Farmer Boy

Alonzo Wilder

Alonzo Wilder, the husband of writer Laura Ingalls Wilder of "Little House on the Prairie" fame, was the subject of her book "Farmer Boy".  I never read more than school book snippets of the rest of her series of books on her life in frontier rural America but I read "Farmer Boy" more than 5 times.  Because Alonzo Wilder seemed to have a connection with me, my 2XGreat-grandfather was named Alonzo and Wilder was from an upstate New York farming family like my own, I really enjoyed reading about his various "adventures".

Of course, in our advanced years we now know that our perceptions aren't always accurate.  Alonzo is known in his family as Almanzo.  I haven't been able to discover exactly why but suspect it is because this is how his name was recorded by a census enumerator and that was likely because that is very close to way he pronounced it.

I had no idea from the book that he was born in 1857 and a contemporary of the Civil War.  I don't remember a single mention being made of brothers or cousins going to war, dying, being maimed, and so forth.  I suppose that Laura cleaned up the account to avoid any unnecessary conflicts,  after all, she was living in Missouri at the time.

In any case it is a good book.  If today's boys were to read that book I'm betting that more of them would have at least a passing idea of honor, integrity and the concept of hard work.