Karen Grassle as Caroline Ingalls with a History "Caroline Ingalls as played Karen Grassle was a wonderful mother and wife in Little House on the Prairie" Karen Grassle, born a beautiful miracle baby on the 25 of February 1944. She was an outgoing girl grown up and when she graduated from high school in 1960 she was VP (vice president) of her class. She went on to go through the University of California-Berkeley majoring in English. Later on she began taking theater courses, and must have taken a liking to it because London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art gave her a scholarship while she was attending an acting workshop in San Francisco which she went on to become head of the Academy’s voice department. She first appeared on the scene in New York after borrowing a dollar from a friend to get to the audition. Showing ambition she changed her name to Gabriel Tree which was the name she gave the producers of The Little House on the Prairie.  Michael Landon convinced her to change her name back to Karen Grassle. Which is very interesting considering that Michael Landon was a name that Eugene Maurice Orowitz picked out of a Los Angeles phone book!  Maybe her reason for using a stage name were to block the producers of Little House on The Prairie from being able to research her entire life history, that way they would make their decision for her acting skill and not what schools or accusations she may have had. Either way we all know and love Karen Grassle as the woman who was chosen above the forty eight other women who tried out for the Caroline Ingalls character. After nine successful seasons of Little House on The Prairie, she went back to what she loved, acting and touring the United States playing in various theaters in a variety of rolls. She settled in Louisville, Kentucky and co-founded Santa Fe’s Resource Theater. Look up ambitious and you'll see a picture of Karen Grassle :)