Genealogy Jottings

As a child, I loved reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s famous Little House series. Now I have discovered that my own family had some of the same experiences hers did. Wilder’s book Little House On the Prairie is set in southeastern Kansas, and Laura’s younger sister Carrie Wilder was born near Independence in 1870. I have learned from the census that my Reed family resided not far away from them near Erie, Kansas at the same time. My great-aunt Anna Reed McDavitt was born there, also in 1870. The Reeds left the area soon after, as did the Ingalls family. Perhaps these moves had something to do with uncertain titles to the land. The Osage tribe had just ceded much of the territory and were relocating to Oklahoma. Settlers were pouring in and staking tenuous preemptive claims. I now need to take a look at the Kansas land records to see if the Reed family appears there.

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