I wrote an AI-assisted ABC biography for my great-grandmother Abbie Ardelle "Della" (Smith) Carringer in ABC Biography of #13 Abbey Ardelle "Della" (Smith) Carringer (1862-1944) of Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and California based on my genealogical research over 38 years.
I wondered what Della (Smith) Carringer might have told her granddaughter Betty in a life memoir in late 1943.
I requested Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 to "Please write a life memoir for Della (Smith) Carringer based on the attached biography, as she might tell her granddaughter Betty in late 1943."
The AI Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 memoir (edited for accuracy and completeness) is:
Della's Story: A Grandmother's Memoir to Betty (Late 1943, San Diego)
Della Carringer sits in her front room at 2115 30th Street, in the home she and Austin built decades ago. She is 81 years old, her husband Austin nearby, as she speaks to her granddaughter Betty Carringer, gathering her memories to pass down.
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Come sit by me, Betty. Pull that chair close, dear — my eyes aren't what they used to be, but I still want to see your face while I tell you these things. I'm an old woman now, eighty-one years old, and I find myself thinking more and more about where I came from and how I got here to this house, to this life, to you and to little Randy asleep in the other room.
My Beginning
I was born on the 11th of April, 1862, in a place called Rolling Prairie, up in Dodge County, Wisconsin. The war between the states was raging then, though I was too small to know anything of it. My father was Devier James Lamphier Smith — everyone called him D.J. — and my mother was Abigail Vaux, though we all called her Abbie.
We didn't stay put in Wisconsin. Your great-grandfather Devier had ambition in him, always looking for the next opportunity. By the time I was six or seven, we'd moved to Iowa — Benton township, in Taylor County. I remember it a little, Betty, though memories from so young are more like feelings than pictures. I remember my brother David being born, and then my sister Mary Ann — we called her Matie.
Kansas Years
When I was about thirteen, we moved again, this time to Kansas — first to Lincoln township near Concordia, in Cloud County. Papa ran a livery stable there. Oh, the smell of that place — hay and horses and leather. I spent hours there as a girl, watching Papa work with the customers, learning how a business operates, how you keep your word and treat people fair.
Your great-grandmother Abbie was a milliner — she made hats, beautiful things with ribbons and feathers. I watched her hands work that fabric into something lovely, and I think that's where I got my own love of making things beautiful. She had her own money from that trade, you know. Not every woman did in those days.
Papa moved us again — always looking for something better — to Clyde township, then to McCook, Nebraska for a spell, and we had a little summer place in Wano, out in Cheyenne County, Kansas, hard against the Colorado line. That's where everything changed for me.
Meeting Your Grandfather
I was a young woman by then, teaching music — piano mostly — to bring in a little money of my own. And there was a young man in town, a carpenter by trade, named Henry Austin Carringer. Everyone called him Austin. He'd come out from Pennsylvania to Colorado, and owned the lot next to our lot in Wano.
Now, Betty, I'll tell you something — Wano wasn't much of a town, but we made our own fun. There was a little playhouse, and Austin and I found ourselves in the same theatrical productions. We performed together — "Lady Audley's Secret," "The Dairyman's Daughter," oh, several plays. I kept a scrapbook of all those old playbills and notices. There's something about performing together, pretending to be other people, that lets you see someone's true heart. I saw Austin's kindness, his steadiness, and I fell in love with him.
We courted for three years. Can you imagine, waiting three years? But we were building something — I had my own land, you know, two parcels I'd received from the government, and Papa had land, and Austin had land. We were saving, planning.
On the 11th of September, 1887, Reverend Emanuel Richards married us in the Congregational Church in Wano. I was twenty-five years old.
Coming to San Diego
Here's the part I want you to remember most, Betty. A month after our wedding, Austin and I sold our Kansas land and got on a train headed west. We came to San Diego with twenty dollars in our pockets. Twenty dollars! That was all we had to start our whole life together.
But we were young, and we were willing to work. Austin was a fine carpenter, and there was building going on everywhere in this growing city. I found ways to earn too — teaching music, teaching art for a time. We were partners in everything, your grandfather and I.
Sorrow and Joy
Our first child came in August of 1889 — a fine, healthy boy we named Devier David, after both our fathers. Nine pounds, the newspaper said, "a bright faced boy." We were so happy, Betty.
But God had a hard lesson for us. Little Devier died the next spring, not even a year old. I cannot describe to you the grief of that time. Austin took it very hard — he turned away from his faith after that, and never quite came back to it the way he'd been before. I held onto mine, though it was tested sorely.
When your father, Lyle, was born in November of 1891, we were overjoyed but also frightened — frightened to love too much, to hope too much. But he thrived, and he became our whole world.
Building Our Life
Austin and I worked hard, Betty. We bought property — lots on 30th Street and Watkins Avenue, what they call Hawthorn Street now. Austin built us a fine two-story house there with his own two hands. I managed the money, bought and sold land when the opportunity was right, kept the books straight. I suppose I always had a head for business, even though it wasn't common for a woman to handle such things.
We raised chickens, grew our own fruit and vegetables — everything that would grow in this wonderful California climate. I designed some of our furniture, and Austin built it. We built a life together, piece by piece, the same way we'd built that house.
My mother, your great-grandmother Abbie, came to live with us after my father passed in 1894. She was with us for years — helped raise your father, sat with us through good times and hard times, until she left us in 1931. I was glad to have her near.
Your Father's Happiness
The greatest joy of my later years, Betty, was watching your father find his own love — Emily Auble, such a lovely girl. And then you came along, and I became a grandmother. And now little Randy, my great-grandson.
I want you to know, Betty, that family is everything. Not the money, not the property, though the Lord knows we worked hard enough for what we have. It's the people. It's you, sitting here with me now.
Our Golden Years
Your grandfather and I celebrated fifty years of marriage back in 1937 — the newspaper even wrote about us, called it "Honeymoon Trip to S.D. Extends Half a Century." Fifty years, Betty! I told that reporter that we'd worked hard as partners and always tried to be kind and helpful to others. I still believe that's the best religion there is — to work hard and be kind.
We've lived in this same spot for over fifty-five years now. This corner of San Diego has watched us grow old, has watched our son grow up and marry and give us you, has watched the city itself grow from a dusty little town into what it is today.
What I Want You to Remember
Betty, my dear girl, I'm eighty-one years old now, and I know I won't be here forever. I want you to remember that your family came from hardworking, resourceful people. Your great-great-grandparents moved across half a country looking for opportunity. Your grandfather and I arrived here with almost nothing and built a good life through partnership and perseverance.
I want you to remember the value of standing on your own two feet — I always kept my own hand in business, always contributed, never just sat idle. I want you to remember to make room for beauty in your life too — music, art, flowers, whatever brings joy — because a life of only work and worry isn't a life fully lived.
And I want you to remember that we are of a resilient stock, Betty. Frontier stock. Whatever comes your way — and this war we're in now worries me terribly, thinking of all the young men fighting — you come from people who faced hardship and kept going, kept building, kept loving each other through it all.
Take care of your mother and father when I'm gone. Take care of Fred, and that sweet little Randy. And remember your old grandmother, sitting here in this house that Austin built, telling you these stories on a December evening in 1943, so many years and so many miles from where I started in Wisconsin.
Della reaches for Betty's hand, her weathered fingers, still strong despite her years, closing around her granddaughter's.
That's my story, dear girl. Now it's yours to carry forward too.
The Video Overview of Della (Smith) Carringer's life memoir, created by the Google NotebookLM AI tool, is below and on my YouTube channel: ]
Links to my blog posts about using Artificial Intelligence are on my Randy's AI and Genealogy page. Links to AI information and articles about Artificial Intelligence in Genealogy by other genealogists are on my AI and Genealogy Compendium page.
Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver
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