Laura Ingalls Wilder, who became one of the most famous children's writers in American history, was born this day near Pepin in rural Wisconsin. She lived an incident filled childhood and young married life as her pioneer family moved from Wisconsin to Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, and South Dakota before she settled with her husband in Mansfield, Missouri. At the encouragement of her daughter, a professional writer, she began her career in autobiographical fiction at age sixty-five and her Little House House on the Prairie series made her world-famous. She died on February 10,1957, having just turned ninety. (By John Osborne)