Do You Remember James and Cassandra Ingalls, ‘Little House on the Prairie’s Forgotten Children?
Ask a casual viewer to name the Ingalls kids from Little House on the Prairie and they’ll probably say Mary, Laura, Carrie and maybe baby Grace and adopted son Albert. But it takes a superfan to remember James Ingalls and Cassandra Ingalls, too.
Played by Jason Bateman in his first acting role and Melissa “Missy” Francis, a popular child star at the time, the two orphans became part of the Ingalls family at the tail end of Season 7 in a heartbreaker two-part episode called “The Lost Ones.”
Who are James and Cassandra Cooper Ingalls?
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James and Cassandra Cooper are the well-behaved kids of Michigan residents Alvin (George McDaniel) and Sarah (M.E. Loree) Cooper. After their crops failed, they headed west to search for gold with Alvin’s Uncle Jed, an experienced miner.
Along the way, however, the couple’s mare unexpectedly gives birth, leading them to separate from their wagon train. They head for Walnut Grove hoping to trade the mare and her foal for a horse that can handle the rough terrain ahead. Jonathan Garvey (Merlin Olsen) makes the trade, and the Coopers are on their way to the mine fields, led by Charles (Michael Landon) and Albert (Matthew Labyorteaux), who are headed there also to deliver supplies.
For you skeptics, yes, there’s gold in Minnesota.
After a peaceful night on the trail, during which Charles and Alvin, and then Alvin and his bride talk about how happy and blessed they are, the group encounters a steep hill on the trail. Charles offers to guide both wagons down the hill, but Alvin says he can handle it. But Alvin’s wagon gives way, freeing his horses before it goes tumbling down the hill, crushing him and Sarah to death beneath it as the kids look on.
Uncle Jed (E.J. Andre) is contacted to look after the young Coopers, but it turns out that he’s older than the hills he’s mining and not equipped to raise to a 12-year-old boy and 8-year-old girl all alone. The Sleepy Eye orphanage and Hester-Sue’s blind school can’t take them in either, and Charles can’t bear to ship them off to Minnesota, so he and Caroline take them in.
After a disastrous trial run with a local couple, the kids become a permanent part of the Ingalls clan … at least for Season 8.
The show did its best to blend the kids into both the Ingalls household and Walnut Grove, relieving them of their entirely angelic nature and getting them into scraps, and almost sending them back to a suddenly-wealthy Uncle Jed at one point. But viewers, who were already growing restless with Little House on the Prairie‘s increasingly outlandish storylines, had trouble recognizing this incarnation of the Ingalls family — particularly the way Francis’ Cassandra was positioned as a substitute Laura and the Oleson’s own adopted daughter Nancy (Allison Balson) as the next generation of Nellie.
After Season 7’s bump in viewership, Little House took a tumble in the ratings. And James took a bullet in a bank robbery. The boy was saved after Charles freaks out even Rev. Alden (Dabbs Greer) and heads into the wild with James, a boatload of faith and some stuff to build an altar in the ultra-religious “He Was Only Twelve” two-parter that ended the season. It also ended the elder Ingalls’ and other regulars’ Little House run.
For its ninth season, the show was rebranded as Little House on the Prairie: A New Beginning and focused on Melissa Gilbert‘s Laura Ingalls (now Laura Ingalls Wilder) and her expanding world. Landon appeared in several Little House TV movies, then returned to series television a few years later in the wholesome Highway to Heaven.
Jason Bateman: From James Cooper to Hollywood multi-hyphenate
James Cooper Ingalls marked Jason Bateman’s first-ever TV role. The 11-year-old Salt Lake City transplant displayed talent beyond his years, and though Little House ended, Bateman’s career took off, following in the footsteps of his sister, Family Ties star Justine Bateman. He appeared in the popular series Silver Spoons, and played Valerie Harper’s son David Hogan on Valerie for 6 seasons. His movie credits through the decades include Teen Wolf Too, Necessary Roughness, Juno, Horrible Bosses and Horrible Bosses 2.
Bateman was managed by his dad and Breaking the Rules costar Kent Bateman until he turned 20. He later admitted that the pressure on him and Justine to support their family by finding new roles all the time caused him a lot of stress. To reward himself for working so much as a kid, Bateman began using alcohol and drugs as he entered his 20s. He admitted in subsequent interviews that his love of a good time cost him his status in a field of talented young actors in the ’90s, and almost cost him his marriage to wife Amanda Anka — daughter of “(You’re) Having My Baby” crooner Paul Anka — as well.
Bateman, now 56, cleaned up his act and found another star-making turn as beleaguered Michael Bluth, the only level-headed member of his formerly wealthy family, in the Emmy-winning series Arrested Development. Bateman won a Golden Globe for his work on this show, launching the second phase of his career — which also involved starring in and sometimes directing the award-magnet Netflix drama Ozark. He’ll next be seen in the Netflix limited series Black Rabbit, which costars Jude Law and premieres Sept.18.
Missy Francis: From commercials to TV news to documentary filmmaker
With her cherubic face and a fame-obsessed mother, Melissa “Missy” Francis began filming commercials before her first birthday, eventually appearing in more than 100 ads. Before she was cast as Cassandra, Francis played “Little Mindy” in an episode of Mork & Mindy and Linda Wabash in the short-lived Joe’s World, while making the “adorable little kid” rounds in a host of TV movies.
When Francis was old enough to make decisions for herself, she left Hollywood to study economics at Harvard, but recalled Landon as a wonderful on-set dad and off-screen mentor. She worked as a TV news anchor before landing plum roles on CNBC and then Fox Business Network and Fox News, while raising her three kids with husband Wray Thorn.
Francis left Fox Business Network in 2020 after she researched and spoke out against the pay disparity between its male and female stars. Fox paid Francis a $15 million settlement in the dispute.
According to her website, Francis wrote a pair of memoirs and formed her own production company, Sailfish Productions. She wrote, directed and produced the 2024 film Revelation, which sees Francis on the ground in the Gaza Strip, investigating the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas.
So, Little House fans did you love or loathe James and Cassandra Ingalls, or somewhere in between? How about that final episode? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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