Laura Ingalls Wilder

The lunch pails in the photograph are in the cloakroom of a schoolhouse built in 1876 in Coralville , Iowa . The old brick schoolhouse is now a museum. When Laura and Mary first attended school in Walnut Grove , Minnesota , they shared a dinner pail. At noon all of the other children and their teacher went home for lunch, but Laura and Mary lived two and one half miles away. They ate their lunch of bread and butter sitting in the grass next to the schoolhouse. When Almanzo's sister, Eliza Jane, opened their dinner pail, Almanzo, Eliza Jane, Royal and Alice had bread-and-butter, sausage, doughnuts, apples and four delicious apple turnovers to share.