Real and imaginary in the Little House books

Last fall, an aunt of mine gave me a couple of books; one of these was Prairie Fires: the American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser, 2017.  In it she exposes events that didn't make the final editorial cut, including the death of a baby brother, the family's time above a wild saloon in Burr Oak, Iowa, and the paralysis that overtook Almanzo Wilder while he was still quite young.  She also mentions many of the actual people the family met on their travels.  These people do not include Nellie Oleson, Mr. and Mrs. Scott, Isaiah Edwards, or Soldat du Chene.

I find the Mr. Edwards story especially interesting.  Apparently, this "wildcat from Tennesse" was based on a settler from England named Edmund Mason, whose grave is in Independence, Kansas.  But an Englishman could hardly pass himself off as an Appalachian wildcat.  Wikipedia also proposes that the character was based on a Fred Brown, a 35-year-old bachelor from Alabama who was cited in the 1870 U.S. Census as living in the same township as the Ingallses.  But Mr. Brown lived too far away to be on particularly close terms with the family.  laurasprairiehouse.com suggests that Mr. Edwards was a total fabrication.

Nellie Oleson is the biggest example of character fabrication in the series.  In fact, Laura Ingalls had run-ins with three girls who gave her a hard time in school and during courtship with Almanzo.  The little girl and boy at the Walnut Grove general store really were named Nellie and Willie, but their family name was Owens, and the striking blonde curls belonged to one Genevieve Masters, who was the real villain of Laura's school days in De Smet, South Dakota.  And the courtship rival was a girl name Stella Gilbert.

The Scotts, in Little House on the Prairie, are also only loosely based on reality.  There were two couple named Scott living in the same county as the Ingallses, but even the nearer one was a minimum of six miles away.

Le Soldat du Chene, on the other hand, seems to have been a real person.  He was an Osage chief whose name came from his having brought down several enemies from behind an oak tree.