On The Banks of Plum Creek - Historical Background

Historical Background

In real life, the Ingalls family left Kansas and moved back to Wisconsin (the setting of Little House in the Big Woods), and from Wisconsin moved to Minnesota. Laura and Mary already had attended school in Pepin, Wisconsin at the Barry Corner School. Laura was only four when she started, which made her the youngest student. Unfortunately, neither in Pepin nor in Walnut Grove could the girls attend school on a regular basis.

Jack, the family bulldog, did not come with the Ingalls family to Plum Creek. However, Laura's readers liked Jack so much that she decided to include him in this book. In the early chapters of By the Shores of Silver Lake. Laura used Jack's death as the transition from Laura's childhood to her adolescence.

Another aspect of Laura's life that is not included in this book is the birth of her brother, Charles Frederick Ingalls, in their home in Minnesota. The baby was never healthy, and died in 1876 while Laura and her family were living at her Uncle Peter's farm in South Troy, Minnesota. The family then moved to Burr Oak, Iowa, and subsequently back to Minnesota. These years were a painful time for the family, so Laura did not include them in her books, and By the Shores of Silver Lake begins in Minnesota once more. The omitted period was dramatized in Cynthia Rylant's novel Old Town in the Green Groves.