Oh, that Nellie Oleson!

Ask any "Little House" fan to name their least favorite character, and the answer will likely be Nellie Oleson. Nellie Oleson was a fictional character based on three real-life girls. This week, I'll be posting about each of those three girls and their relationships to Laura. 

The first inspiration for the Nellie Oleson character was Nellie Owens. From the Wikipedia article: 

"The girl named Nellie Owens was about the same age as Laura and had a younger brother named Willie, just as the character of Nellie Oleson did in the books. Her parents, William and Margaret Owens did, as Laura describes, run the local mercantile in Walnut Grove. Nellie Owens is the basis for Nellie Oleson in On the Banks of Plum Creek. Later in her life, Owens moved to California and then on to Oregon, where she married Henry Kirry and had three children, Zola, Lloyd, and Leslie. Her brother Willie went blind from a firecracker explosion, attended a school for the blind, married, and also had three children. There seems to be no indication that Laura ever saw Nellie Owens again after Laura's family left Walnut Grove in 1879." 

The photo to the left is, of course, Nellie Owens.

On Wednesday, we'll meet Laura Ingalls Wilder's biggest childhood rival!

Thanks for reading LHCO! Check out my Pinterest page, where I pin things from this blog and things from my "real life."
Elizabeth