This collection (27 items) contains a diary, a 4-volume manuscript autobiography, 8 newspaper clippings, 2 court documents, and 15 photographs related to the life of William Flick, a manual laborer.
Between November 2, 1916, and January 30, 1917, William Flick kept a Diary detailing his travels on an Illinois canal, his hunting expeditions, and his work as a clam digger. He wrote about traveling with his brother, Albert, and working on his boat.
William Flick's Autobiography, composed in 4 spiral-bound notebooks in 1958, begins with his birth in 1872 and documents his work and movements throughout his teenage and adult years. In his narrative, which he claimed to have written "because I don't think any one [sic] around here has made a success of as many ocupations [sic] as I have," Flick reminisced about his family, jobs, and acquaintances in Illinois, Oregon, and Idaho, and shared observations about his life. The final volume of the autobiography contains Flick's reflections on some of the technological and social changes he witnessed during his lifetime.
The Documents and Newspaper Clippings series (10 items) contains a summons and a deposition from Ogle County, Illinois, related to Albert Flick, as well as 8 newspaper clippings related to William Flick and his family. The clippings document family news and deaths, including the accidental death of Flick's daughter Flossie.
Fifteen Photographs depict William Flick and his family, including several taken during Flick's time as a logger in Creswell, Oregon, and as a clam digger in Illinois, as well as one taken in front of a carpenter's shop in Chicago, Illinois. One portrait shows Marlow Flick in his Navy uniform. Four items are photographic postcards.
William Flick ("Bill") was born in Pine Creek, Illinois, on September 25, 1872, the son of Harry Flick, a carpenter, and his wife Mary. He had five siblings: Ida, Carrie, Albert, Lilly, and Charles. In 1875, the Flick family moved to Grand Detour, Illinois, where William lived until 1884, when he began working on a farm. Over the next decade, he worked on farms and in factories in Ogle County, Illinois. In 1896, William Flick moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked in a shop. He married Anna Anderson, a Swedish immigrant, on June 12, 1898, and the couple moved to Creswell, Oregon, in 1903. In Oregon, he herded cattle and worked as a general laborer. William and Anna Flick later relocated to Stuart Canyon, Idaho, where they lived in 1910 with their children Ernest (b. ca. 1905) and Flossie Marie (1908-1913). Their third child, Marlow, was born on August 8, 1910; he served in the United States Navy, dying in 1942 after a German submarine sank his ship.
During World War I, William Flick and his family lived in Wisconsin; they then moved to Oregon, Illinois, where Flick served as a deputy sheriff and briefly opened a tavern after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Anna Flick was committed to an asylum around 1943 and died in 1948. After her death, Flick married Nell Shoner of Peoria, Illinois, who died five years later. William Flick died in 1960.
