Draft · open to revision

The Reverence & Evidence Charter

This project handles the names of real people who are buried beneath real ground. These are the rules it holds itself to. They are not bureaucratic overhead; they are part of the work.

1. 01

   We reconstruct lives; we do not simulate people.

   No generated faces. No generated voices. We never put words in the mouths of the dead, never animate them, never fill the gaps in a life with plausible fiction. A face appears only when a real photograph exists, with its source named.

2. 02

   Anything that would feel wrong at the graveside is out.

   This single test answers most questions before they are asked. No gamification, no badges, no "scan to unlock," no sensationalizing an unusual death, no spectacle of any kind. If you would not do it standing at the stone, it does not belong here.

3. 03

   Every claim is sourced; every uncertainty is shown.

   Where records conflict, we show the conflict rather than quietly choosing. "Unknown" is an honest and frequent answer. A life cannot be published here without at least one cited source, the website is built so that it literally will not compile otherwise.

4. 04

   AI's role is bounded.

   Artificial tools may locate, transcribe, correlate, organize, and help draft. They may not invent, impersonate, or decide what is true. The restraint is the point: it is what makes the use of these tools credible at a grave.

5. 05

   The person in the grave is the protagonist.

   New tools are the reason this work is newly possible, but they are not the subject and not the brand. The subject is a schoolteacher, a mother, a carpenter, a soldier, a particular person who lived in this town.

6. 06

   Preservation appeals state only what is true.

   When a marker is failing, we say who the person was, describe the actual condition of the stone, and name the professionally appropriate conservation work, never an invented figure, never manufactured urgency.

How a life is researched

Each life is built from the public record: the gravestone itself, the published 1893 History of the Town of Hingham (its genealogies are in the public domain), town vital records, Find a Grave and the cemetery's own future roster, and, where families consent, their photographs and recollections. Every source is recorded. Anything that still needs confirming on-site (the exact grave location, the condition of a stone, a face) is published openly marked “field verification pending.”

If you find an error here, that is not a failure of the project, it is the project working. Tell us, and we will correct it and say that we did.