Showerthought: Our archived meeting notes from the 1920s have a cryptic blacked-out section.

I was digitizing old board minutes and hit a page where someone heavily redacted details about a sudden site closure. This isn't normal editing; it matches whispers about a vanished research team from that era. Where do you even begin to look for answers when the paper trail is deliberately scrambled?

3 comments

3 Comments

thea7711mo ago

Check the paper stock for watermarks from 1923. I had a similar thing with railroad ledgers, and the mill code pointed to a shutdown factory... Next, pull any employee logs from that year, even if they seem unrelated. Local newspaper microfilm might have obituaries or gossip columns that hint at the incident. Don't ignore family records either, descendants sometimes keep letters that explain these things. It's a slow process, but you can piece together the story from the edges.

fiona_young1mo ago

Totally agree with thea771, church bulletins from that time can hold wild clues too.

sarah_torres61mo ago

What if the redaction IS the main clue though? Chasing side details feels like a trap. I'd study the ink and pressure marks on that exact page first.