The autobiography of Johann Konrad Daehler, my great-great-great-great-grandfather, who came from Germany as a pioneer to settle northwestern Illinois in 1855.
"He Built Well" is the autobiography of Johann Konrad Daehler, written in 1882 to document his life for his children and grandchildren. The book begins with his birth in Freienseen, Germany, in 1811 and details his life in the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt during the early 19th century. He recounts his childhood, his rigorous apprenticeship and career as a master carpenter, his marriage, and the growth of his family. The narrative provides a firsthand account of his decision to leave his homeland, the transatlantic voyage to America in 1855, and his experiences establishing a new life as a German pioneer settler in Carroll County, Illinois.
More than a decade ago, I found a printed manuscript on a shelf at my parents' house. On the faded blue cover it read "He Built Well". Curious, I opened to the first page and there was written in block letters a note from my grandfather that read:
Nov 23rd, 1991
To Christopher:
The genealogy is a history of the Johann Daehler family who settled as pioneers in northwestern Illinois in 1855.
My grandmother (who I don't remember, as she died 8 months after I was born) was a grand-daughter of the narrative writer (Johann Jacob Daehler). My grandmother Elisa Wilhelmina Daehler married my father's father, August Geldmacher, who I remember well as my only living grand-parent. Page 88 mentions our family. You may want to fill in some date for your family.
Love, Dad
Naturally, this was intriguing. I borrowed the manuscript from my parents with the intention of reading and creating an electronic copy of it, but it eventually lay forgotten under a pile of papers. When we moved recently, I found it again and decided it was time to do the project I had been planning on. This is the result.
I've taken the manuscript, scanned it, OCR'd it, and laid it out as a book. The final product is what you see here: a version of "He Built Well" that can be read online, downloaded as a PDF, or loaded onto an e-book reader.
To format the book I used AsciiDoc, a really flexible text-based format similar to Markdown but way more powerful. AsciiDoc has a companion tool called AsciiDoctor that lets you style and package up the text in a variety of formats. Working with AsciiDoc and AsciiDoctor is a breeze, and using it I was able to put together what I think is a pretty good representation of this book.
This e-book is an open source project, created with the goal of sharing knowledge and inspiring others. The entire source code, including the book content and this website, is available on GitHub. I think it forms a pretty good template for use in any publishing project.