Nellie Owens
The girl named Nellie Owens was about the same age as Laura and had a younger brother named Willie, just as the character of Nellie Oleson did in the books. Her parents, William and Margaret Owens (renamed Nels and Harriet Oleson in the television series; called only "Mr. and Mrs. Oleson" in the books), did, as Laura describes, run the local mercantile in Walnut Grove. Nellie Owens is the basis for Nellie Oleson in On the Banks of Plum Creek. Later in her life, Owens moved to California and then on to Oregon, where she married Henry Kirry and had three children, Zola, Lloyd, and Leslie. Her brother Willie went blind from a firecracker explosion, attended a school for the blind, married, and also had three children. There seems to be no indication that Laura ever saw Nellie Owens again after Laura's family left Walnut Grove in 1879. Nellie died in 1949.
Read more about this topic: Nellie Oleson