Nellie Oleson Meets Laura Ingalls by Heather Williams

Nellie died on Novemin Oregon and is buried in Forest View Cemetery in Forest Grove, Oregon. There seems to be no indication that Laura ever saw Nellie Owens again after Laura’s family left Walnut Grove in 1879. Her brother Willie went blind from a firecracker explosion, attended a school for the blind, married, and also had three children. Soon, the Kirrys changed their home again by moving to Rainier, Oregon in 1899. In 1891 they went to Tillamook, Oregon, where Nellie taught school and in 1893 married Henry Francis Kirry (1869–1951).

Later in her life, around 1883, the Owens family moved to California probably via the Oregon Trail. Nellie’s parents, William (1836–1920) and Margaret (1836–1908) Owens did, as Ingalls describes, run the local mercantile in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Owens was born on August 2, 1869, two years after Laura Ingalls. Three different girls from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s childhood - Nellie Owens, Genevieve Masters and Stella Gilbert - were the basis for the fictional Nellie Oleson. She was portrayed by Alison Arngrim in the NBC television show Little House on the Prairie (1974 to 1983), where her role is much expanded. Nellie Oleson is a fictional character in the Little House series of autobiographical children’s novels written by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Nellie Oleson Meets Laura Ingalls by Heather Williams