My grandparents Frank and Mae Schlick during the months of May and June in 1940 were in the middle of building their home at 27W356 Beecher. While the Schlick family was involved in building a new home, the American people in 1940 were still crawling out of the negative economic effects of the Great Depression. In Europe, World War II had begun in September of 1939 with the Nazis invasion of Poland. America would not enter the fight until December 1941 with the Japanese attack on December 7 1941 on Pearl Harbor.

The handwriting on two of the above documents belong to my Grandmother Mae Catherine (Hodous) Schlick. The yellow ledger sheet (shown in the above photo on the left) is titled “”Frank Schlick Job Time Sheet“. My grandmother tracked the names of Winfield residents working on building the house, the amount of time each worked on the house, their pay per hour (ranging from $0.85 cents to $0.60 cents per hour) and the dates they worked on the property and home (May 6, 1940 to June 22, 1940).

The names of people who worked on the new Schlick home include: John and Joe (Joseph) Armbrust, Peter Baum, Clyde Brisben, Dick (Richard) Hartigan, Chris Vogt and William McDonald. John Armbrust was my grandfather Frank Schlick’s uncle. John was married to Katherine Daleiden the daughter of Christopher Daleiden. Dick Hartigan in the future would own Hartigan’s Standard Oil Gas Station and Automobile Repair Shop. The Standard Station was located at the corner of Jewell and Church Street north of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad tracks. Peter Baum was on the volunteer fire dept, played baseball on the Winfield baseball team on the 1933 “Third Wheel Baseball League” sponsored by the Chicago, Aurora, & Elgin Interurban Railline. The Baum’s also owned a shop in town for a period of time.

On the middle sheet of paper (shown in the above photo) is a diary my Grandmother kept tracking when work was completed and on what day. In reviewing the diary grandma writes that gasoline was $0.19 per gallon! John Armbrust worked on surveying and laying out the placement of the house and the garage on the property. Grandma also records that it “rained” on Wednesday, May 8th during the laying of the piers for the garage. The men only worked from 8:00 a.n. until 11:00 a.m. on that day due to the rain and they went back to work between 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.. My grandfather noted by his nickname “Pa” hauled and loaded sand. It took seven hours to dig the basement on Monday May 6th.

The smaller receipt sheet(s) (shown in the photos above on the right) the cost of materials to build the house. John Armbrust had an account with the Bergland- Stephens Lumber Co. located in Glen Ellyn, Illinois at 462 Park Boulevard. The receipts note the Co. is “at the C.A. & E Tracks” this was the electric interurban railroad line called the Chicago, Aurora and Elgin. A rough estimate given the receipts reveal when added up list $2,200 was spent on building materials and over $638 was spent on the labor to build the home. Estimated total cost for the project was over $2,800.