I have been having the best time with the new full text search engine that Familysearch is testing. Using Artificial Intelligence, the search engine ‘reads’ handwritten text in the document categories they’ve made available: probate and deeds. This is so much better than an index because the tool identifies all the names in a document, making it possible to discover a mention of a relative in a place no one would ever think to look. In this case in an annual probate administration report for someone else unrelated to my family.
In the October term of 1860 the record was made in the Woodford County, Illinois Probate records, 1846-1863 on page 329 of an accounting by the guardian of Aurelius Edgar Felter, minor heir of deceased Jacob Felter. The guardian, John C. Harvey, asked for and presumably got permission to be credited for building a house, most likely to generate additional rental income, on a farm owned by the orphan Aurelius Edgar Felter.
For context, Woodford County is about 130 miles southwest of Chicago. The lumber most likely would have been ordered by a dealer and brought to Secor, Illinois by rail. Secor, like so many small rural towns in America, owed their existence to the presence of the railroad. The orphan, Aurelius Felter, was aged 3 in the 1860 census for Greene Township, Woodford Co, IL and living in the household of William A. Jennings. On that same census page was the household of Stephen Cummins, who provided lodging for the house carpenter.
C H Slemmer is my great-great-grandfather on my mother’s paternal side. Here he is in the 1860 Census living as a boarder in Secor, Il, age 23, carpenter, born in Pennsylvania.
Greene Township was directly north of Palestine Township, where Secor is located, a distance of a few miles. Still, Charles was given board to live near the property where the house was being built. The obvious questions like was he a contractor who hired sub-contractors, or how long did it take come to mind. The real question for me is this: was this the reason Charles H. Slemmer moved to Secor, Illinois? I knew he was a carpenter, but he married the daughter of a furniture maker. I always thought that was the kind of carpentry he practiced. It never occurred to me that he built houses. For a fast-growing small town, someone who knew how to build houses would be far more useful than someone who could turn furniture legs on a lathe.
And why Secor? Was he in Chicago and get hired to accompany the lumber with the promise of work? Did he respond to an ad in a Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania newspaper? Did he have a few bucks in his pocket and he wanted to see how far west he could afford to go? It wasn’t love because his wife-to-be was only eleven-years-old in 1860. His five brothers went west, too, but only as far as Ohio and Indiana, so it wasn’t family. Whatever the reason, he liked what he saw because in 1866 he married the nubile Miss Caroline Haussler, settled down, had a son, and he died in Secor in 1903. In the 1870 census Charles’ real property was valued at $3,500. Thanks to Familysearch’s new AI tech, I can make an educated guess that Charles built the house where they were living.
The Lazy Genealogist 