Carrie Ingalls

Carrie Ingalls Swanzey
Born Caroline Celestia Ingalls
August 3, 1870
Montgomery County, Kansas, U.S.
Died June 2, 1946 (aged 75)
Keystone, South Dakota
Resting place
De Smet Cemetery
Spouse(s) David N. Swanzey
(1912–1938, his death)

Caroline Celestia "Carrie" Ingalls Swanzey (August 3, 1870 June 2, 1946) was the third child of Charles and Caroline Ingalls, and was born in Montgomery County, Kansas. She was a younger sister of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who is known for her Little House books.

Biography

As a child, Swanzey (according to Wilder) had been small, thin and frail, and of all the Ingalls family members, Carrie seems to have suffered the most through the deprivations of the hard winter of 1880–81. Wilder remarks in a later book that Carrie "was not recovering from the hard winter as she should" (Little Town on the Prairie, chapter 12). Swanzey was not constantly ill, but she never enjoyed robust physical health during her life. She traveled to several places in her young adulthood seeking a more comfortable climate, but always returned to the harsh winter climate of South Dakota.

During her late-teen years Swanzey was a typesetter for the De Smet News and, subsequently, other newspapers throughout the state.[1] On August 1, 1912, at age 41, she married widower David N. Swanzey (1854–1938), who is best-remembered for his part in the naming of Mount Rushmore. She became stepmother to Swanzey's two children: Mary Swanzey (born in 1904, married Monroe Harris, 14 children) and Harold Swanzey (1908–1936). Harold was one of the workers who helped carve Mount Rushmore and his name can be found on the granite walls below the monument. He was later killed in a car accident. David Swanzey died in Keystone, South Dakota on April 9, 1938.

With her sister Grace's help, Carrie took care of their sister Mary after their mother's death in 1924.

Carrie was enthusiastic about Wilder's books and helped her by sharing her childhood memories. Like Grace and Laura, she suffered from diabetes. She died of complications from diabetes in Keystone on June 2, 1946, at age 75 and was buried in the De Smet Cemetery. She outlived her youngest sibling Grace (who died of diabetes) by nearly five years.

Diabetes ran in the Ingalls family and Grace and her sisters all succumbed to complications from to the disease. Laura Ingalls Wilder was the longest-lived Ingalls daughter by far, outliving Mary Ingalls by 29 years, Carrie by 11 years, and Grace Ingalls by 16 years. Laura Ingalls Wilder eventually also succumbed to diabetes at age 90 on February 10, 1957.

In the media

Carrie was portrayed in the television adaptations of Little House on the Prairie by :

References

  1. Benge, Janet and Geoff (2005). Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Storybook Life. YWAM Publishing. ISBN 1-932096-32-9.

External links