From the Families
Records the Public Archive Never Kept
The documentary backbone is in place. Courthouses, cemeteries, censuses, newspapers. What I'm still looking for is the layer the public record never captures: what families saved when no one else thought it mattered.
The project covers American families whose lives crossed the late frontier era. Material is most useful about people born between roughly 1850 and 1910, typically your great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents.
Material about more recent generations (grandparents, parents, modern descendants) is generally outside the project's scope.
If your family fits this window and you carry any of the material below, I'd be glad to see it.
What we're looking for
Anything where a voice still comes through.
Oral histories
Stories you grew up hearing. Recorded interviews, written transcripts, audio cassettes, voice memos. Any quality.
Photographs
Family portraits, places, daily life. Identified or unidentified. Damaged is fine.
Written family histories
Memoirs a relative once put together. Privately printed family books. Handwritten manuscripts. Anything that tried to remember.
Letters
Personal correspondence between family members. Anything in someone's own hand.
Family Bibles & papers
Birth, marriage, and death registers in family Bibles. Old account books. Loose papers in a drawer no one has opened in fifty years.
Anything you're unsure about
If you're not sure whether something matters, it probably does. Send a description first; we'll figure it out together.
How to send
Email is best. Describe what you have in a sentence or two. There's no need to scan or upload anything before we've spoken. I read every message personally and reply.
Write to stephen@whatthegroundknows.comWhat happens to your material
Originals stay with you
I work from scans or photographs. If you'd like me to handle originals, we'll arrange that with care and they go straight back to you.
Families are credited
If your material is quoted or reproduced in the published books, the contributor and the family are named in the acknowledgements. Openly or by pseudonym, your preference.
Family wishes are honored
If there are stories you'd prefer not be made public, tell me. I won't use anything against your family's wishes, and I won't publish private material without your written permission.
Nothing is sold or transferred
Material you share goes into the project's research archive only. It is not sold, not licensed to third parties, and not redistributed.
“The records survived because nobody thought they mattered. The same is true of what families kept.”