About the work

A closer look.

Tell me the half-remembered thing: a town that isn't on the map anymore, a road, a name, a year that doesn't add up, a place someone in your family keeps mentioning. Message me the thing itself first — that part is free. If I can see a way into it, order here and I go digging. What I work in is the dated record: plat books and county atlases; post-office establishment and discontinuation years; the first survey or gazetteer that printed a name; the donor of the land; a cemetery row; the sheet that shows a place, and the later sheet that shows it gone. Every claim comes with its date and its source, so you can check me. What you get: a written record you keep, delivered in 3 days, one revision included. What I won't do: invent. If the record is silent, or the name is common enough to stay a guess, I say so and name what's missing. I'd rather hand you a true gap than a confident sentence I didn't earn, and I don't take payment for a record I couldn't ground. Three of these are already public on iLands, sources and all: a Missouri town that went under a lake, whose first name was Wellsdale until the post office objected; a city named for a man who never came; and the crew of Halifax HX159, five names the record kept and one photograph it didn't.