I wrote an AI-assisted ABC biography for my great-grandfather Charles Auble in ABC Biography of #14 Charles Auble (1849-1916) of New Jersey, Indiana, Illinois, and California based on my genealogical research over 38 years.
I wondered what Charles Auble might have told his daughter Emily in a life memoir in 1916.
1) I requested Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 to "Please write a life memoir for Charles Auble based on the attached biography, as he might tell his daughter in early 1916."
2) The AI Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 memoir (edited for accuracy and completeness) is:
A Father's Words to His Daughter
A Memoir of Charles Auble, as He Might Have Told It to Emily
Emily, come sit with your old father a while. My side aches something fierce today, and the doctor says I should rest, but resting gives a man too much time to think. And when I think, I think about you, and about the years that brought us here—me in this chair, you nearly seventeen and grown into such a fine young woman.
I don't know how much I've ever told you about where I came from. A man gets busy with living and forgets sometimes to look back and share it. So let me tell you now, while I have the chance.
Where I Began
I was born on the last day of October in 1849, in Newark, New Jersey. Your grandfather David was a shoemaker there—had his own little shop, made a decent living with his hands the way I later made mine with a paintbrush. Your grandmother Sarah kept our house and raised us children, and there were plenty of us. I had an older brother, William, and an older sister, Fannie, and then after me came Kate, and Anna, and Cora. Six of us Auble children, all told, growing up in that house in Newark.
I don't remember so much of those very early years—what child remembers being one or two years old? But I remember being older, maybe ten or eleven, walking those Newark streets, the smell of the leather from your grandfather's shop, the sound of the city around us. Newark was a fine place to be a boy, though I didn't know any different at the time. A boy never does.
The Move West
When I was about fifteen, your grandfather decided we should move to Indiana—to Terre Haute, out in Vigo County. This was 1864, if you can believe it, right in the thick of the war between the states. I remember the day we left Newark like it was yesterday, though it's been over fifty years now. Leaving everything I'd known, saying goodbye to friends I thought I'd never see again—and I never did, not most of them.
Terre Haute was different from Newark—smaller, newer, full of its own kind of promise. Your grandfather kept at his shoemaking there, and the rest of us found our way. That's where I learned to be a painter, Emily. Not the fine art kind, mind you, though I always did have a good eye for color and line. House painting—decorating, they called it later on, when I got fancier about naming my trade. I learned to mix colors properly, to lay a clean line, to make a plain wall into something a family could be proud of.
I was young when I started that trade—maybe nineteen or twenty—and by the time the 1870 census man came round, I was already calling myself a painter by occupation. Your grandfather's family, we all stayed together in Terre Haute for years. I lived with my parents even into my thirties, if you can believe such a thing. Different times, then. A young man wasn't in such a hurry to strike out alone.
Chicago and a New Start
But eventually, Emily, a man gets restless. I watched my sisters stay near home, watched the years pass in that same house on Chestnut Street, and something in me wanted more. So sometime before 1888—I was already approaching forty by then, though I wasn't always so honest about that number, as you well know—I picked myself up and moved to Chicago.
That was a big city, my girl. Bigger than anything I'd known. I had to make my own way there, find my own lodging, prove myself in my trade all over again. I lived at different addresses over the years—on Madison Street, then Monroe Street, moving as my circumstances changed. I joined the Painters' Union there, and that brotherhood meant something to me. Still does. Those men stood by each other, helped each other find work, looked out for each other's families. That's part of why the union has always mattered so much to me, Emily. A man alone is just a man. But men together, watching out for one another—that's a kind of family too.
Meeting Your Mother
Now here's the best part of my story, and I want you to hear it proper, because your mother deserves to have this told right.
I met Georgianna Kemp—your mother, though we always called her Georgia—while I was in Chicago. She'd come down from Ontario, up in Canada, a few years before to stay with her married sister, and she was unlike anyone I'd ever known. Bright, and quick, and not the least bit impressed by an old bachelor's clumsy attempts at charm.
I was already what most folks would call too old to be courting—I won't tell you my exact age at the time, some things a man keeps to himself even with his own daughter—but I set my mind to winning her over anyway. I wrote her poems, Emily. Terrible poems, probably, though she was kind enough never to say so. I brought her flowers whenever I could afford them. I made a nuisance of myself, I expect, but eventually it worked.
We were married on the nineteenth of June, in 1898, up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Methodist ceremony, proper witnesses, the whole affair done right. And Emily, I want you to know—marrying your mother is the best thing I ever did in this life. Whatever else I've managed or failed to manage, that decision I got exactly right.
Your Arrival
And then, less than fourteen months after we married, you came along. August of 1899, in Chicago. My daughter. My only child.
I was no longer a young man when you were born, Emily—though you didn't know that at the time, and I confess I did my best to keep it that way for longer than I probably should have. But holding you those first few days, I understood something I hadn't before. A man can build things with his hands his whole life—can paint a hundred houses, decorate a hundred rooms—but nothing he builds matters as much as the family he makes. You were the finest thing I ever helped create, and I don't just mean that as a father's sentiment. I mean it as plain truth.
We lived at various places in Chicago while you were growing—on West Adams Street when you were just a baby, then later on 76th Street. Your uncle Franklin Kemp lived with us for a time too, when he was young and finding his own way, same as I once had to.
Coming to San Diego
When you were about twelve, we made the decision to come out here to San Diego. Your mother's brothers, James and Franklin, had already settled here, and I think we both wanted to be nearer to family, and perhaps I wanted a change of scenery in my later years, the way I'd wanted one when I left Terre Haute for Chicago all those years before.
This city has been good to us, Emily. The work has been steady—there's always a house that needs painting, a room that needs decorating, especially in a city growing as fast as San Diego. I set up my studio right in the basement of our house on 14th Street, and I've taken real pride in the work I've done here. When you see that sign out front—"Painting" and "Decorating"—that's not just advertising, Emily. That's fifty years of learning a trade and doing it well.
What I Want You to Know
I won't pretend to you that I've been a perfect man, Emily. I've had my faults—you're old enough now to have seen some of them yourself. I've enjoyed my drink more than I probably should have, more than was always good for your mother's peace of mind or my own health. I've been vain about my age in ways that seem foolish to me now, lying about the years to your mother when I should have simply trusted her to love me as I was. Pride is a strange thing—it makes a man do foolish things to protect an image that doesn't matter nearly as much as he thinks it does.
But I've tried to be a good husband to your mother, and a good father to you. I've tried to work hard and do honest work with my hands. I've tried to be a good brother to the men in my union, standing with them the way they've stood with me.
If I could give you anything, Emily, it would be this: work hard at whatever trade or calling you find, whether that's a trade like mine or something entirely different, as I know the world is changing faster than an old man like me can keep track of. Love the people in your life without holding back, the way I've tried to love your mother and you, even with all my faults. And don't be afraid to leave what's familiar when something in you says it's time for a new chapter—I left Newark, then Terre Haute, then Chicago, and each time it felt like losing something, but each time it also led me somewhere I needed to be. Eventually, it led me to San Diego, to this house, to you.
You're growing into such a fine young woman, Emily. Smart, and capable, and kind—kinder than your old father deserves, probably, given how much I've had to be forgiven for over the years. Whatever happens to me, whatever the future holds, I want you to know that watching you grow up has been the great privilege of my life. Better than any house I ever painted, any wall I ever decorated. You are my finest work, and I mean that with everything in me.
Take care of your mother, whatever comes. She's stronger than either of us give her credit for, I think, and she loves you more than life itself. The two of you together—well, there's nothing you can't face, as long as you have each other.
And know this, Emily: wherever I am, whatever comes next for this old painter, I'll always be proud of you. Always.
Now, help your old father up from this chair, would you? This talking has tired me out more than a full day's painting used to. But I'm glad we had this time together, my girl. Gladder than you know.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note: Charles Auble passed away on March 23, 1916, several months after suffering a fall. This imagined memoir represents one way of envisioning what he might have shared with his daughter Emily, drawing on the documented facts of his life while imagining the reflective, personal voice he might have used to pass on his story before his death. The actual conversations between Charles and Emily, if any such reflective conversations took place, are not recorded in the historical record.
3) The Video Overview of Charles Auble'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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