About the Carpentersville Area Memories Website

Please click on one of the options below to purchase a very reasonable membership that will provide ongoing monthly or annual support, or by

making a one time donation using our secure donation site or our GoFundMe.  Also, you will find the history of this website and a list of expenses

and budget below.  Thank you for visiting and thank you for your support !

2005 – I started with a small page on my personal website that contained a few photographs from Kings Road Elementarty, Perry Middle, and Irving Crown High.  Later I added a few Irving Crown High yearbooks from 1972, 73, 74, and 75 (years that I attended the school). The yearbooks were donated by School District 300 at no cost.  I started inviting old friends to visit the page and soon they were asking me to add more. Many people started donating content, more yearbooks, class photos, pictures,  newspaper articles, and home movie footage (videos).

2008 – the page was too big and the traffic was to great to keep this as part of my personal page and I purchased the cvillememories.com domain and started a new website.  The cost increased from $20 per month to $80 per month but there was plenty of room for more content and better control over user interface as well as the look and feel.  People continued to donate content and the site increased in size on almost a daily basis. At this point I was still only adding content related to Carpentersville, not the surrounding area, and only the schools that I attended (Kings Road Elementary, Perry Middle, and Crown High).

2010 to 2013 – I acquired all the content from the dchs.com website. That site was dedicated to retaining memories from Dundee Community High, East, and West Dundee.  The site was fairly large with almost 100 partial DCHS Yearbooks dating back as far as 1917, until the closing of the school in 1983. Due to this influx of content I again had to make a major change to the website.

2013 – I started on a major upgrade to the website. New technology, cheaper hosting costs, and tools made that a very easy decision.  The website took on a whole new look and the contents grew over 10 times what it had been. I also started expanding to more cities, schools, and adding other types of content like newspapers clippings, brochures, pamphlets, and restaurants. Fortunately part of my “real” job was also related to technology so this was a tremendous help, and I could do most of the work myself. I had to purchase a large scanner, really good internet with super fast upload speeds, a workhorse computer and a bunch of software for web development. At this point the website costs went from $80 per month to nearly $200 per month, that is when I started asking for donations to help support the costs of running the website. Many people were extremely willing and helpful, but I still remained the primary supporter and financial backer of the project.

2019 – I was adding a new yearbook to the website when I received an error message that I had gone over the limit of the number of files allowed under my hosting contract. At this point the monthly cost had already gone over $600 per month as I had increased everything possible short of buying a hosting package that included my own private server. My contract for hosting included unlimited storage, but not unlimited number of files. The file limit was 200,000 files, which at this point I had gone over. I could not add anything more to the site, so a decision had to be made.  The options were to keep the site as is for eternity, close the site completely, or purchase a host package for a dedicated server (that includes unlimited everything but is much more expensive).  I chose the last opiton and started working on a brand new WordPress site that would include memberships and a very nice, new, modern, look and feel. The new site would have many more options, possibilities, and advantages, but all coming at a cost. This took almost a year of building, testing, changing, testing again, until finally we launched the new site with a new domain in 2020.  the cvillememories.com domain still exists, it directs everyone to the new domain, carpentersville.info. The main reason for the change was that I could not keep the old site up and running while developing the new site under the same domain (at least not any way that I knew of of that would have made sense for me at the time). At this time I started referring to this as the Carpentersville Area Memories Preservation Project.

March of 2020 – the brand new WordPress website that you see today went live, and our montly costs increased to $1000+. The new site provided various membership options and limited access for certain membership levels. This was done in an effort to increase the amount of funds coming in to support the growth of the site. Overall we were very fortunate and blessed to be able to support the new site over the first 4 years. During that time we have had a few major sponsors and supporters pass away. Unfortunately that is a problem we are facing, many of our long time supporters are no longer with us. I need some of the younger website visitors to step up and help make up for the support we are now lacking.

March of 2025 – I opened much of the site to the Free Members in hopes of generating more donations. There are still many pages only available to Premium Members, and all of the High School, Junior High, Middle School, and Yearbook pages are restricted to paying members only.  The cost of the site has not fluxuated a lot since 2020 but there was a definite increase of about $100 per month in 2022-2023. The annual budget still remains at $12,000 as we continue to grow and try to keep this project alive.

Current Site Content – (I am always looking for new content, please contact me if you have anything of interest you would like to share)
In addtion to the 1000’s of images (Little League, Girl Scouts, Meadowdale Shopping Center, Restaurants, and So Much More), brochures, pamphlets, photos, audio files, newspapers, news articles, menus, and other content, there is the following;

High School Yearbooks – 144 available in High Definition PDF format
Dundee Community High – 61 (1917-1983)
Irving Crown High – 17 (1966-1983)
Barrington High – 26 (1955-1995)
St Edward High – 15 (1949-1989)
Hampshire High – 2 (1951-1957)
HD Jacobs High – 6 (1982-2001)
Dundee-Crown High – 17 (1984-2007)

Middle School Yearbooks – 62 available in High Definition PDF format
Algonquin Middle/Jr High – 17 (1963-1981)
Lakewookd Middle/Jr High – 21 (1959-1978)
J. Perry Middle – 8 (1969-1979)
Hickory Hill – 10 (1963-1982)
Dundee Middle – 6 (1958-1975)

Elementary School Memory Books – 1 available in High Definition PDF format
Oak Ridge Elementary – 1 (1957)

Class Photos – 393 class photos from all area Elementary and Middle/Jr High Schools
J. Perry Middle – 6 (1967-1969)
Hickory Hill – 28 (1962-1976)
Algonquin School – 6 (1903, 1954, and unknown years)
Carpentersville School – 18 (1934-1967)
Dundee Elementary – 3 (1962-1966)
Eastview – 11 (1959-1975)
Fairview – 51 (1959-1975)
Golfview – 50 (1961-1976)
Helm Road School – 1 (1955)
Dundee Highlands – 10 (1965-1972)
Kings Road – 40 (1960-1976)
Meadowdale – 32 (1960-1983)
Oak Ridge – 54 (1957-1980)
Parkview – 10 (1961-1975)
Sunny Hill – 85 (1958-1986)
Washington School – 1 (1960)
St Johns – 6 (1956-1969)
St Margret Mary – 1 (1965)
St Catherine – 19 (1955-1970)

Videos
93 Videos from the past – Home Movie footage and much more

Budgeting and the plan
During the year we collect the bugeted funds for the next year, in 2024 the funds collected during the year are to be used for the 2025 budget. In 2023 we collected the funds for 2024, etc.. 2021 – 2022 we were able to reach the $12000.00 goal, and in 2023 we were able to meet the goad for 2023 and 2024 as planned.  In 2024 we only collected $4711.73, that was $7288.27 short of the needed funds to cover 2025. So in 2025 we are needing to make up the funds not collected in 2024, plus the funds for the 2026 budget, or a total of $19288.27 needed to balance the budget for 2025-2026. This is why it is so important for me to get your help.

I am currently going out of pocket again this year, but hoping to make up at least some of those funds, and not go in the negative again next year.
As of 4/27/2025 we have collected $8067.32 toward the 2025 budget with $3932.68 still needed.  We also need to collect the $12,000 for 2026 by the end of this year.  Total needed as of 4/27/2025 is $15932.68, please help me reach this goal and keep the website going through 2026 and beyond.

Note: If I am running short of funds the first budget items that get cut are Administration and Advertising.  Hopefully this will help you to make a decision to get on the project team and help support the effort to save our memories for generations to come.

Thank you,

Chuck Engels
Founder
The Carpentersville Area Memories Preservation Project
Cville resident from 1961 – 1973, 1974 – 1975
Irving Crown High Class of 1975