40 Fun Facts About By the Shores of Silver Lake

A 2013 medical study doubted which illness that By the Shores of Silver Lake blames for Mary Ingalls's blindness?

Scarlet fever is the cause the book gives, but researchers who combed first-hand accounts and newspaper reports concluded that a viral infection of the brain was the more likely culprit.

In By the Shores of Silver Lake, which animal do Laura and Carrie meet while out on the moonlit ice?

A wolf is what the sisters encounter on their moonlight walk. When Pa goes out to hunt it the next day, he finds the perfect piece of land for the family's claim instead.

Which old family bulldog dies in his sleep on the morning Pa leaves Plum Creek in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Jack dies in the story, but the real bulldog was no longer with the Ingallses by then. Wilder placed his death here to mark Laura's passage out of childhood.

In By the Shores of Silver Lake, Ma and the girls go west to Pa by which means, new to them all?

By train: none of them has ridden one before, and they are thrilled that it covers in a few hours the distance a horse and wagon would manage in a day.

In By the Shores of Silver Lake, what work does Laura resolve to take up to help send Mary to college?

Teaching school is what Laura decides on once she hears about the college. Helping to pay Mary's way was one of the reasons the real Laura became a teacher.

Which Little House book, with the family sheltering in Pa's town store, directly follows By the Shores of Silver Lake?

The Long Winter follows the family through seven months of blizzards, after an early October storm drives them off the claim and into town.

Which American book award named By the Shores of Silver Lake one of its Honor titles?

The Newbery Medal committee gave Honor status to five Wilder books in a row, the fourth to the eighth in the series, and this one was the second of them.

A visiting minister in By the Shores of Silver Lake tells Ma of a college for the blind in which state?

Iowa is where the minister says blind students can get a college education, and the family sets its heart on it. The real Mary enrolled in 1881 and completed the seven-year course.

By the Shores of Silver Lake opens on Plum Creek, just outside which Minnesota town made famous by television?

Walnut Grove was home to just 153 people in the 1880 census. The television series set there turned the tiny prairie town into a household name nearly a century later.

After Mary loses her sight in By the Shores of Silver Lake, what daily task does Pa hand to Laura?

Describing what she sees becomes Laura's job for the rest of the book, from prairie sunrises to passing strangers, and the task leaves her more patient and mature.

The free-land law Pa counts on in By the Shores of Silver Lake was signed in 1862 by which president?

Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act once the Southern states had left Congress. It let a settler claim public land for a small fee by living on it for five years.

Where is the Ingalls family living, after several moves, when By the Shores of Silver Lake ends?

In a shanty on the claim is where the story leaves them. Wilder called it a half house because its roof slanted all one way, and a replica now stands where the original did.

Which young settler, the hero of Farmer Boy, makes a brief appearance late in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Almanzo Wilder turns up only briefly, in the chapter called Moving Day. He had filed on his own land in 1879, a year before Pa did.

Which illustrator of Charlotte's Web drew the pictures for the 1950s edition of By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Garth Williams had never been west of the Hudson River when he took the job, so he toured the places the Ingalls family had lived, sketching and photographing as he went.

Which treasured ornament of Ma's stays packed away at the railroad camp in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

The china shepherdess is never displayed in temporary quarters. Unpacking and admiring it is a small ceremony that Ma saves for the day the family is properly settled.

What was the real first name of Pa, the father who files a land claim in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Charles Ingalls was a hunter, trapper, carpenter and farmer who loved music and played the violin. He filed the real claim behind the story in February 1880.

Which aunt arrives at Plum Creek in By the Shores of Silver Lake with a railroad job offer for Pa?

Aunt Docia is Pa's sister, first met at the dance at Grandpa's in Little House in the Big Woods. Her husband, Uncle Hi, is a contractor building the new railroad west.

What position does Pa hold at the railroad camps in By the Shores of Silver Lake before he files a claim?

Bookkeeper and timekeeper, and storekeeper too: Pa records the men's hours and hands out their wages for fifty dollars a month, steady cash after two poor wheat crops.

At which Minnesota town does Pa meet Ma and the girls with the wagon in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Tracy lay seven miles beyond the family's old home and counted 322 people in the 1880 census. From there the Ingallses went on by wagon in September 1879.

Which cousin lets Laura ride a horse for the first time, on her own pony, in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Lena is a year older than Laura in the book, though the real cousin was born only three months before her. The two play once their chores are done, from milking cows to collecting laundry washed by a neighbour.

Which rider in By the Shores of Silver Lake, part French and part Indian, leads an angry crowd away from Pa's store?

Big Jerry was the brother-in-law of the grading foreman. Wilder left few other clues, and his identity stayed a puzzle until descendants of the foreman's family confirmed who he was.

Which newlywed couple reaches the surveyors' house in a snowstorm in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

The Boasts stay on past Christmas and become firm friends of the family. The real Robert and Ella had in fact been husband and wife for ten years before they moved west.

Which first for the future town does Reverend Alden lead at the surveyors' house in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

A church service was held there in February 1880, with twenty-five people present. Reverend Alden was passing through on his way west to organise a church in the next county.

In which town is the land office where Pa files the family's claim in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Brookings, spelled Brookins in the book, lay to the east. Pa waits for its land office to open, which saves him more than a week's travel to Yankton and back.

How do the Ingallses earn money for Mary's college during the spring rush in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Boarding travellers turns the surveyors' house into an inn: men heading west to find land have nowhere else to sleep, and what they pay is later put toward Mary's education.

In By the Shores of Silver Lake, which Kansas friend starts a fight so Pa can file first at the land office?

Mr. Edwards first met the family near Independence in an earlier book. He turns up again in the next one and generously gives Mary a twenty-dollar bill.

Which fashionable piece of parlor furniture does Pa build at the surveyors' house in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

A whatnot is a stand of shelves for books and ornaments. A neighbour tells Pa how to build one, although furniture dealers had been advertising them for at least a decade.

What news of a homesteader's thirteen-year-old daughter reaches Laura and her cousin in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

She has just married, her mother explains, and is no longer at home to help with the work. On the way back the two cousins decide they are not ready to grow up quite yet.

In By the Shores of Silver Lake, the down of which bird shot by Pa trims little Grace's Christmas coat?

A swan's downy skin becomes the hood, cuffs and collar of the coat. A local paper later reported Pa shooting one on the lake that measured six feet eight inches from tip to tip.

Which trees does Pa plant right around the family's new home late in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Cottonwoods that had seeded around a lone tree on the prairie are what Pa brings home. Five still standing on the old land are said to be the ones he planted for Ma and the girls.

Who advised the author of By the Shores of Silver Lake to leave Mary's blindness out of the story, advice she ignored?

Rose Wilder Lane, her daughter, suggested it. Wilder kept the blindness in because it had changed life for the whole family, not only for Mary.

The town that rises beside Silver Lake in the Ingalls story, De Smet, is named after a Belgian man of which calling?

A Jesuit missionary, Father Pierre-Jean De Smet spent most of his life working among Native American peoples. The town named for him was platted in 1880, months after the Ingallses arrived.

The surviving manuscript drafts of By the Shores of Silver Lake are kept in which Missouri town where Wilder wrote?

Mansfield has the house museum that owns the drafts, which show that Wilder began the story in several different ways. A microfilm copy sits in the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.

Where is little Grace finally found after she goes missing on the prairie in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

In a buffalo wallow, a hollow left in the prairie by herds that had vanished before the family came. A local history puts the last sighting nearby only months before the Ingallses arrived.

What kind of frontier wrongdoer shoots the homesteader Mr. Hunter dead in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

A claim jumper seizes land that another settler has already filed on. Hunter comes back from working on the railroad grade to find one in possession, and is shot when he confronts him.

In the 1920s the real Silver Lake beside De Smet was ditched and put to which unglamorous use?

The town dump moved to the mostly dry lake bed in 1924 and stayed into the 1960s, to the dismay of visiting readers. The lake survives all the same, rising and falling with the rain.

What grievance brings a threatening crowd of railroad workers to Pa's store in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

A dispute over pay drives the scene, which Wilder based on a real riot in a Minnesota railroad town in June 1879. The strikers there wanted $1.50 a day instead of $1.25.

Which railway company was pushing the line west across the prairie that employs Pa in By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Chicago & North Western crews laid about a mile of track a day and crossed out of Minnesota in October 1879. The company also built the surveyors' house that sheltered the family.

Which town, where the real Ingalls family helped run a hotel, falls in the gap before By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Burr Oak is where the youngest sister, Grace, was born in 1877. Wilder left the whole episode out of the series, so the story jumps from Plum Creek straight to the move west.

Which artist, first illustrator of the Little House series, shared the 1939 drawings for By the Shores of Silver Lake?

Helen Sewell consulted photographs of the Wilder family to draw the series. For this book she shared the work with Mildred Boyle, and both sets of pictures gave way to a new edition in the 1950s.