I wondered if my AI Assistant Anthropic Claude could provide me with information about a specific event in an ancestor's daily life in 1889 in McCook, Nebraska. My 2nd great-grandparents Devier J. and Abigail A. (Vaux) Smith had married in 1861, and had four living children in 1889. I posted ABC Biographies for them in ABC Biography of #26 Devier James Lamphier Smith (1839-1894) of New York, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska and ABC Biography of #27 Abigail A. (Vaux) Smith (1844-1931) of New York, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and California.
I asked the AI tool Anthropic Claude to "Create a story about the letter from their daughter Della in early August 1889 requesting Abbey to come to California based on the attached biographies."
Here is the Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 Medium response:
The Letter from Della
Early August 1889 — McCook, Nebraska
The letter arrived on a Tuesday, carried up from the McCook depot by young Tommy Reid, who delivered mail along Main Street for two bits a week. Abigail “Abbey” Smith recognized Della's careful hand on the envelope even before she'd wiped the flour from her fingers to take it from him.
She sat down at the kitchen table to read it, and by the second paragraph her hand had gone to her chest. Her first child, Della (Smith) Carringer, had written from National City, near San Diego, where she and Austin resided after their honeymoon trip in 1887.
Dear Mother, Dr. Wentworth says everything progresses as it should, but I confess I am frightened, being so far from you and knowing no one here well enough to ask the things a woman ought to be able to ask her own mother. Austin is kind but he is at the mill from morning till dark, and I have not one soul to sit with me. The baby is expected near the end of August. I would not ask if I did not need you so.
Abbey read it twice, then folded it along its creases and sat looking out the window at the dry Nebraska hills for a long while before she went to find Davey.
The Conversation with Davey
She found her son at the livery stable, forking hay down from the loft for a customer's team. David Devier “Davey” Smith had his father's build and his mother's steadiness, and at twenty-six he ran the McCook livery about as well as any man in Red Willow County.
"Davey, I need to speak with you about something."
He set the fork against the loft ladder and climbed down, wiping his hands on his trousers. Something in her voice had already told him this wasn't about supper.
"Della's written," Abbey said, and handed him the letter.
Davey read it slowly, the way he did most things, and when he finished he handed it back to her without a word for a moment.
"You mean to go to her."
"I do."
"Mother, that's near two thousand miles. You'd be gone months, likely, if you're to see her through the confinement and after."
"I know the distance, Davey. I have crossed a good deal more than that in my life, one state at a time." She said it gently, not unkindly, but there was a firmness underneath it that Davey recognized from childhood — the same tone she'd used the time he wanted to quit school at twelve to work full days at the stable.
"What about Papa? He's out at the ranch most weeks now. Who tends the house?"
"The house will keep. Your father manages well enough when he's here, and Matie is right here with you if anything wants doing. It is Della who needs tending now, not this house or you two."
Davey rubbed the back of his neck, the way his father did when he was working through a thing he didn't like but knew he couldn't argue against. "You'll go alone? On the cars, all that way?"
"Women travel alone every day, Davey. I am forty-five years old, not an invalid. I will manage a railway ticket."
He almost smiled at that, in spite of himself. "I'll take you down to the depot myself and see about the connections. There's no sense you standing in some junction in Colorado not knowing which platform to find."
"Thank you, Davey." She touched his arm. "I knew you would see the sense of it, even if you don't care for the distance."
"I don't care for the distance," he admitted. "But I care less for the thought of Della alone out there with no one but her husband."
The Conversation with Matie
That afternoon Abbey came home to find her daughter Mary Ann — Matie, the family called her, though she was near twenty-three now and engaged to be married — at home shelling peas on the front step in the last of the daylight.
"Mama! Sit, there's another basket just there." Matie stayed on the step, but Abbey stayed standing, the letter still in her apron pocket where it had stayed all afternoon.
"Della's written. She's asked me to come to her, before the baby comes."
Matie's hands went still over the pea basket. "Is something wrong with her?"
"No — no, nothing of that kind. She's only frightened, being so far off with no family near her. Austin is a good husband but he cannot be a mother to her in this."
"Of course he can't." Matie set the basket aside and stood. "When would you go?"
"Soon as I can manage the arrangements. The baby's due end of August, and I'll want time to get there and settled before that, in case it comes early, the way Davey did."
Matie was quiet a moment, and Abbey could see her doing the same arithmetic David had done — the miles, the months, the empty chair at the table.
"I'll miss you something terrible," Matie said finally. "But you must go. I'd want you if it were me out there alone." She managed a small smile. "Though I'd rather have you a good deal closer than California, if I'm honest about it."
"You have your fiance and friends here, and Davey still here in the house. Della has no one."
"I know it." Matie picked the basket back up, mostly to have something to do with her hands. "Will you write to me? Tell me everything — what it's like out there, and the baby, and whether Della's truly all right?"
"Every week, I promise you that."
"And Papa? Does he know yet?"
Abbey's mouth tightened just slightly. "Not yet. I wanted to speak with you and Davey first. I'll write him at the ranch tonight, though I expect he won't be pleased."
The Letter to Devier
Devier J. “D.J.” Smith was out at the Kansas ranch (near Wano in Cheyenne County) that week, as he was most weeks now, and had been for some time — the horses and cattle wanted more looking after than a man could manage riding back and forth to town, and McCook and the ranch had settled into an arrangement that suited neither of them much but that neither had found a better answer to. Abbey wrote to him that night by lamplight, choosing her words with more care than she generally bothered to.
Dear D.J.,
Della has written asking me to come to her in San Diego before her confinement, as she has no family near and is badly frightened. I mean to go. Davey will see me to the depot and I expect to be settled with her within the fortnight, God willing the connections run smooth.
I do not know how long I will be needed there — through her lying-in certainly, and some weeks after, until she is strong enough to manage the child and the house both. I have asked Matie to take care of things here, and Davey is at the house should anything want a man's hand to it.
I know you will say it is a long way to send a woman alone, and perhaps you are right, but there is no one else to send, and I would not forgive myself if I stayed here comfortable while my daughter labored alone two thousand miles off. You have managed a good many things alone yourself these past years out at that ranch, and I expect you can manage a good many more while I am gone.
I will write you from Colorado and again when I have arrived, so you will not fret over the traveling of it.
Your wife, Abbey
D.J.'s reply came five days later, forwarded on from Wano, short in the way his letters generally were:
Abbey —
Go to her. A girl having her first ought to have her mother by her, whatever the distance. Don't fret about things here, they'll keep same as they always do. Wire when you're safe arrived so I know you didn't fall off the train someplace in the mountains.
D.J.
Abbey read it standing at the kitchen table, and something in her shoulders loosened that she hadn't quite known was tight. It was not a letter of great tenderness, but she had been married to the man for twenty-eight years and knew well enough that this was, in its way, exactly that.
She wrote a letter to Della that day, and posted it to National City.
Departure
She left McCook on a Thursday morning in the middle of August, Davey driving her to the depot in the buggy with her single trunk roped in behind. Matie had come too with a small parcel of dried apples and biscuits for the journey, pressed into Abbey's hands at the last moment as though she couldn't quite let her mother board without giving her something.
"Three days, maybe four, on the cars," Davey said, checking his pocket watch against the depot clock. "You've got your connections written down?"
"I have them, Davey. I am not likely to forget where Denver is."
He almost smiled, the same way he had in the stable. "Wire us from Denver anyhow."
"I will wire you from every town with a telegraph office between here and the Pacific Ocean if it will ease your minds," Abbey said, and kissed them both — Matie first, holding her a moment longer than was strictly necessary, and then Davey, who bore it with the slightly embarrassed patience of a grown son being kissed on a public platform.
The whistle sounded down the track. Abbey climbed the steps with her carpetbag, found her seat, and looked back once through the window at her son and daughter standing together on the McCook platform, growing smaller as the train pulled west and then south, carrying her toward a daughter she had not seen in two years and a grandchild she had not yet met, four days and two thousand miles away.
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Author's Note: This is a work of historical fiction based on real people, documented family facts and locations. The conversations and specific details are imagined, as no firsthand accounts of these discussions survive.
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The AI Google NotebookLM Video Overview of this story is in (and on my YouTube channel):
This is historical fiction based on known events in the lives of my ancestors -- it might have been this way. Devier J. and Abigail (Vaux) Smith are my 2nd great-grandparents through their daughter Della (Smith) Carringer (1862-1944), and I have significant information about this family from the available records, but I know nothing about their day-to-day lives.
As always, I am amazed at what life was like in any place over 130 years ago. This description of their family life in 1889 Nebraska is interesting and so different from our current daily activities.
After I read these types of social history summaries, I wish that I could be a time traveler for one day to visit this Smith family in 1889 Nebraska and witness their daily lives. I'm glad that the general lifestyles and occupations are known from historical records and witness accounts.
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