The Archivist's Porch
by La Maison de Lumière
The Archivist’s Porch is the companion audio journal to the 241-Year Daigre Mulberry Grove Legacy Restoration Project - nine generations. Join Dr. Theresa Styles as she archives & catalogs a multigenerational Louisiana Acadian-Creole family collection of more than 1,500 historical documents. At the Archivist’s Table, we ask, “What do the records tell us?” On the Porch Swing, we return as descendants & ask, “What have the records taught us?” The archive preserves the records. The podcast preserves the journey.Love them as a descendant. Preserve them as an archivist. Let the evidence lead us.
Episodes
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Porch Swing Series Episode 10A: A Way of Living (Season One Finale)
There was never a finish line. There was only a front porch waiting for someone to come home. When I began this journey twenty-three years ago, I thought I was searching for my ancestors. Now I understand they were quietly teaching me how to build a home where they could always be remembered...
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Archivist Table Episode 10: Welcome Home
Your ancestors never asked you to become their lawyer. When we first begin tracing our roots, it's easy to feel as though we are constantly on trial, gathering evidence, solving mysteries, and building an airtight case for our family's dignity. We carry unanswered questions, defend difficult...
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Porch Swing Series Episode 9A: Carry the Love, Not the Weight
Love doesn't ask me to carry what time has already carried. Love asks me to remember. This Friday on the Porch Swing, we're leaning into a truth that completely changed my relationship with the records: when I untangled remembering from carrying, the weight stayed with the documents and the peace...
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Archivist Table Episode 9: Untangling the Memory
I can remember them without carrying the weight. When we dig into the deep, multicultural soils of our past, our hearts fill up, but so does our anxiety. For years, many of us quietly tell ourselves that to honor our ancestors, we must carry the weight of everything they endured. We drag legal...
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Porch Swing Series Episode 8A: Tomorrow Is Waiting
The records aren't running away. The archive isn't disappearing overnight. For years, I believed I had to finish everything immediately. One more document. One more folder. One more answer before I could rest. Then one day, I realized something beautiful: Tomorrow has been waiting for me all…
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Archivist's Table Episode 8: The Patient Archivist
The archive isn't asking you to hurry. It's asking you to come back tomorrow. In this session at The Archivist's Table, we dismantle one of the quietest traps in family history research: frantic rushing. When we begin searching for our ancestors, it is easy to feel pressured to find every answer...
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Porch Swing Series Episode 7A: The Archive Taught Me to Listen
The archive doesn't tell you what to imagine. It teaches you how to listen. Do you know what surprised me most on this journey? It wasn't another census page, another deed, or another succession record. It was the music. For years, I loved old New Orleans jazz, the clarinet, the banjo, and the…
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Archivist's Table Episode 7: The Reciprocal Dance, Investing in Our Community
Preservation doesn't end the relationship. It creates space for it. When we begin building a family archive, it is easy to believe the work is a one-way street that we are the only ones investing our time, energy, and attention into preserving our ancestors. But one of the greatest revelations of...
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Porch Swing Series Episode 6A: Pull Up A Chair
Walking in the sun isn’t the end of the journey. It’s the beginning of living with them. This Friday on the Porch Swing, we're reflecting on what happens after the heavy archival work is done. For twenty-three years, I thought my job was to find them, page after page, courthouse after courthouse....
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Archivist’s Table Episode 6: Walking in the Sun
I can finally walk with them in the sun. When we first begin exploring our family history, we rarely realize how much darkness we are wading through. We carry boxes of unresolved questions, inherited wounds, and stories fractured by time. We spend hours staring at cold columns and faded records,...
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Porch Swing Series Episode 5A: We'll Leave the Light On
I thought I was building an archive, but somewhere along the journey, I realized I was building an arrival. One day, a family member I will never meet will open this collection. They will access a document, hear a story, or discover a photograph. Maybe they will even find this porch. In that…
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Archivist's Table Episode 5: Building A Collection, Not A Case
Build a collection worthy of being inherited. When we first explore our family history, it is natural to search for proof that our ancestors were good and that our story deserves to be remembered. But to face the true depth of our history, we must make a strict promise to ourselves: I will not…
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Porch Swing Series Episode 4A: I Stayed
Pull up a chair. Take a deep, quiet breath and sit with me on the porch swing tonight. This Friday, we are reflecting on the moments when the records hurt, when history refuses to be simple, and when the truth asks more of us than we expected. Learning the full scope of my third…
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Archivist's Table Episode 4: Beyond Heroes & Villains
What do you do when the records hurt? In this deeply honest episode of Archivist’s Table, we confront one of the hardest truths in archival and genealogical work: our ancestors were fully human, and that means refusing to flatten them into either heroes or villains. As I sit with the records of…
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Porch Swing Series Episode 3A: Lay Your Briefcase Down
Pull up a chair and rest a while. This Friday evening on the porch swing, we are following up on our session about Papa OG to reflect on the habit that drains so much of our daily energy. One of the greatest gifts this project has given me is balancing the objective eye of the archivist with the...
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Archivist's Table Episode 3: The Advocate's Release
Do you feel a constant need to defend your family's history? In this working-room session at the Archivist’s Table, we dismantle a heavy emotional habit: trying to act as a lawyer for the past. Sitting with the baptismal, property, and estate records of my third great-grandfather, Gilbert Daigre,...
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Porch Swing Series Episode 2A: Preserve Their Voices
Pull up a blue chair and rest for a moment. This Friday on the porch swing, we are leaning into the beautiful, unwritten pieces of the people we love. Not long ago, while laughing with friends about the little things we still say around our families, a sudden truth struck me: some of the most...
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Archivist's Table Episode 2: The Horizon of Judgement
What happens when we bring modern judgment into historical spaces? In this working-room session at the Archivist's Table, we confront the hardest boundary you will ever have to build on your journey: Do not let your ending write their beginning. It is so easy to try to force the complex choices…
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Porch Swing Episode 1A: They Are Already Here
Pull up a chair and pour yourself a cold drink. Tonight, on the porch swing, underneath the ceiling fans with a slice of homemade peach pie, I am reflecting on the men who shaped my life. While grilling blackened fish on Father’s Day, a sudden realization brought me to tears—not from grief, but...
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Archivist's Table Episode 1: Beyond the Census Column
What record begins your story? When we first start researching our ancestry, it is so easy to fall into the trap of treating names like mere data points on a checklist or branches on a flat tree. In this premier episode of the Archivist Porch, we sit down at the Archivist Table to look past the…
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Welcome to the Archivist's Porch
Welcome to The Archivist's Porch The companion podcast to the 241-Year Daigre Mulberry Grove Legacy Restoration Project (1785-2026). Hosted by Dr. Theresa Styles, this multigenerational archival initiative documents and preserves more than 1,500 historical records collected during a...
About this show
The Archivist’s Porch is the companion audio journal to the 241-Year Daigre Mulberry Grove Legacy Restoration Project - nine generations. Join Dr. Theresa Styles as she archives & catalogs a multigenerational Louisiana Acadian-Creole family collection of more than 1,500 historical documents. At the Archivist’s Table, we ask, “What do the records tell us?” On the Porch Swing, we return as descendants & ask, “What have the records taught us?” The archive preserves the records. The podcast preserves the journey.Love them as a descendant. Preserve them as an archivist. Let the evidence lead us.
Hosted by
La Maison de Lumière
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