Charles Ingalls

Charles Phillip Ingalls (; January 10, 1836June 8, 1902) was an American pioneer, farmer, government official, musician, and carpenter who was the father of Laura Ingalls Wilder, known for her Little House series of books. He is depicted as the character "Pa" in the books and the television series. Early life and family Charles Ingalls was born in Cuba, New York, the third of nine children of Lansford Whiting and Laura Louise (née Colby) Ingalls. Ingalls' parents appear as "Grandpa" and "Grandma" in the Laura Ingalls Wilder book Little House in the Big Woods. Ingalls' father was born in Dunham, Missisquoi County, Lower Canada (now Dunham, Quebec, Canada), a descendant of Henry Ingalls (1627–1714, possibly as late as 1718) who was born in Skirbeck, Lincolnshire, England, and settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His mother was born in Vermont and was a descendant of Edmund Rice, an early immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony. Ingalls' paternal grandmother was Margaret Delano, a descendant of Mayflower passenger Richard Warren as well as from the Delano family of New York and ancestors of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In the 1840s, when Ingalls was a young boy, his family moved from New York to the tallgrass prairie of Campton Township, just west of Elgin, Illinois.