I’m part of a multi-generational line of Laura Ingalls Wilder fans. My grandmother read all the books in the Little House series, and my mother read them to me as a little girl. Now I’m re-reading them with my seven-year old daughter. The genealogist in me had to hash out all these aunts and uncles who lived near Laura in the “Big Woods” of Wisconsin. Paired with Caroline Fraser’s excellent biography Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (which I’m also reading- Laura Ingalls fans, add this to your bookshelves if you want to dive into the non-fictionalized life of Laura and her family- so thorough and fascinating!), I did some quick research of my own to untangle the Ingalls and Quiner families of Wisconsin.
The overall story of Laura Ingalls is widely known- She was a little pioneer girl who moved often to various states via covered wagon with her Pa, Ma, sisters, and their “good ol’ bulldog Jack.” The family experienced disaster after disaster, from locusts eating their crops, to barely surviving the blizzards of 1880-1881 due to near-starvation. Despite the Ingalls’ bad luck (or, if you read Fraser’s book, bad luck and natural consequences of Pa’s bad decision-making), the stories offer vivid accounts of family life in the 1800s. Little House in the Big Woods, in particular, paints a picture of tightly-knit extended family members working together through various endeavors like butchering time, collecting maple sap, and having a spirited dance at Grandpa Ingalls’ house. This dance, in particular, is what made me start researching Ma and Pa’s families, which I learned were quite intertwined… It turns out, three Ingalls siblings married three Quiner siblings.
Pa’s Family- The Ingalls
Charles Phillip Ingalls was born in Cuba, New York on 10 January 1836 to Lansford and Laura Ingalls. He was the fourth of at least eleven children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. The family lived in Illinois briefly before settling in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, “on the north banks of the Oconomowoc River.”1
The Ingalls Siblings:
(Symbols denote members of the Ingalls family who married a Quiner)
#Peter Riley (1833–1900)
Unnamed Infant Boy (1835–1835)
+Charles Phillip (1836-1902)
William (1835–1918)
Lydia Louisa (1838–1913)
*Polly Melona (1841–1888)
Lansford James (1842–1928)
Laura Ladocia “Docia” (1845–1918)
Hiram Lemuel (1848–1923)
George Whiting (1851–1901)
Ruby Celestia (1855–1881)
Ma’s Family- The Quiners
The Quiner family were the Ingalls’ neighbors just across a small stream. Caroline Lake Quiner was born in Brookfield, Wisconsin on 12 December 1839 to Henry and Charlotte Quiner. She was the fifth of seven children, six of whom survived to adulthood. Henry died in a shipwreck after the lumber ship on which he was second mate sank in a storm on Lake Michigan in 1845. Caroline was just five years old.2 After several years of roughing it in the wilderness of Wisconsin and providing for six young children as a widowed mother, Charlotte Quiner moved her family near the Oconomowoc River. She eventually remarried to a man named Frederick Holbrook, and the couple had one child together in 1854.3
The Quiner Siblings:
(Symbols denote members of the Quiner family who married an Ingalls)
Martha Morse (1832–1836)
Joseph Carpenter (1834–1862)
*Henry Odin (1835–1886)
Martha Jane (1837–1927)
+Caroline Lake (1839–1924)
#Eliza Ann (1842–1931)
Thomas Lewis (1844–1903)
(Half-Sibling, born to Charlotte and her second husband):
Charlotte Elizabeth “Lottie” Holbrook (1854–1939)
The First Wedding
The Ingalls and Quiners were neighbors in Concord, Jefferson County, Wisconsin from about 1854 to 1859. Eventually, the Ingalls moved near Pepin, Wisconsin. But a few Quiners followed… Three unions became of this period of proximity: The first occurred in February 1859, when Henry Quiner married Polly Ingalls.4 Readers of Little House in the Big Woods will remember Uncle Henry and Aunt Polly’s son Charley, who “cried wolf” when his father and Pa were harvesting oats (and consequently stepped on a yellow jackets’ nest.)
Henry and Polly died around 1886 and 1888, respectively. Sadly, four of their seven children died before 1885.
Before experiencing the hardships of pioneer life, Henry and Polly moved to the Big Woods around 1860, with the second Ingalls/Quiner pair to marry…
Pa and Ma
Charles Ingalls and Caroline Quiner wed on 1 February 1860.
Two subjects of their daughter Laura’s series on her childhood, Pa and Ma Ingalls moved constantly after their marriage, thanks to Pa’s “itching foot” and his hopes of finding rich, profitable farmland. The pair had four daughters, Mary, Laura, Carrie, and Grace, and a son Frederick, who died as an infant in 1876.
Charles and Caroline settled in De Smet, Dakota Territory after years of moving their family around the country. Charles died in 1902 and Caroline in 1924.
The Last Couple
The last couple to form from these two families was Peter Ingalls and Eliza Quiner. The pair married 5 June 1861.
Peter and Eliza lived about thirteen miles from Pa and Ma’s little log cabin near Pepin, Wisconsin.5 They were close enough to visit Laura’s family for Christmas at, a cheery scene remembered in Little House in the Big Woods. The couple eventually had six children, the first three of whom played with their cousins Laura and Mary that holiday, making “snow pictures” and listening to Aunt Eliza’s recollection of their dog Prince keeping the family away from a panther.
All of the children born to these couples (Henry and Polly Quiner, seven; Charles and Caroline Ingalls, five; Peter and Eliza Ingalls, six) were double-first cousins. Typical first-cousins have one parent who is a sibling with one of their cousin’s parents. These kiddos had BOTH parents as siblings with their cousins’ mother and father. Double cousins share about the same amount of DNA as half-siblings. So, while Big Woods might have felt vast to little Laura Ingalls, her nearby extended family was fairly compact, branching out little from the neighbors along the Oconomowoc River in Wisconsin.
- Caroline Fraser,Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2017), 35. ↩︎
- Fraser, 35-36. ↩︎
- Ibid, 37. ↩︎
- Ibid, 38. ↩︎
- Paula Smith Hill, editor, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pioneer Girl (Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2014), 34. ↩︎
