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 storyStories from old paper
Journal
Letters, documents, photographs, and the lives that surface when you follow the clues.
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 story
Let's See What's in the Box
I have a problem. I can't stop buying other people's dead relatives' papers. Storage units, estate sales, auction houses. If there's a box of old letters gathering dust somewhere, I'm...
Read the story