New here? Start with these five
Welcome. This site stands behind a book about one family — McCoys, Hatfields, Vances, and Careys — and one man at its center, Lawrence Carey of Logan, West Virginia. You don't need to know any of that to begin. Take these five stops in order, and you'll have the shape of the whole story.
1 — Meet Lawrence
Start with his face: the one portrait the family kept, wrapped in brown paper for a hundred years. Everything in the book is about the man in this picture.
2 — Hear Chapter One
The book opens with the two bloodlines that made him. Chapter One, “The Bloodline,” is here read aloud in full — press play and let it tell you.
3 — Walk the family tree
The tree is alive here: tap a name and it rebuilds around that person. Find Jennie McCoy, find Lawrence, and follow the lines down to the family of today.
4 — Brook's name in his own hand
Lawrence's eldest son Brook was spelled a half-dozen ways by clerks. On his draft card he signed himself — Easter Brooks Cary. The book follows his own hand. So can you.
5 — How corrections work here
This research gets things wrong sometimes, and when the record proves it, the correction is posted in the open — what was said, what the paper shows instead. That's the promise the whole site runs on.
After the five stops, wander where you like: the story on one line, the people index, the documents themselves — everything here is built to be followed at your own pace.