Beta — this experience grows as the evidence does
Evidence Time Machine
Move through time. Watch the family emerge from the records.
Historical records do not preserve every life equally. BEFORE TILL uses evidence to reconstruct what can be known — while leaving uncertainty visible.
Step into the evidence
Select a year and explore what surviving records reveal about the Smith–Tolliver family. Some years are rich with names and documents. Others contain only fragments. BEFORE TILL does not fill those silences with invention. This experience reflects the evidence currently in the archive and will become more detailed as new records are verified.
- DocumentedSolid frame
- CorroboratedDouble frame
- Family TraditionDashed, memory layer
- Under InvestigationDotted, unresolved
- ? UnknownRecord silence
1840
A name inside an estate inventory
The earliest surviving record in this reconstruction does not describe a life. It describes an estate. Hilliard appears inside it because the legal system of the time counted him as property. He is the human subject of this year; the estate is the context around him.
- Sources
- 2
- People named
- 1
- Claims touched
- 22
- Documented events
- 1
- Evidence observations
- 4
- Open questions
- 26
Archival density only. This is a measure of surviving paperwork, never of a life's importance.
People known to the archive
- Documented
Hilliard Taliaferro / Tolliver
Family
1 record in 1840
What the records show
Hilliard named and valued in the William Q. Taliaferro estate inventory
Documented14 December 1840 · Estate Division · Copiah County (County Only)
Named entry in a probate inventory, valued at $800.