa has its own expert in Sarah S. Uthoff who frequently writes about Wilder on her Trundlebed Tales site.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's books were based on her childhood and early years on the prairie, her ages in various locations have been adjusted, and locations were moved or Laura depicted as being a different age than she really was.  This moving around of the facts completely left out the year-and-a-half or so (1876–1877) that Laura and her parental family lived in Burr Oak, Iowa.  But the family did live in Burr Oak and there is much to discover about the family's time there.  None of Wilder's published writings for children included the months spent in Burr Oak but she did write about life in Burr Oak (in a previously unpublished manuscript).  In Burr Oak, Pa Ingalls was to help run the tavern in town, and Ma was to fix meals for those who stopped to sleep in the facility, or who just happened by for a meal.  But the family was not paid for their work, and they were left to do much of the work themselves even though the agreement was "to help."  Disenchanted the Ingalls moved to an apartment two lots over, above a grocery store, and finally to a house at the edge of town.  It is that house, owned by a Mr. Bisby, where baby Gracie was born.  But when she was just a few months old, the family returned to Walnut Grove and eventually to DeSmet, South Dakota where Ma and Pa Ingalls lived for the rest of their lives.  When the family left Burr Oak, it was during the "time between two days" -- meaning they left in the middle of the night.  Pa could not pay the rent he owned the house owner.  The owner had threatened that Pa must pay before he left or he would have the sheriff hold his horses.  So Pa took his family and they left without being seen.  Indications are that Pa did make the debt right, but there is no absolute record of that.  Burr Oak is not the only connection between Iowa and the Ingalls family.  The family was living in South Dakota when Mary (Laura's sister) lost her sight as a teenager.  Mary was sent to Iowa where she attended school at the Iowa College for the Blind in Vinton. Information about Mary's days in Vinton may be found in an article "Vinton School for the Blind Mary Ingalls Era 1877-1889" on the Museum of the American Printing House for the Blind site.

Even though Laura Ingalls Wilder did not publish information about the Burr Oak community, the community and the directors at the Burr Oak Museum have researched and showcase the connection.  On a recent September day, a friend and I headed out to visit the Burr Oak Location.

 Laura Ingalls Wilder Park and Museum • 3603 -- 236th Avenue • Burr Oak, Iowa 52101

 

The Burr Oak House (Masters Hotel) is on the west side of the street and the renovated and restored Burr Oak Savings Bank is on the east side.  Visitors to the center go to the old bank building first to pay for the museum admission and to visit the gift shop.  From there a museum tour guide is available to guide visitors through the hotel.  The approach to the side door is lined with prairie flowers, bursts of yellow, and coneflowers, as well as others that I could not identify.  After our visit to Burr Oak, and later in the weekend my friend brought, as a hostess gift, the yellow planter/flowers in the lower left corner of this collage.  Each time I see those flowers in my house, I think about something new that I heard or learned in Burr Oak.   The photo board to the left of the building was created by a local artist, Nancy Sojka who was inspired by the art work of Cheryl Harness. 

 Pa's fiddle is one of the most recognizable items - many children who read Laura Ingalls Wilder remember the scenes in which Pa is playing his fiddle.   For many years (including 1947)  Pa's fiddle was in Memorial Hall in the Museum of the State Historical Society at Pierre, South Dakota.  During an annual concert someone would use the fiddle to play the old songs Pa used to play.  Now the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri has acquired Pa's original fiddle and has it as part of their collection.  Over 127 songs are referenced in the Wilder books.  Several CD's have been produced showcasing Pa's fiddle music.

 

Since I enjoy having special dishes for special occasions I enjoyed seeing a place setting of the dishes Laura had at Rocky Ridge.  These dishes were certainly much fancier than the ones the family would have used in Burr Oak.  You will see later in a picture that the Burr Oak House (Masters Hotel) set the table for the evening meal with plain white plates and it seems tin cups were used for drinking.  Certainly not these beautiful china dishes used later in Laura's life after she married Almanzo and settled on their little farm, Rocky Ridge Farm, in Mansfield, Missouri. 

 At Rocky Ridge Laura also had this bread plate, decorated with heads of wheat and words circling the plate "Give us this day our daily bread."  In her book The First Four Years, Laura describes the plate as being oval but the plate exhibited at Rocky Ridge and a duplicate exhibited here is much rounder than what one would describe as oval.  In 2009 Cheryl Whitlock wrote an article "The Mystery of the Oval Glass Bread Plate" on her site Beyond Little House.  In that article she examines the mystery surrounding the oval description and the round plate on display.

 In addition to the quilt patterns which I found interesting, the lower left hand corner shows Laura's corncob doll.  It is simply a corn cob, with two black dots for eyes, wrapped in a white hankerchief type cloth.  Later she was given a coveted rag doll that she named Charlotte.

 One thing that I missed seeing during this trip that was on display the last time I was in Burr Oak is the "red work" that Laura and her mother and sister embroidered throughout their life.  In this picture you can see one example of the red work.  Red work was very popular in the 1880s (to about the 1920s but it is gaining a renewed popularity in this decade). Red cotton embroidery floss was often the only color available as other colors were only available in silk floss making it more expensive.  Patterns were stamped on muslin and an outline stitch (actually called the Kensington stitch for a girls school in England) was used to embroider the design onto the muslin.  Red work was used to decorate towels, pillow cases, scarves for dressers, luncheon cloths, and so forth.  Girls as young as 5 and 6 were taught to embroider red work.  Since Laura was born in 1867, it is doubtful if she would have been doing red work when she lived in Burr Oak as the family was in Burr Oak in the late 1870s, a full decade before the popularity of the fashionable "fanciwork" would have become popular.  Laura would likely have created some red work later in her teens, although I don't believe that has been documented.

Laura wrote her first book when she was in her late 60s.  An unpublished manuscript, Pioneer Girl, became the basis for her first children's book, Little House in the Big Woods, which drew from her original manuscript.  Later she drew from Pioneer Girl for the years that she wrote about in her continuing series.  In Pioneer Girl Wilder does speak of living in Iowa.  The South Dakota State Historical Society Press apparently has obtained the rights to that original manuscript and is preparing an annotated publication which hopefully will be released in 2014.  The historic society press has a website The Pioneer Girl Project, where questions surrounding the life of Wilder and notes about the progress of the book's publication are announced.  Of course there are dozens of other websites focusing on the work of Laura Ingalls Wilder - a search of the Internet will turn up many of them, along with Wilder's books as well as those researched and written by William Anderson who wrote his own biography of Wilder, Pioneer Girl: The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder (HarperCollins, 2000).  In 2002, Cynthia Rylant's book Old Town in the Green Groves: The Lost Little House Years (llustrated by Jim LaMarche) was published by HarperCollins.  The book was meant to fill in the gap of the years Laura did not write about but reviewers generally felt it lacked the intimacy with the times that Laura had in her written stories.  Old Town in the Green Groves seemed more fact reporting than storytelling.
Fans of all things Laura Ingalls Wilder will be eagerly awaiting the publication of Pioneer Girl.  And real fans will also not want to miss visiting Burr Oak, Iowa, one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood homes.  Burr Oak's Laura Ingalls Wilder Park & Museum website is at www.lauraingallswilder.us/‎.

Related blog posts:
McBookwords: Library of America - Laura Ingalls Wilder - December 3, 2012
McBookwords: Laura Ingall's Wilder's Birthday - February 6, 2011; Updated as Re-Thinking LIW's books - February 7, 2015.  Includes Laura's recipe for Gingerbread.
McBookwords: Laura Ingalls Wilder - Happy Birthday - February 7, 2009  Includes links to Laura's Gingerbread Recipe.