On Tuesday, June 19, I visited Pepin, Wisconsin. Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in a log cabin about seven miles north of Pepin, at the site of what is now the Little House Wayside Cabin, a replica house and historical marker. The Wayside Cabin is built to correspond to how the cabin is described in Little House in the Big Woods. There is also a Little House on the Prairie Museum in town.
Pepin sits on the shore of Lake Pepin, a widening of the Mississippi River. Across the river is Minnesota. The town was founded in 1855 as a steamboat landing. The Ingalls family bought the land and built the cabin in 1863. Mary Amelia Ingalls was born in the cabin in 1865, and Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born there in 1867. They left for Kansas in 1868, but returned in 1870 to live there several more years. They moved to Walnut Grove, Minnesota in 1874. Their experiences in Wisconsin are collapsed into the one year described in Little House in the Big Woods. They are also described in Laura’s memoir Pioneer Girl.
The Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Pepin has several rooms full of old tools, clothes, kitchen technology, and artifacts from World War I. It does have one quilt that belonged to Laura Ingalls Wilder and one that belonged either to Laura or her daughter Rose Wilder Lane. It also has some artifacts from the Barry Corner School that Laura and Mary attended with their cousins, including an attendance sheet with their names on it. The museum has a room with a replica covered wagon, a fishing boat, a steamboat that children can play in, and other toys for the kids (sunbonnets, etc.) In the final room, there is a replica one-room schoolhouse with a looping video about Pepin with information drawn from the book The Village of Pepin in the Time of Laura Ingalls Wilder, which I bought at the gift shop. Some of the houses built before the 1860s still stand.
None of the sources about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life mention that the family attended church services when they lived in Wisconsin. Most biographers suggest that the seven miles to Pepin was too far for a weekly journey. I believe that there was a Methodist Church in Pepin at the time, but not a Congregational Church. The family later attended Congregational Churches in Walnut Grove, Burr Oak, and De Smet.
I did discover that there are two country churches not far from the Wayside Cabin. On this trip, I was able to drive to them: the Lund Mission Covenant Church and the Sabylund Lutheran Church. One can actually see the steeple of the Lutheran church from the parking area at the Wayside Cabin. The website for the Lund Mission Covenant Church says that it was founded in 1874, which was the same year that the Ingalls family left. The Sabylund Lutheran Church apparently was founded in 1856, so it would have been in existence when the Ingalls family were living in Wisconsin, although I don’t yet know if it would have been in its current location. If it was, it would have been in walking distance from the Ingalls’ cabin. The distance would certainly be less than the mile and a half that the family walked to church in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. The current Sabylund Lutheran Church building is a large brick structure that was built in 1893, or at least that’s what the cornerstone says. I have reached out to both churches via phone and email but have not yet been able to make a connection. I do have a suspicion that the Lutheran Church may have initially conducted services in German or perhaps Swedish or Norwegian. The Mission Covenant Church may have held services in Swedish.
I also walked along the shore of Lake Pepin, since that is mentioned in Big Woods. There is a public beach that is both sandy and pebbly; Big Woods tells the story of Laura picking up pebbles on the beach. The beach also has a lot of shells.
My next stop was Walnut Grove. Thanks for reading.
Links:
Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Pepin
The Faith of Laura Ingalls Wilder 
I’ve been a lifelong Laura Ingalls fan and amateur scholar (I suppose I could call myself that). Living in NY, the only home site I’ve been able to visit is Malone and that was 20 years ago. Laura Ingalls inspired my interest in history and I majored in history in college. I appreciate this site though I must confess I have indifferent regard for traditional Christian religion that would border somewhere between agnosticism and atheism. That being written, I was raised in a Protestant church, so I am well acquainted with Christianity and especially its historical development in the United States; among my ancestors were “Mayflower” passengers William Brewster and Stephen Hopkins, so I have that in common with the Ingalls.
In answer to the question as to whether the Ingalls attended a Lutheran church in the woods of Wisconsin when they were practicing Congregationalists, it is likely no. Though today the various creeds and tenets of denominations are somewhat ignored and they are lumped together as “Christian,” until recently, each was much more distinct and separate. As recently as the 1950s, my great-aunt, who was Presbyterian and my grandmother, who was Baptist, had to receive special dispensation from the Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia and their ministers in order to serve as bridesmaids in the wedding of a Catholic friend of theirs.
In the late-19th century, there was great division in American politics and culture between Republicans who were primarily English Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists, that supported prohibition (as Charles Ingalls did) and anti-slavery, while Democrats were predominately German Lutherans, Irish Catholics, and Episcopalians, who opposed government involvement in prohibition and supported the Union. One of the keys to Democrat Grover Cleveland winning the 1884 election was a Republican who blamed the Democrats for “Rum, Romanism and rebellion,” which was supposed to mean 1. No Prohibition of alcohol 2. Catholicism (which Republicans and Protestants were afraid of) and 3. Remembering the Copperhead Democrats wanted to sue for peace with the Confederacy.
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