Project Past Uncovering History, One Record at a Time

Project Past

Uncovering History, One Record at a Time

Latest Articles

Drawn in Red Ink: How Archival Maps and Municipal Records Are Quantifying the Geography of Segregation
Digital History

Drawn in Red Ink: How Archival Maps and Municipal Records Are Quantifying the Geography of Segregation

Declassified federal housing maps from the 1930s have long been recognized as evidence of institutionalized racial discrimination. Now, historians are combining those maps with city planning documents, property transaction records, and tax assessment files to produce a granular, neighborhood-level account of how deliberate policy choices engineered the wealth disparities that define American cities today. The archive, it turns out, recorded everything.
What the Ledgers Knew: Corporate Archives and the Hidden Human Cost of American Industry
Archival Research

What the Ledgers Knew: Corporate Archives and the Hidden Human Cost of American Industry

Buried in insurance claims, payroll registers, and company financial filings lie casualty figures that official accounts never disclosed. Researchers are now cross-referencing corporate archives, court dockets, and burial records to reconstruct the true scale of death and illness that powered American industrialization. What they are finding challenges the sanitized narrative written by the companies that survived.
Numbers That Never Lied: Mining 150 Years of American Business Ledgers to Expose the Hidden Economy of Labor and Inequality
Archival Research

Numbers That Never Lied: Mining 150 Years of American Business Ledgers to Expose the Hidden Economy of Labor and Inequality

For more than a century, the official story of American capitalism was written in boardroom minutes and executive biographies. But a growing movement of economic historians is turning instead to the dusty payroll books and account ledgers that businesses actually kept—and finding that the numbers tell a radically different story about who built this country and how little they were paid for doing it.
Speaking the Record Into Existence: How Community Oral History Projects Are Preserving What Official Archives Were Built to Ignore
Digital History

Speaking the Record Into Existence: How Community Oral History Projects Are Preserving What Official Archives Were Built to Ignore

Traditional institutional archives were never neutral repositories. They reflected the values, priorities, and prejudices of the governments, universities, and corporations that funded them—which meant that entire populations lived and died without leaving a trace in the official record. A new generation of community archivists and oral historians is changing that, one recorded conversation at a time.
Between the Notices: Reading the Social History of 19th-Century America Through Its Forgotten Newspaper Columns
Digital History

Between the Notices: Reading the Social History of 19th-Century America Through Its Forgotten Newspaper Columns

The front pages of nineteenth-century American newspapers recorded wars, elections, and the pronouncements of the powerful. It is the back pages — the dense columns of auction notices, labor advertisements, missing person appeals, and commercial announcements — that recorded how ordinary people actually lived, worked, and suffered. Scholars are now treating these overlooked texts as primary historical documents of the first order, and what they are finding challenges comfortable assumptions abou
Manifest Destiny, Reconsidered: How Digitized Ship Records and DNA Evidence Are Correcting a Century of Immigration Mythology
Archival Research

Manifest Destiny, Reconsidered: How Digitized Ship Records and DNA Evidence Are Correcting a Century of Immigration Mythology

For generations, American families have passed down stories of how their ancestors arrived on these shores — names, dates, and ports of entry repeated at dinner tables until they hardened into fact. Now, a convergence of newly digitized passenger manifests and consumer DNA testing is exposing how frequently those cherished narratives diverge from the documentary record, revealing not personal fabrications but systemic failures in how this nation recorded the people who built it.
Tracing the Thread: A Beginner's Roadmap to Discovering Your Family's History Through Free Government Records
Digital History

Tracing the Thread: A Beginner's Roadmap to Discovering Your Family's History Through Free Government Records

Millions of Americans carry questions about their family's past that seem just out of reach — a great-grandmother's maiden name, a grandfather's military service, a immigration record from a century ago. The good news is that an extraordinary wealth of digitized government records is freely available online, and with the right approach, even a complete beginner can begin assembling a remarkably detailed picture of their ancestors' lives.
Voices Buried in the Stacks: How Communities Are Recovering the Histories That Official Archives Left Behind
Archival Research

Voices Buried in the Stacks: How Communities Are Recovering the Histories That Official Archives Left Behind

For generations, the historical record has reflected the priorities of those who controlled it — leaving vast swaths of American experience undocumented, misfiled, or deliberately suppressed. Today, a growing coalition of scholars, community organizations, and grassroots activists is mounting a sustained effort to recover what was lost, challenging long-held assumptions about whose past is worth preserving.
From Attic to Algorithm: How Everyday Americans Are Unlocking Millions of Handwritten Historical Records
Digital History

From Attic to Algorithm: How Everyday Americans Are Unlocking Millions of Handwritten Historical Records

Across the country, volunteers armed with nothing more than a laptop and a curiosity for the past are transcribing millions of handwritten historical documents — from Civil War diaries to immigration manifests — and making them searchable for the very first time. Crowdsourced transcription initiatives led by institutions like the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian are reshaping who gets to participate in historical research. The results are accelerating discovery at a pace that traditional

Ink and Intrigue: What Presidential Private Correspondence Tells Us That History Books Never Did
Archival Research

Ink and Intrigue: What Presidential Private Correspondence Tells Us That History Books Never Did

Declassified letters, journals, and personal notes held within the National Archives are quietly rewriting what we thought we knew about America's most consequential leaders. From Lincoln's candid doubts to FDR's unguarded diplomatic exchanges, the private record often tells a strikingly different story than the official one. Archival researchers are piecing together a more complete — and more human — portrait of presidential decision-making.