his homestead with the intent of planting acres of seed wheat which he had cultivated the previous summer on rented shares in Marshall, Minnesota. It was in De Smet that he first met Laura Ingalls. The Ingalls family had been one of the first settlers in the area, before the town was formally organized. They moved to the Dakota Territory from Walnut Grove, Minnesota, when Charles Ingalls took a temporary job with the railroad. Ingalls wrote of Wilder's character in The Long Winter. Along with his future wife's school chum, Ed "Cap" Garland, Wilder risked his life to save the citizens of De Smet from starvation during the long, hard winter of 1881. Wilder was 23 and Garland 16 when, in between storms of a winter of almost nonstop horrific blizzards that shook the region during the 1880–1881 winter, they went into the open prairie in search of wheat a farmer had reputedly harvested somewhere to the southwest of De Smet. The two men found the farmer and after a difficult negotiation, purchased 60 bushels of wheat. Hauling the life-saving food on sleds that continually broke through the snow into slough grass, they just made it back to De Smet before another four-day blizzard hit the area. Marriage to Laura Ingalls When Wilder was believed to be 25 years old and Ingalls was age 15, the two began courting. Wilder would drive Ingalls back and forth between De Smet and a new settlement outside town where she was teaching school and boarding. Then, when spring arrived, the couple would go for long buggy rides. Three years later, on August 25, 1885, Wilder and Ingalls were married in De Smet by the Reverend Edward Brown. They settled on Wilder's claim and began their own small farming operations. The Wilders' daughter, Rose, was born December 5, 1886. Rose Wilder later became known as the author Rose Wilder Lane, a noted political writer and philosopher. During their first years of marriage, described in The First Four Years, the Wilders were plagued by bad weather, illness, and large debts. In the spring of 1888, Wilder and his wife were both stricken with diphtheria. Although they both survived, Wilder suffered from one of the less common, late complications of the illness, neuritis. Areas of Wilder's legs were temporarily paralyzed, and after the paralysis had resolved, he needed a cane to walk. His inability to perform