Laura Ingalls Wilder (February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957) was an American author who wrote the Little House series of children's books based on her childhood in a pioneer family. Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born near the village of Pepin, in the "Big Woods" of Wisconsin, to Charles Phillip Ingalls and Caroline Lake (Quiner) Ingalls. She was the second of five children; her siblings were Mary Amelia, who went blind; Caroline Celestia, called Carrie; Charles Frederick, who died when nine months old; and Grace Pearl.

Her birth site is commemorated by a period log cabin, the Little House Wayside. In Laura's early childhood, her father settled on land not yet open for homesteading in what was then Indian Territory near Independence, Kansas. After less than two years living there, the family returned to Wisconsin, moving into the same log cabin in which Laura had been born.

Within a few years, her father's restless spirit led them on various moves to a preemption claim in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, living with relatives near South Troy, Minnesota, and helping to run a hotel in Burr Oak, Iowa. After a move from Burr Oak, back to Walnut Grove where Charles Ingalls served as the town butcher and Justice of the Peace, Charles Ingalls accepted a railroad job in the spring of 1879 which led him to eastern Dakota Territory, where he was joined by the family in the fall of 1879. Over the winter of 1879-1880 Charles Ingalls landed a homestead, and called DeSmet, South Dakota home for the rest of his, Caroline and Mary's lives.

After staying the winter of 1879–1880 in the Surveyor's House, the Ingalls family watched the town of De Smet rise up from the prairie in 1880. The following winter, 1880–1881, one of the most severe on record in the Dakotas, was later described by Wilder in her book, The Long Winter. Once the family was settled in DeSmet, she attended school, made many friends, and met homesteader Almanzo Wilder (1857–1949).

This time in her life is well documented in the Little House Books.

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