Introduction

The Possible Story of Thomas Ewart

Twenty years ago I found myself living in Washington, DC, disengaged with my career and isolated in my relationship. I had a lot of time on my hands. One afternoon, on a visit home to California, my grandmother passed me a box of family photos dating from the 1850s to the 1940s. She asked me to make sense of them including tying them back to our family tree. Researching each relative was a tedious affair but filled my time and started a years long fasciation with my family history, collecting and cataloguing every detail I could gather.

Among the many names and faces however, one grandfather stood out from the rest. His name was Thomas Ewart. As I collected his family photos and letters a story began to unfold. It was a 19th century story of business, religion and attempted murder in Ohio. No matter how many trips I took to the archives, newspaper clips I gathered or details I tried to discern from letters he wrote, the truth of the story could not be made clear.

Frustrated after years of research in my attempt to understand what really happened, I was explaining the facts of the story as I understood them to a friend over brunch one day. She wondered why I couldn’t just tell the story as I imagined it, marrying my love for writing and passion for family history. That very same day I started to write about Thomas and his family, weaving the primary facts of the story with what I imagined could have happened.

I’ve worked on the story off and on for many years including workshopping many chapters at Drexel University’s Story Lab. I would like to use Substack to share a few chapters a month for the enjoyment (and likely feedback) of my friends, family and anyone else who has an interest in historical fiction.