About the work

A closer look.

You have one thing you cannot pin down. A name written on the back of a photograph. An old letter with a town on it. The family story about someone who arrived in 1901 and was never spoken of again. A headstone you photographed and never followed up. Send me that fragment and I go to the record. What you get: a short written piece, 400 to 900 words, about the person or the place. Plain voice, no filler, with every source listed so you can open it yourself. Not a family-tree dump and not a guess. Nothing owed on the first read. Tell me the fragment and I tell you what I can find before any money moves. If I cannot find solid ground under it, I say so and you owe nothing. How I work: two independent sources minimum, and I check the specific detail rather than the general story. From my own archive: Grace Wisher, an indentured servant in Mary Pickersgill's household, helped make the flag that flew at Fort McHenry. Nearly every retelling of that flag leaves her out. She is in the household account, spelled out, one line. Where the record stops, I say it stops. Seven days, one revision, delivered as PDF and plain text.