By Julie Huebel, Pierce County Historical Association
ELMWOOD, WI – “Laura loved Grandma’s house. It was much larger than their house at home. There was one great big room, and then there was a little room that belonged to Uncle George, and there was another room for the aunts, Aunt Docia and Aunt Ruby. It was fun to run the whole length of the big room, from the large fireplace at one end all the way to Grandma’s bed, under the window at the other end. The floor was made of wide, thick slabs that Grandpa had hewed from the logs with his ax. The floor was smoothed all over, and scrubbed clean and white, and the big bed under the window was soft with feathers.” Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote of her grandparents’ house in Rock Elm Township. I is for Ingalls…
We’ll start by talking about Lansford Whiting Ingalls, the famous Laura Ingalls Wilder’s grandfather, that lived in Rock Elm Township. Lansford was born in Quebec, Canada. He married Laura Louise Colby, and they had several children, among them multiple that lived in Pierce County. Their son Charles lived just over the border into Pepin County where his daughter Laura was born. Charles and Caroline would meet in Jefferson County, Wisconsin where Caroline (Quiner) grew up and taught school and where Charles’ father purchased land in 1853. They would move to western Pepin County in 1862, only a half mile from the Pierce County line.
I’m going to focus on the members of the family that have lived in Pierce County. Among the list of Pioneer Settlers of Rock Elm Township as documented by a committee in 1886, Peter Ingalls (Charles’ oldest brother) settled in Rock Elm Township in 1865, he was married to Caroline’s sister (three sets of siblings from the Quiner and Ingalls families would marry). Peter is buried in Milaca, Minnesota. Lansford Whiting (the elder) and son Lansford James (he went by James) settled in Rock Elm Township in 1867. James is the man pictured here, he would stay in Rock Elm Township and is buried in Poplar Hill Cemetery. Many of his descendants are still in the area today. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote of her Uncle James in Little House in the Big Woods, “Uncle James and Aunt Libby had come with their little girl, whose name was Laura Ingalls, too.”
Rock Elm’s first murder involved Laura Docia (she went by Docia) a sister to Charles. She was married to August Waldvogel, when in 1868, he claimed in self-defense he shot through a door of a logging camp he was the pay master of, killing Milo Goodenough. Despite his defense, he was sent to prison at Waupun, WI. Docia Waldvogel divorced him and remarried, moving west. Her obituary says he died in 1870, and she was remarried in 1872, but this was not true, he died in 1884, they were divorced.
Another of Charles’ sisters lived in Pierce County, Lydia Louisa was first married in Jefferson County, WI in 1856 to Robert Clough, he died only three years later (they had one son). She would remarry in 1865 in Pepin County, to Joseph Stouff, recently discharged from the Civil War with her brothers James and Hiram as the official witnesses. She died in 1913 at age 74 and is buried in Plum City Union Cemetery between her husband and son, her grave is not marked with a headstone.
Charles’ brother, Hiram also lived in Rock Elm Township, a young, newly married farmer is found in the 1870 census there. He enlisted close to the end of the Civil War in January of 1865 from Lake City, MN. He would not have served long. He moved north and is buried in Webster, WI.
Another of Charles’ brothers, George, also briefly lived in Pierce County. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote of her Uncle George in the first book in her series: “Uncle George was home from the army. He wore his blue army coat with the brass buttons, and he had bold, merry blue eyes. He was big and broad, and he walked with a swagger. Laura looked at him all the time she was eating her hasty pudding, because she had heard Pa say to Ma that he was wild.” She wrote that she heard her dad say: “George is wild, since he came back from the War.” He was married to Julia (Bard). They would have multiple children die just after birth with one surviving to about one year, Benjamin. He died in 1885 while they were living in Webster after several from the family moved there from Pierce County, he died of suffocation after being bundled up in blankets too tightly when traveling in winter. Poor Julia could not handle all of this loss and was admitted to a hospital and later moved to Dunn County Asylum, she died there in 1910 of TB and is buried in their Potter’s Field Cemetery.
Laura’s grandfather, Lansford Whiting Ingalls and his wife Laura are on the 1870 census still in Rock Elm Township, with their two youngest children, George and Ruby still at home. They are also buried in Webster, WI. It is likely more from the family also lived in Pierce County, staying with their parents or a sibling before getting married and settling somewhere with their own families. Let me know if you know more of the Ingalls family living in Pierce County.
