On this day . . . January 10th

Charles Ingalls (1938 - 1902)

Charles Phillip Ingalls was born January 10^th 1836 in New York and was the second of nine children. Charles married Caroline Quiner on February 1^st 1860 and the pair had 5 children: Mary, Laura, Carrie, Freddie and Grace. Throughout his life, Charles had a strong case of “wanderlust”. He loved travelling and did not like living among crowds of people, so with his family in the early years, they traveled quite a bit moving from their original home in Wisconsin, to Indian Territory in south-eastern Kansas, back to Wisconsin, to southern Minnesota, Iowa, back to Minnesota and finally to Dakota Territory, ultimately settling in De Smet, South Dakota. He worked as a farmer and carpenter as well as an occasional hunter, tradesman and storekeeper. Charles died June 8^th, 1902 at the age of 66. 

Charles Ingalls was immortalized in his daughter's Little House on the Prairies series as "Pa". Laura Ingalls Wilder's series begins when she was a young girl living in the Big Woods of Wisconsin and tells the story of the Ingalls family, throughout their travels - their struggles and the good times.