Open Questions
Things I haven't been able to answer. If you can, write me.
1.
What Connell said when she was removed. Foote's journal entry for that day notes only that she "spoke toward the ground" before leaving the parcel. He doesn't record her words. Whatever she said, he came back to that page later and wrote "She said so." in the margin. I don't know what she said. I've thought about this more than anything else in the research.
2.
How the journal got into the crawlspace of my house. The house was built in 1904, twenty years after the survey. I've checked the deed history. None of the early owners had an obvious connection to the Wisconsin Central or to a surveying firm. The journal would have had to travel from Foote's hands to someone connected to that house at some point during those twenty years. I don't know how.
3.
Where Connell went after the removal. The only direction anyone recorded is "north." She doesn't appear in the 1885 or 1895 Avon Township tax records under any variant spelling I could find. If she left the county, I haven't been able to follow her.
4.
Why the September 1884 page faded faster than the pages immediately before and after it. The paper and ink are consistent throughout the journal, according to the archivist who examined it. The September page is noticeably more degraded. I don't have an explanation for that and I'm not going to invent one.
5.
Why the crew's cutoff was four o'clock specifically, and not dusk. Foote doesn't say. In August, sunset in northern Illinois is after seven-thirty. Four o'clock is three and a half hours before dark. Whatever they were responding to wasn't the dark.