Laura & Retirement This website is dedicated to Laura Ingalls Wilder, the original Prairie Girl. Laura inspired me to become a Teacher, Mother and Taught me the meaning of adventure and Perseverance.

Retirement looms

During much of the 1920s and 1930s, between long stints living abroad (including in her belovedadopted country of Albania), Rose lived with her parents at Rocky Ridge Farm. As her free-lance writing career flourished, Rose successfully invested in the booming. Her newfound financial freedom led her to increasingly assume responsibility for her aging parents' support, as well as providing for the college educations of several young people she "adopted" both in Albania and Mansfield. 

She encouraged her parents to scale back the farming operation, bought them their first automobile and taught them both how to drive. Rose also took over the farmhouse her parents had built and had a beautiful, modern stone cottage built for them. However, when Rose left the farm for good a few years later, Laura and Almanzo, homesick for the house they had built with their own hands, moved back to it, and lived out their respective lives there. Around 1928 Laura stopped writing for the Missouri Ruralist and resigned from her position with the Farm Loan Association. 

Hired help was installed in another new house on the property, to take care of the farm work that Almanzo, now in his 70s, could not easily manage. A comfortable and worry-free retirement seemed possible for Laura and Almanzo until the stock market crash of 1929 wiped out the family's investments (Laura and Almanzo still owned the 200 acre (800,000 m²) farm, but they had invested most of their hard-won savings with Rose's broker). 

Rose was faced with the grim prospect of selling enough of her writing in a depressed market to maintain the responsibilities she had assumed. Laura and Almanzo were faced with the fact that they were now dependent on Rose as their primary source of support.

In 1930, Laura asked her daughter's opinion about a biographical manuscript she had written about her pioneering childhood. The Great Depression, coupled with the recent deaths of her mother and her sister Mary, seem to have prompted her to preserve her memories in a "life story" called "Pioneer Girl". She had also renewed her interest in writing in the hope of generating some income. Little did either of them realize that Laura Ingalls Wilder, 63, was about to embark on an entirely new career: children's author.

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