Mary Amelia Ingalls- Biography
Mary Amelia Ingalls was the first child of Charles and Caroline Ingalls and was born on January 10, 1865, in Pepin, Wisconsin. Mary was a character in all of the Little House books and Mary and Laura were inseparable.
When Mary was fourteen years old, she became severely ill. Her illness, which is variously described as scarlet fever (in the books) and meningitis, resulted in a stroke which caused Mary to go blind. Laura then became Mary’s “eyes”, describing everything around them to her sister.
Read newspaper accounts of Mary’s health decline and blindness here.
In 1881, the Dakota Territory paid for Mary to attend the Iowa School for the Blind in Vinton, Iowa (know known as the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School). She graduated in 1889, and returned to De Smet, South Dakota to live with her parents.
Like many blind women of the time, Mary never married, and lived with her parents until their deaths. Mary then lived with Grace and her husband. In Keystone South Dakota, Mary died on October 17, 1928 at the home of her younger sister Carrie.
Some of Mary’s bead work, as well as her special Braille slate and bible are housed at the Mansfield Museum while many of her other possessions are housed at De Smet.
Related documents
Newspaper accounts of Mary’s health and blindness
Vinton School for the Blind Mary Ingalls Era 1877-1889
Related reading
For more on Mary, read Mary Ingalls – The College Years by Marie Tschopp
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There is also a Little House fiction book written in the style of the original Little House books about Mary’s life at college.
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