Five Minutes of Insurance
A young English brushmaker, a twenty-cent insurance policy, a moving train, and an elaborate Victorian funeral. One black-bordered letter led to the strange, gruesome story of John Newton Howe.
Read the storyTrue stories from old paper
History, found in the margins.
I buy the letters, photographs, certificates, and scraps people leave behind. Then I follow the names and clues to find the lives inside them.
More from Rarelight
Stories from the archive
Ordinary lives leave extraordinary paper trails.
Nail After Nail
A naturalization certificate bought on eBay for $30 led me through ten censuses, two continents, and 150 years of anti-Catholic violence in America.
Read the story
The Pin No One Claimed
A condolence letter from the Phalo Club led me to ordained women ministers, Susan B. Anthony's colleagues, and the suffrage movement's forgotten alliance of progressive religion and industrial money.
Read the story
The 200 Dollar Box of Papers
How I bought the papers of Julia Anna Nenninger Balbach, a Gilded Age novelist and industrialist's wife, at an online estate auction for $200. What was in the box.
Read the storyWhy Rarelight exists
The paper is only the beginning.
Rarelight Archives began with a simple habit: buying old papers that made me wonder what happened next. A letter. A naturalization certificate. A death notice. A name in an unfamiliar hand.
I research the people behind them and write the stories I find. Eventually, many of the original documents will be available in the shop. The story comes first.
About Rarelight
Old papers wanted
Rarelight is buying
Have old papers you do not want to throw away?
I’m always looking for the next paper trail.
I buy letters, photographs, diaries, family papers, and unusual documents with a story still inside them. Tell me what you have and what you know about it.
Sell to Rarelight