My Genealogy Hound

De Smet, South Dakota, Caroline "Carrie" Ingalls Swanzey, grave and tombstone

The grave and tombstone of Caroline "Carrie" Ingalls Swanzey, the third daughter of Charles and Caroline Ingalls and the sister of Laura Ingalls Wilder of the Little House book series. Carrie was born on August 3, 1870 in Montgomery County, Kansas in the prairie area east of Independence, Kansas. The Ingalls family lived in this area from 1869 to 1871 and then returned to their home near Pepin, Wisconsin. Their life in Kansas was the basis for the book, Little House On The Prairie. The Ingalls family returned to Wisconsin in 1871 when it was learned that the Indian lands that they were living on would not be opened for settlement.

Between 1871 and 1879, the Ingalls family moved from Kansas to near Pepin, Wisconsin (1871), to Walnut Grove, Minnesota (1874), to Burr Oak, Iowa (1876), back to Walnut Grove, Minnesota (1878) to De Smet, South Dakota (1879). Before she was ten years old, Carrie had lived in five states.

In 1912, at the age of 41, Carrie married David N. Swanzey, a widower with two children. Carrie had no children of her own. David Swanzey was one of the workers who helped to create the Mount Rushmore National Monument.

After her mother, Caroline, died in 1924, Carrie and her sister, Grace, became the caretakers of their blind older sister, Mary, who in turn died in 1928.

Caroline "Carrie" Ingalls Swanzey died at the age of 75 as the result of diabetes complications on June 2, 1946 at Keystone, South Dakota and is buried near her parents, Charles and Caroline Ingalls, in the De Smet Cemetery, outside De Smet, South Dakota. Also buried in this cemetery are other members of the Ingalls family including sisters Grace (Dow) and Mary Ingalls. An unnamed infant son of Laura and Almanzo Wilder is also buried here, next to Caroline, mother of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

De Smet is the county seat of Kingsbury County, South Dakota.