Henry and Charlotte Quiner

Henry Newton Quiner, born in 1807, married Charlotte Tucker, born May 25, 1809, on April 2, 1831. They had seven children: Martha (died in childhood), Joseph, Henry, Martha, Caroline, Eliza, and Thomas. Henry and Charlotte were Laura's maternal grandparents.

Henry was a farmer, but also traded with the nearby Wisconsin Indians. In the fall of 1844, he sailed off on Lake Michigan on a trading trip. A storm arose and sunk the schooner, and Charlotte Quiner was left a widow.

In 1849, Charlotte remarried, to a farmer named Frederick Holbrook. The couple's only child Charlotte was the Aunt Lotty of the Big Woods. When asked by Mary and Laura which color of hair she preferred, Aunt Lotty replied wisely that she liked both kinds best. Lotty later married Henry Moore and had one son.

Charlotte died in 1884 in Wisconsin, just before her granddaughter Laura married Almanzo Wilder many miles away. It is unlikely Laura ever saw her grandparents again after leaving the Big Woods at age 7.