From the people of the valley
The county histories were written by a few men in a few years. Everything else is still in the valley: a grandmother’s telling, a box of photographs, a face nobody has named in eighty years. This is where readers’ stories, unnamed photographs and questions are published, with their permission, beside what the record says.
Memories of a building, a business, a family or a day the town still talks about. Each one is marked plainly: found in the record when a document bears it out, family memory when it is a story we cannot yet check.
The first stories will appear here. Yours could be one of them.
The town · the year · Family memory or Found in the record
Your memory of a building, a business, a family or a day the town still talks about, in your own words.
From the desk: what the record shows, with its source, or what it would take to check it.
Shared by you, or kept anonymous
An old photograph with faces nobody has named, or a building nobody can place. We publish the picture, with your permission, and the valley helps put names to it. Every identification is checked against the record before we call it settled.
No photographs yet. Send one from a family album or a shoebox at an estate sale; we will publish it here with what is known.
One reader’s question a month, answered from the record: why a road has its name, who built a house, what became of a town, where an ancestor is buried. Answers show their sources, like everything else on the site. If a question needs paid research, we say so and answer what we can for free.
The first question will be answered here. Ask yours.