Welcome to La Maison de Lumière: The Archivist's Porch.

Pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup of coffee, and welcome home.

I'm Dr. Theresa Styles, an archivist, preservationist, educator, and family historian. For more than twenty- three years, I have dedicated my life to preserving a family archive spanning more than two centuries, rooted in the Daigre family line andthe river parishes of Louisiana. What began as a search for my own family's history gradually became something much larger.

The collection became my teacher.

Every record asked another question.

Every document revealed another relationship.

Every discovery reminded me that preservation is about far more than collecting names and dates.

It is about preserving context.

It is about preserving meaning.

It is about leaving behind an inheritance so future generations never have to begin their story from fragments when they can begin from belonging.

The Archivist's Porch grew naturally from that work.

It wasn't created as a podcast first.

It emerged after years of sitting with records, asking questions, and allowing the evidence to speak before drawing conclusions.

Here, we begin where every good archivist begins:

What do the records tell us?

Not what we hope they say.

Not what family tradition assumes.

Not what later stories have added.

We let the evidence lead.

Because the responsibility of an archivist is to remain faithful to the records.

Each episode begins at The Archivist's Table, where we open succession papers, church registers, census records, newspapers, land records, photographs, letters, and other historical documents. Together we examine the evidence, reconstruct relationships, and slowly rebuild the lives hidden within the archive.

Only after we have listened carefully to the records do we move to The Porch Swing.

There, we become descendants.

Together we reflect on what the records have taught us about family, resilience, grief, hope, belonging, forgiveness, and love.

The lessons are never manufactured.

They emerge naturally from the work of preservation itself.

Along the way you'll meet the people who continue to teach me through the records they left behind, PapaOG, Paul and Marie, Gilbert A., Louisa, Maman, grand mere Dorothy, Papa Boone, Leroy, Sylvia, Red, and many other ancestors whose ordinary lives became extraordinarygifts for the generations that followed.

This podcast is not simply about genealogy.

It is about learning how to preserve both our history and ourselves.

It is about discovering that every document was once someone's ordinary day.

Every record belonged to a real person.

Every preserved story has the power to reconnect someone with where they came from.

The porch has always been part of that tradition.

For generations, families gathered on the gallery to visit, remember, laugh, mourn, tell stories, and pass history from one generation to the next.

This porch continues that conversation.

So, if you hear the porch fans turning overhead... the cicadas singing... birds calling in the distance... or the occasional interruption from everyday life... I leave thosesounds in on purpose.

This is a real porch.

This is where these conversations belong.

My hope is simple.

That something I learned while preserving my family's story might help you better understand your own.

Because we can love them as descendants.

We can preserve them as archivists.

And we can let the evidence lead us.

The coffee is on.

The porch light is lit.

And there will always be a chair waiting for you here.

Welcome home.