AMUSING FAMILY CONNECTIONS A girl named Laura Ingalls was born in 1867 and grew up on the prairie. One of the first places she lived was on a hard scrabble little farm a few miles southwest of Independence Kansas. Her dad, Charles Ingalls, was a God fearing, and a hardworking man, but by 1871, the locusts, the drought, and the grass fires drove him out. In 1869 a family known locally as the Benders moved into the area and set up a road house along the Osage Trace about as far northeast of Independence as the Ingalls family lived southwest of Independence. The distance between was about 25 miles. The Benders supplanted their meager income by murdering and robbing travelers at their roadhouse, and then burying the bodies in their garden. By 1873 they had a
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