Shared history.
Personal boundaries.

People and places

Living people and children are not given public profiles simply because they appear in a family tree. A relative’s participation does not authorize us to publish someone else’s private details. Deceased people’s stories also deserve care, especially where records concern living relatives.

Our interest in Mary’s home is historical. We do not question present ownership, make a property claim or invite visits onto private land. Historical maps and approximate routes are not permission to enter a property or directions to a present owner’s home.

What happens when you contact us

Email links open your own email application. Nothing is sent until you send it. Your message and attachments then reach the project founder’s mailbox at hello@mcpaddenproject.org, where they can be reviewed and answered. Please begin with a short lead—not identity documents, DNA files, children’s details or private addresses.

Messages and contributions are not published automatically. We will discuss attribution and the intended use before publishing a contributed memory or private family material. Please ask if you want a message, attribution or contribution reconsidered or removed. Copies already downloaded or shared by others may be beyond our control.

On this browser

The site stores your reading-size and motion choices locally in this browser. These are preferences, not a verified family identity. You can change them through Reading controls or remove them by clearing this site’s browser data.

Hosting and external services

This public website uses Cloudflare Workers. You do not need an account to read the stories. A separate private research pilot remains restricted to authorized reviewers.

Cloudflare may process connection and operational information to deliver and secure this website. This public reading edition does not use sign-in or authentication cookies; the separately protected private research pilot is not part of public reading. We have not added advertising or audience-tracking analytics to the story application.

Following an external source link takes you to another service with its own privacy and access terms. This site currently has no member-registration or document-upload service. Your enquiries are reviewed by people; this site does not automatically publish contributions or send AI-generated replies.

A story you can experience your way

Our accessibility target is WCAG 2.2 Level AA. We are still evaluating the site and do not claim full conformance or legal ADA compliance.

The cinematic scenes are part of the storytelling, but essential information should not depend on seeing an animation. Reading controls offer larger text and a motion pause; your device’s reduced-motion preference is used until you choose otherwise. Story text, route descriptions and source explanations remain available alongside the visuals.

Handwritten scans can still be difficult to read, and not every record has a complete transcription. Screen-reader and broader browser testing are ongoing. If a page or control blocks you, tell us about an accessibility problem or request help with a record. Include the page link and, if useful, your browser or assistive technology—not private medical information. We will discuss a useful alternative format where possible; no fixed response time is promised.

Share the story. Keep its context.

We want others to learn from this research and build on it. Sharing a public page link and its citation is a good starting point. Reproducing a photograph, record or passage is a separate question.

Three kinds of material

• Our writing and interpretation. From 8 October 2026, original project-authored story prose, research explanations and catalog descriptions are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), to the extent we control the relevant rights. You may share and adapt this writing, including commercially, with attribution. Historical facts are not exclusive to this project.
• Records, maps and outside photographs. Their own source terms apply. Public-domain material and existing open licenses retain those freedoms; permission for this website alone does not authorize every reader’s reuse.
• Family contributions and illustrations. Family permission to display and download a photograph is not automatically an unrestricted license. Keep AI-generated illustrations labeled as illustrations, not archival photographs.

Credit for our original writing

Credit the identified author where supplied and The McPadden Project. Keep supplied notices, link to the original page and the license, and indicate changes. A credit can suit your format; it must not suggest that we endorse your adaptation. For example: “From The McPadden Project, by Ed McPadden, [original page link], CC BY 4.0 [license link]. Adapted and abridged.” Use the final sentence only if you changed the text.

This license does not include archival reproductions, family portraits or document photographs, third-party maps or photographs, quoted third-party passages, contributions without explicit license consent, generated illustrations or their derivatives, logos, software or source datasets and route geometry with their own terms. Their existing rights and conditions remain separate.

Compliant users can continue using writing already released under CC BY 4.0 even if we later change how we distribute it. No reuse fee or additional permission is required for that covered writing. Books and research services can still be offered for sale; paid delivery does not take away recipients’ licensed reuse rights. The license does not grant every privacy, publicity or other right that a particular use may need.

Before reproducing a source

1. Find its Research Library entry and read the reuse note. A download button gives you a copy, not permission for every use.
2. Keep the citation, repository or creator credit, source link and any stated conditions with the copy. Explain any crop, enhancement or other change.
3. Preserve what the evidence does—and does not—show. A plausible journey, illustration or crop is not independent proof of what happened to an individual.

This edition includes reviewed reproductions. Where an original image is not included, its record description, citation and available holding-source links remain accessible. Unresolved uses remain unresolved; an attribution or “pending review” label does not clear them. Ask us about a proposed book, merchandise or other use when the source terms do not already answer your question. This guidance does not remove rights an applicable license, public-domain status or law gives you.

For researchers and AI tools

The source manifest (JSON) carries stable source IDs, citations, evidence limits, correction links and copy-specific review information. The asset inventory (JSON) connects files and derivatives to their sources and review conditions. These are metadata downloads, not image bundles.

Keep uncertainty attached to each claim. Original catalog descriptions have their text license identified separately from the underlying sources. A blank source license or date means it is unknown or not selected—not unrestricted. Machine-readable access does not create permission to redistribute restricted images, train an AI on them or access private material. There is no additional AI restriction on uses already allowed by CC BY 4.0, the source’s license or law. Preserving evidence limits is our research recommendation, not an added condition on the standard CC license.

A correction or a concern is welcome

Tell us the page or record, what concerns you and how we can contact you. You can raise a factual correction, a privacy concern, an attribution issue or a request about contributed material. We may need to clarify identity or permission before changing a record; no fixed response time is promised.

Privacy or removal concerns: privacy@mcpaddenproject.org. Reuse or attribution questions: permissions@mcpaddenproject.org.

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