The Wilder Homestead

As Randy was putting together his tentative schedule of customer visits he needed to make in the US, there was only one of trips he really wanted the kids and me to accompany him. One of his meetings was to be scheduled in Vermont. In the past two times he had gone to this customer site, he had driven near Fort Ticonderoga. He hoped that this was something we would really enjoy.

I also looked at his route and realized that it might be possible, too, to spend a day in Malone, New York. This spring Myles read Laura Ingalls' Wilder Farmer Boy. He was as absorbed in this story as any of his beloved mystery books. The home in which Almanzo Wilder and his family lived during Farmer Boy was still standing and operated as a museum. Before Fort Ti, then, we would go to Malone.

More after the jump.

The Wilder Homestead, the home built by Almanzo's father James Wilder sometime in the early 1840s, stands on a country road between the towns of Malone and Burke, New York. Of all the homes in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, it is the only one with the original structure still intact in the original location. Owners of this home after the Wilders sold it in 1875 did nothing to expand the house, and little to improve it short of limited modern conveniences. Since the 1990s the Wilder Homestead has been run as a museum, with the addition of recreated barns where the Wilders' once stood, and now a replica of a one-room schoolhouse on another part of the property. Photographs were not allowed to be taken inside the buildings, so all of my pictures are exterior shots.

Our tour guide for the afternoon was a 60-something grandfather from Arizona and a self-described “Laura Nut.” He had been to all of the other Laura Ingalls historical sites in the US frequently. He jumped at the opportunity to work at the Wilder house in the summer, partly to escape the oppressive heat of Arizona, but mostly because it was the one “Little House” that was as close to its original state as it could be. We absolutely benefited from his breadth and depth of knowledge about the Wilders, the product of years of studying pictures, letters, and other documents in the various Laura archives around the country.

The first part of our tour was through the rebuilt barns. The barns that had been built by James Wilder were no longer standing when the Wilder Association purchased the property. The historical society erected them according to sketches Almanzo himself had provided Laura when she was writing Farmer Boy.



The barns were very full of period artifacts that had been donated to the museum. While none of them had any known connection to the Wilders, they were helpful in showing some of the tools found around the farms of that time. In the barns he related everything he wanted us to see with a corresponding story from the book. We talked about Almanzo's cousin trying to spook the colts, Almanzo with his team of oxen, how he came to buy Lucy the Pig instead of Lemonade, and what Almanzo's first job every morning was in the pump house.



Inside the barns, Myles and Brigid enjoyed comparing the farming techniques used during the 19th century not to contemporary times in America but rather what they've seen around Beijing. After discussing at length the threshing techniques as described in the book, in a room in the barn built to look like what the Wilders would have used, Myles was happy to volunteer how it's done in our part of Beijing.

Between the barns and the house is a small garden. One plant in particular was worth our guide pointing out to us. It was hops.



Hops was one of the most common crops in that part of New York State during the 19th century. There are records of many of the Wilders' neighbors growing and selling hops. What does not exist is any record of the Wilders cultivating hops, and hops is never mentioned in Farmer Boy. Were they hops growers or not?

In the house we went through Mother's pantry, with our guide pointing out the likeliest location for the indoor pump, a true luxury for a mid-century farm. We saw the downstairs rooms, including the good parlor. It isn't known where exactly Almanzo hit the wall with the blacking brush and Eliza repaired it, but Jim himself in studying the archival photographs from the early restoration noticed a very suspicious black mark on the plaster, the right height and position for Almanzo's aim. One very special artifact in the house that is absolutely connected to the Wilder family was a wool blanket Almanzo's mother wove herself. It was dark blue with a white geometric pattern. Royal Wilder's granddaughter donated it to the museum. Even late in her life, long after it was less expensive to buy fabric, Mother preferred to weave her own. Of everything in any of the buildings, this blanket was the hardest to resist touching or photographing.

Upstairs we saw the likely sleeping arrangements of the children, as well as where Mother's loom would have sat. It was blocked off, but we could also peer into Father's attic workroom.

After the tour, we had to buy a few books. Myles, now interested in reading more Laura Ingalls Wilder books, picked out Little House in the Big Woods because he prefers to read book series in order. Brigid was happy with A Farmer Boy Birthday, a retelling of a chapter in picture book format. This book is now out of print, and among the few places where it is still available for the retail price is the Wilder Homestead. I also could not help but buy a book for myself. In the Homestead bookstore were also many of the prequel books written by Melissa Wiley! The Martha Years and Charlotte Years are also long since out of print, so the books in stock were priced accordingly. I don't want to say how much I paid for one softcover book, but the hardcover was $150! I was so excited to see all the Wiley books together, and then actually buy one. As Melissa would say, "Squeee!"



We drove into to Malone to check out a few other places from the book. One was the location of the Academy, more formally known as Franklin Academy. In the book Royal prepares to go to the Academy to further his schooling. Today what was once the Franklin Academy is now the local Middle School. One of the entrances still bears the name Franklin Academy, though this is a newer building than when the Wilder children attended.


 

Also in Malone are the Franklin County Fairgrounds, where Almanzo chose to buy a pig instead of a lemonade and where he showed his milk-fed pumpkin.



Here also we learned about a piece of American/Canadian/Irish/British history that we were previously unaware. Two of the Fenian raids of Canada began at the fairgrounds.



Our tour, with our very knowledgeable guide, and the visit to the Malone was an incredible companion to future readings of  Farmer Boy. These places have existed in my imagination for nearly thirty years. My mental pictures were shaped by the very accurate Garth Williams illustrations. So much, especially the house, was almost exactly as I always envisioned them.

Myles and Brigid don't have the decades-long relationship with the Little House Books (yet). They are only at the beginning, just now getting acquainted with the Wilder and Ingalls families. Visiting the actual farm, where Farmer Boy takes place, they were practically able to step inside the story. Sure, we visit all kinds of historical places all the time. The difference is that the history that Ingalls Wilder recorded was about real children and their families and written for children to enjoy. Almanzo from Farmer Boy was a real person, and this was his real home, and he really was here when he turned nine years old. Myles was a little in awe of that. Unlike other young boys that inhabit Myles' favorite books, like Harry Potter or Hiccup Horrendous Haddock or even Encyclopedia Brown, Almanzo Wilder existed and we visited his home.