Characters / Little House on the Prairie

For characters from the TV Series, see Little House On The Prairie TV Series.

See here for characters from the anime adaptation.

The Little House Series - Main characters

Laura Ingalls Wilder

The original pioneer girl and author of the first Little House Series.

• All Girls Like Ponies: One wonders if Almanzo could have courted her at all, without his horses. Lampshaded by Ma at one point:
  "Are you sure Laura? Sometimes, I think you care more for the horses, than you do for their master."
• Big Sister Instinct: Don't bully her little sister. Just don't.
  • Inverted with Mary; Laura won't hesitate to save her big sister either.
• Brainy Brunette: Has roan brown hair and is very adept in her studies, along with having smarts for the farm and wilderness.
• Chekhov's Skill: A meta example in her ability to describe the things Mary can no longer see after she goes blind. Later, of course, she uses her descriptive skills to write the books.
• Daddy's Girl: Of all the Ingalls children, she is by far the closest to her father; they have an enduring bond and are very much the same in character, with Laura sharing his 'wandering spirit'. He nicknamed her 'Half-pint' and 'Flutterbudget'.
• Height Angst: Goes along with Pintsized Powerhouse below. Once she hits her teenage years, she often inwardly laments how little she is. It only gets worse when she goes to teach her first term of school: she's afraid her students won't mind her, because she's so small. As it turns out, she's right, though she manages to handle it.
• I Am Not Pretty: Laura's pretty dissatisfied with her appearance — she's a short, sturdy brunette who wishes she was "tall and willowy" and blonde like Nellie Oleson. By modern standards, she was quite attractive◊, but her features were not the (fairly narrow) 19th-century ideal.
• Lady of Adventure: Has inherited her father's 'itching foot'.
• Outdoorsy Gal: Prefers working in the fields to staying inside.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Laura was small even by the standards of her day, when people in general were shorter than they are now (she was barely five feet tall as an adult). Despite this, she's strong enough to rip the bolts out of a bench that had been fastened to the floor of her schoolhouse. She has no problem helping bring in the harvest or assisting Pa with construction on their various homes. On several occasions he calls her "strong as a little French horse."
• Plucky Girl: Has she ever been intimidated? Yes. Does this stop her from being her boisterous and outgoing self? No.
• Proper Lady: Has shades of this as a teen despite her tomboyish ways in how well-behaved she always is in school, and played straight as an adult, which is true to the real life Laura.
• Real Women Have Curves:
  • Averted. Laura is dissatisfied with her "dumpy" figure and thinks Nellie's tall, slim, willowy one looks better.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Mary. Laura is active and adventurous, while Mary is gentle and passive.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: Subverted: though Laura earns money working as a seamstress several times, she hates sewing.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The tomboy to Mary's girly girl.
  • Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Laura very much enjoys the beautiful dresses Ma makes, and she cares about being in fashion, even wearing the skirt hoops that annoy her because they're stylish. She's incredibly well-behaved and proper in school, careful to stay out of trouble even when she is angry at Miss Wilder. Laura also notes that her friends "knew Laura was not really a tomboy".
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Noted to have shining, vivid, and gorgeous blue, even "violet" eyes.

  Look how Laura's eyes are shining.

Almanzo Wilder

Laura's husband and the main character of Farmer Boy

• Amazon Chaser: You get the impression that he likes Laura for her spirited temper (it seems to amuse him), and he's very indulgent of her more tomboyish tendencies. While Pa never let Laura ride or drive his horses because she might get hurt, Almanzo lets her drive all of his horses and buys her a pony just for fun. He's also respectful when she tells him she doesn't want to promise to obey him as part of their marriage vows, telling her that he'd never expect her to take the vow seriously even if she did say it, but agreeing to ask the preacher to leave it out anyway.
• Big Eater: In Farmer Boy, he's capable of putting away vast amounts of food. Backfires when he tries to stuff himself in order to grow faster so that he can help break the horses; even he has trouble finishing the food he piles onto his plate and he gets scolded by his father for being wasteful.
• Cool Horse: It's his horses, a pair of matched Morgans named Prince and Lady, that first catch Laura's attention. At a Fourth of July celebration in Little Town on the Prairie, he enters them in a buggy race despite not having a buggy and having to make do with a much heavier cart than any of the other competitors are driving... and wins.
• The Determinator: On the personal note: He continued driving Laura to her teaching assignment 24 miles round trip even after she told him that she's only going with him just to spend weekends with her family. His persistence eventually won her over.
• Prior to this, he took a perilous journey through the deep snow in order to find grain for the town. It was about a 40 mile round trip and they did get caught in the blizzard upon reaching town.
  • That's nothing. He continues to maintain both of his farms despite debilitating illness and suffers a stroke for it. And it still doesn't stop him from trying, even though he was historically dependent on a cane the rest of his life (which is never mentioned in the Rose books).
• Deuteragonist: In the First Four Years.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Drives twenty-four miles round trip in forty below weather to bring Laura home for the weekend. After she's said she's not interested in him.
• Embarrassing First Name: He explains to Laura that it's a Wilder family tradition, derived from the name of a Moor ("Al-Manzoor" or something to that effect) who saved the life of one of his ancestors.
• In-Series Nickname: His brothers and sisters call him "Mannie" or "'Manzo." Laura calls him "Manly" after they're married, likely because he hates his first name.
• Nice Guy: Refuses any pay for bringing back the wheat, and declines to buy any because he has enough supplies. He's also very thoughtful toward Laura, often bringing her gifts that will either lessen her workload, like progressively less dangerous stoves, or that he just thinks she'll like, like a swift riding pony or interesting plants and flowers.
• Those Two Guys: With his brother Royal, and often with Cap Garland.
• Took a Level in Badass: The highlight of The Long Winter. Although he and his brother were comfortable and well stocked-up in their provisions to last them throughout the winter, Almanzo made it his mission to look for a stock of wheat grain to feed the town after noting Charles "Pa" Ingalls' emaciated appearance and realized that there might have been more people starving. Note that they took this mission on a simple basis of a rumour that there might have been wheat supplies somewhere.
• Vague Age: In The Long Winter he's said to be nineteen, to Laura's fourteen. In real life there was a ten year age difference between the two, which would make him 24. In later books the age difference is said to be eight years, while The First Four Years portrays their ages correctly as nineteen and twenty-nine.
  • There have been doubts about his real age as some recent research [1] showed evidence that he may have been born in 1859 instead of 1857 so there might be some "truth" that he lied about his age just to be eligible to become a homesteader.

Charles Ingalls

Laura's father, known for his itching foot that sent the Ingalls family pioneering across America.

• The Ace: Is there anything Pa can't do?
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Compared to the official illustrations, Pa in the TV series looks like a real hunk. Ironically enough, Pa in real life was boyishly handsome◊, almost fey, with a perpetual baby face that just happened to be obscured by his absolutely wild beard.
• The Determinator: Numerous times!
  • Once walked 200 miles to find work to feed his starving family.
  • When he got caught in a blizzard in On the Banks of Plum Creek and stayed in a creek bank.
  • Props to Pa for having this personality. It seems that it's a solid requirement to have this trait for anyone who wants to settle in a then-undeveloped Midwest.
• Papa Wolf: Will go to great lengths to protect his family.
• The Pollyanna: He possesses an almost unflagging sense of optimism in the face of prairie fires, conflicts with the Indians whose land he's illegally squatting on, and seemingly unending setbacks. When grasshoppers eat the wheat crop that was supposed to bring the family a fortune, it's the first time we see him come close to breaking.
• Sherlock Scan: In The Long Winter, as soon as he enters Royal's store he's immediately able to spot that the inside dimensions of the room don't match the outside dimensions and deduce where the missing space is, and figures out that said space is hiding wheat based on previously having seen a plugged knothole in the wall.
• Shipper on Deck: He was friends with Royal and Almanzo Wilder before Almanzo started formally courting Laura, and doesn't even try to convince Almanzo that he's capable of driving Laura to and from the Brewster school. He also makes sure to tell Laura that the beautiful comb and hairbrush set she's given at the church Christmas tree was probably from Almanzo, and is quick to defend Almanzo when Ma disparages the 'circus horses.'
  • To be fair, having gone through several hardships that came with braving the Western Frontier, it shouldn't be a surprising thing to set up his daughter to the most eligible bachelor in town.

Caroline Quiner Ingalls

Laura's mother and main character of the spin off series The Caroline Years about her childhood on the Western frontier.

• Brainy Brunette: Was a schoolteacher and a scholar, and utilizes her smarts to make a great variety of food and help run the farm.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Gentle, ladylike Ma shocks Laura when she remarks with unusual fierceness that Almanzo, who is courting Laura, is likely to get Laura's neck broken driving her around behind half-trained horses and she hopes he breaks his own first. Ouch.
  • Before this, in The Long Winter, Ma surprised and scared Pa and the rest of the family when she point-blank refused to let him look for the rumored wheat. This scene describes Ma looking "terrible" which might imply that she possesses a Death Glare.
• Country Mouse: In the prequel series, when she visits her aunt and uncle in the city. She grows out of it though.
• Determined Homesteader: Like her daughter, she grew up on the Western Frontier.
• Education Mama: Ma highly values education. She was a schoolteacher before she married Pa, and it's largely thanks to her efforts that Laura and Mary are consistently at the top of their class whenever they have the chance to attend school. The main driving factor that made her convince Charles to settle in Dakota was that she wanted her daughters to receive a proper education.
• Parents as People: Laura didn't sugar coat the fact that sweet, gentle Ma was also unabashedly racist when it came to Native Americans.
  • She also inadvertently encouraged a competition between Mary and Laura, telling them to ask their teenage aunt whether she likes golden or brown curls the best.
  • When the neighbor's baby mistakes Laura allowing her to play with Laura's beloved ragdoll, Charlotte, for Laura giving her the doll to keep, Ma scolds Laura for objecting to this and tells her to let baby Anna have Charlotte. Then, when Laura is miserable and grieving the loss of the doll, she again scolds for sulking. Once she realizes how much Charlotte meant to Laura, she apologizes and says she would never have made her do such a thing if she'd known...and when Laura finds Charlotte discarded in a puddle, Ma is quick to conclude that she did nothing wrong in taking her back.
  • When the girls have been prepared for and accepted the inevitability of a Christmas without Santa Claus, Ma makes a big deal of hanging up their stockings anyway, just in case he somehow comes through after all. Laura overhears what the reader recognizes as Ma brainstorming last-minute solutions for filling the stockings, but they're still empty on Christmas morning. If Mr. Edwards hadn't surprised everyone by showing up unannounced with tin cups, peppermint sticks, cakes, and pennies from Santa Claus, Pa would be right that the disappointment was only the worse for adding false hope at bedtime on Christmas Eve.
• Plucky Girl: The death of her father, moving across Wisconsin, new changes, moving around the wilderness, a long winter, starvation, and a loose log don't keep Ma down very long.
• Proper Lady: As a child and later, an adult. Laura comments on it frequently.
• Schoolmarm: Unlike her daughter, she genuinely loved teaching, and giving it up to get married and follow Charles wherever he wandered was a difficult decision.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: Subverted. Although she's an accomplished seamstress, she actually hates sewing as much as Laura.

Mary Ingalls

Laura's older sister.

• Dumb Blonde: Averted. She is as intelligent as her hair is golden.
• Literal-Minded: More in the sense that she dislikes metaphors and similes rather than being unable to understand them.

  Laura: "Sheep sorrel tastes like springtime."

  Mary: "It really tastes a little like lemon flavoring, Laura."

• Proper Lady: Always perfectly demure and well-behaved. Laura, who is more spirited, always feels inferior as a result. Subverted when she and Laura talk about how Laura feels that Mary is perfect all the time, and Mary admits she's often angry and thinks horrible thoughts.
• Regal Ringlets: Perfectly curled hair and a perfectly prim and proper personality.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Laura. Mary is pretty and ladylike, while Laura is energetic and somewhat rowdy.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Seems sweet as pie at first glance... then you realize she's spent her life hiking across the Wild West, facing Indians, wolves and bandits.
• Pride: Hinted at and finally admitted to. Mary admits to Laura that she was always proud of being the better and prettier sister and her Proper Lady persona as a kid was occasionally an act to make herself feel superior to Laura.
• The Smart Girl: In the prequel series, she's the most intelligent of her sisters and even goes to the city to further her studies.
• Stiff Upper Lip: Scarlet Fever? Check. Blindness? Check. She doesn't let any anguish show!
• Textile Work Is Feminine: Accomplished seamstress and actually likes it as well, unlike her mother and Laura.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The girly girl to Laura's tomboy.

Carrie Ingalls

Laura's little sister, known as "Baby Carrie" up until Plum Creek or so. She's too young to be Laura's playmate, but she later comes to look up to and admire Laura, while Laura appreciates her company and matter-of-fact sense.

• Cool Big Sis: Views Laura as one.
• Delicate and Sickly: The malnutrition the family faced during The Long Winter hits Carrie a lot harder than the rest of them; she was described as 'spindly' and 'delicate' beforehand, and remains sickly long after the others have recovered. She suffers frequently from what sound like migraines, and almost faints after standing too long at the blackboard in school. She doesn't appear to have fully recovered until the ending of These Happy Golden Years — almost four years later. (She lived to be seventy-five, and was known to have moved around a bit trying to find a climate to better her health.)
• Shrinking Violet: While Laura and Mary are both rather shy, they hide it better than Carrie does.

Grace Ingalls

Laura's baby sister. Grace was only eight or so when Laura married and left home, so she never featured heavily in the books. Rose describes her as 'jolly' in On the Way Home, and when she isn't acting rather spoiled, she is a lot like Laura.

• Generation Xerox: Like Laura, she was rambunctious, prone to singing, temporarily a schoolteacher, and married a farmer.
• Spoiled Brat: Downplayed. Owing mainly to the fact that she's about ten years younger than her sisters, but she's not bratty at all, truly; she just acted more of a regular excitable child than her sisters were allowed to.
• Tagalong Kid: She wants to be, until her parents put their feet down.

Royal Wilder

Almanzo's older brother. He hassles Almanzo somewhat, but they get along well. Unlike Almanzo, he has no love for the hard work involved in farming and decides to become a storekeeper. Royal moves to De Smet about the same time Almanzo and Eliza Jane do, and owns the town's feed store.

• Adventure Rebuff: When Almanzo initially proposes going to find the wheat, Royal wants to be the one to go with him, but Almanzo says one of them has to survive for their parents' sakes.
• The Caretaker: When Laura and Almanzo come down with diphtheria, he's the one who comes out from town to nurse them, figuring that he's single and there's no one he can spread it to.
• Those Two Guys: He and Almanzo sometimes come across as such, from Laura's point of view.
• We Named the Monkey "Jack": Twice. First, Almanzo names a mule "Roy" after him, probably meant to be unflattering. Later, he names a colt "Royal," saying that Royal was the crown prince of his family and that this colt would be so of the Wilders' horses— this was probably meant to be flattering.

Eliza Jane Wilder Thayer

Almanzo's bossy older sister, and later, Laura's detested school teacher, and later still, Rose's devoted old aunt.

• Composite Character: The younger Eliza Jane as presented in Farmer Boy is a combination of Almanzo's older sisters Laura Ann and Eliza Jane, the former of whom was Adapted Out due to the One-Steve Limit. The Eliza Jane who appears in Little Town is the real Eliza Jane...but the Eliza Jane in These Happy Golden Years who plans to travel west and take over Almanzo and Laura's wedding was likely Laura Ann.
• Cool Aunt: To Rose, as she's much more modern and forward thinking than Laura and Almanzo, who are generally content with things as they are. While Rose grew up on her mother's stories of homesteading with her family, E.J. homesteaded as a single woman.
• Doting Parent: To her son, Wilder Thayer, and to Rose when she lives with her during high school.
• Embarrassing First Name: Not at first, but when she was a child, she caught head lice from another girl at school, and the other children took to calling her "Lazy, lousy, Liza Jane". Possibly why she went by E.J. as an adult.
• Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher: Her attempt to teach the De Smet school are an unmitigated disaster: she goes for a sweet approach with a bunch of hard-working frontier kids (which ends exactly as well as you'd expect), listens unquestioningly to the gossip of one of her students (and doesn't bother to verify any of it), abuses Carrie to punish Laura's perceived faults while trying to stay sweet as pie to the other students... it's no wonder she only managed one term.

Alice Wilder

Almanzo's other older sister, and the sibling he's closest to. Very fond of her hair ribbons.

• Cool Big Sis: She is probably Almanzo's favorite sibling.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: She likes playing outside with her little brother and helping with the farm chores, but when Almanzo asks if she wouldn't rather be a boy, with less restrictions on behavior, she eventually tells him no.
  "Boys aren't pretty like girls are, and they can't wear hair ribbons."

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The Little House Spin Off Series - Main Characters

Rose Wilder

Laura's daughter and main character of the spin off series 'The Rose Years'.

• Brainy Brunette: Like her Mother, Grandmother, and Great-Grandmother, she is a very studious and thoughtful pupil and does become a writer in her own right.
• Child Prodigy: Combines three years of Latin study into one.
• Generation Xerox: Just like her mother, she was a successful writer and a Libertarian.
• Last of Her Kind: As she was an only child and none of her aunts had any children of her own, she was the last descendant of Charles and Caroline Ingalls in Real Life.
• The Smart Girl: As shown above, she was studious, skilled in Latin and became a successful writer in her own right.

Caroline Quiner Ingalls

For tropes applying to Laura's mother Caroline see her character in the Little House Main Characters folder.

Charlotte Tucker

Laura's grandmother and main character of the spin-off series The Charlotte Years, about her childhood in Boston.

• Brainy Brunette: Has dark, curly hair and is a very studious pupil who becomes both a top-notch dressmaker and a determined homesteader and single mom.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: If you can track down a late-'90s/early 2000s printing of the spin-off books, with an unabridged family tree, Charlotte had by far the most siblings of any of the protagonists, though many died young.
• Plucky Girl: Encouraged by her mother, and passed on to her daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughter.
• Regal Ringlets: Her curls are from her mother, but they're more controlled and girly than her boisterous mother's ever were.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: The sole Little House protaganist who enjoys sewing.

Martha Morse

Laura's great grandmother and main character of the spin off series The Martha Years about her childhood in Scotland.

• Feminine Women Can Cook: Averted. Martha is a complete Tomboy despite being an excellent cook. Ironically, it's her older sister Proper Lady Grisie who struggles in the kitchen.
• Fiery Red Head: In spades.
• Hot-Blooded: Martha's temper causes several... issues during the series. (Like scaring her governess out of a job).
• Lady of Adventure: Emigrates to America in the 1700s despite having a comfortable and wealthy life in Scotland.
• Marry for Love: Is determined to do this even as a child. In the next series, when we see her as Charlotte's mother and Happily Married to Lew, it's clear she was successful.
• Outdoorsy Gal: Is increasingly frustrated as she is forced to stay inside, instead of exploring the Scottish highlands.
• Plucky Girl: Hey, it had to start somewhere.
• Quirky Curls: Has wild curly hair that's hard to brush and a fiery personality.
• Rebellious Spirit: Martha does not appreciate being told what to do.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With older sister Grisie. See Tomboy and Girly Girl for more details.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Lew. She's the daughter of a wealthy landowner, he's the local blacksmith. Historically, it is established fact her parents disapproved of the match and it was probably a major reason they emigrated to America to get married.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Tomboy to Grisie's girly girl. Martha likes footracing and playing with the village boys. Grisie prefers to stay inside sewing.
• Uptown Girl: Again for Lew, as Martha is the daughter of a landowner and he's working class.