The Hoover Wilder Connection

Since I was riding along with Wendy McClure’s on her quest to find ‘Laura World’ (see yesterday’s entry), I decided to find out where Laura Ingalls Wilder’s archives really were.  There’s usually a pretty interesting story behind why an author picks a library as their archive site and Laura’s was no exception.  After a quick search, I found myself at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in Burr Oak, Iowa.  Hhmmm.  What was the connection between Laura Ingalls and Herbert Hoover?  
Was it an Iowa connection?
nope.
Hoover left Iowa as an orphan when he was 10 years old and pretty much never looked back.  And Laura only lived in Iowa for a few years as kid.

Was Hoover a fan of the Little House books?
not that he admitted.
Hoover was working on world peace, saving war orphans from starvation, and trying to figure out what the heck happened to the U.S. economy - I can’t really see him tucking into “On The Banks of Plum Creek”.

Was Laura a Hoover fan?
not that she admitted
When Hoover was elected President in 1929 Laura Ingalls Wilder was churning out chapters about her childhood to be published as “Little House in the Big Woods” in 1932.  No doubt she was recovering from the death of her sister, Mary the year before.  And then there was bread to make, a garden to plant and cows to milk.  Any downtime was probably spent sleeping, not discussing politics..

Even though their life spans almost overlapped, 1870ish to 1960ish, the Hoover-Wilder connection wasn’t a Laura connection at all - it was a link to her daughter, Rose.

Rose Wilder was her mother’s opposite.   The Hoover Library describes her as “an author, journalist, world traveler, and Libertarian spokeswoman.”  But her life story is just as much a study in breaking boundaries,  risk taking and being true to yourself.  Rose began her career as a telegrapher for Western Union.  She moved from Kansas City to Missouri and then on to California where she eventually became a newspaper reporter.  She was married briefly and unhappily to Claire Gillette Lane, during which time she had a miscarriage.

Rose worked as a publicist for the American Red Cross during WWI, traveled across Europe and even lived in Albania for a while.  You certainly can’t get much farther away from log cabins and prairie dresses than Albania.

Rose found her greatest success as a journalist and an author of magazine articles and books.  In 1920 she wrote a series of articles with Charles K. Field, the editor of Sunset magazine, about the life of Herbert Hoover.  The articles were pulled together and published as the book, The Making of Herbert Hoover.    In retrospect, it seems like they were a little premature in their analysis but Hoover was already an well-known humanitarian by 1920 (see previous post).

Herbert Hoover and Rose did not work together on the biography, in fact, Rose heard that Hoover tried to “suppress” the book because of the dialogue she included. There are letters to Rose from Hoover’s relatives from that time period but Rose never spoke with Hoover.

When Laura Ingalls Wilder died in 1957 her papers went to Rose.  When Rose died in 1968 both of their   files went to Roger MacBride, Rose’s attorney, business manager and friend.  It was Roger who donated them to the Hoover Library in 1980, 12 years after Rose’s death.  The files include 30 feet of correspondence, diaries, book drafts, and other writings “rich in personal perspective and introspection”.

In the late 1930's Rose and Hoover did become friends and enjoyed a friendship that continued for three decades.  

So, in the end, neither Rose nor Laura picked Hoover’s library as the resting place for the papers that defined their lives, that choice was made by the mysterious Roger Lea MacBride and that story is for tomorrow.