FILE 001
Canary Islands to New Spain
Captain Francisco Báez de Benavides
A miner, captain, magistrate, and armed creditor whose seventeenth-century record survives through office, conflict, and contested ancestry.
History, in motion.
21 films · 12 stories
Twelve chapters · 25:21Featured documentary · Cup 27
The Shanghai Bowl
The Shanghai Bowl’s wartime concealment, recovery and family connection to Cup 27.
Human stories reconstructed from what survives.
Explore the archiveA four-part documentary series
The Canary Islands:
conquest and survival.
Begin before the invasion. Follow Gran Canaria’s war, Tenerife’s resistance, and the struggle over land and water that followed.
Cumberland Conquest · Family game
Cumberland Chess — Family Edition
Big Ed and Uncle Paul lead the family cast across three real farm landscapes in 3D. Play the computer, take turns together, or watch computer versus computer. Full-screen play and optional farm sounds bring the board to life.
A fictional family game from the Cumberland Conquest universe. The game includes image credits and a provisional MacNamara coat of arms.
Four ways through the archive
Lives, places, and the paths between them.
Begin with a person, follow a family, or find a place on the map. Each route opens another view of the history.
01
People
Meet the people behind the records, from seventeenth-century New Spain to twentieth-century America.
Explore →02Family Paths
Explore family branches by surname and region, with the evidence for each connection close at hand.
Explore →03Places in Their Time
Enter the hometowns, workplaces, institutions, and landscapes that shaped a life.
Explore →04Research Stories
Follow a migration, a surviving object, or a question that reaches across generations.
Explore →From the map room
See the islands in their time.
A historical map offers a view of the Canary Islands. Its source and limits stay with the image.
Open the story mapHistorical context map · CR-001
The Canary Islands in Blaeu’s 1667 atlas
1667 map · c. 1690 Atlas Van der Hagen compilation
A later-seventeenth-century European cartographic view of the Canary Islands: Joan Blaeu’s 1667 map in the Atlas Van der Hagen compilation of about 1690.
Evidence boundary: It is not an Indigenous source, a voyage record, or proof of any person’s port, ship, itinerary, migration, or genealogical link.
Open source recordSelected from the archive
People and their stories
Seven lives and a generation-spanning route offer places to begin. Open a file to read the story and follow its sources.
FILE 002
The Laredo Herreras
Pedro Herrera
A Laredo cavalryman, sheep raiser, cartman, husband, and pension applicant reconstructed from records that do not all answer the same questions.
FILE 003
Indigenous Gran Canaria
Aymediacoan
An Indigenous Gran Canarian figure remembered through descendants’ testimony, early historical tradition, and an open island-to-island lineage problem.
FILE 004
MacNamara military history
Major Edwin Joseph MacNamara
An Air Policeman tested by a tornado, a Penn State cadet leader, airborne officer, Special Forces major, husband, and father whose life extended far beyond his final mission.
FILE 005
Rudolph–Morrison family and military history
Richard W. Rudolph
An Air Force radio operator in Cold War Alaska who returned to a thirty-five-year Kinney career and rose from cost clerk to department head.
FILE 006
Burrier–Culver family and federal fire-service history
David Monroe Burrier
Fort Belvoir’s civilian fire chief, a Davison Army Airfield crash-rescue leader, and the man who put rescuing people before protecting equipment.
FILE 007
The Laredo Herreras
José Albino Herrera
A Laredo shoemaker, cultivator, artisan, voter, and laborer traced through changing governments, recorded property, and a recurring family household.
STORY 001
Research story and evidence map
The Canary Route
Gran Canaria, Tenerife, New Spain, and Laredo—connected without pretending that one traveler followed one recovered road.
The archive’s method
Five grades. No silent promotion.
A claim may become stronger when new evidence arrives. Until then, the language and label must remain at the level the record supports.
Primary or contemporary evidence directly supports the claim.
Serious scholarship or correlated evidence strongly supports the claim.
Accepted in the current reconstruction, but still open to stronger documentation.
A historically documented accusation, presented as an accusation—not as established fact.
The evidence is insufficient, conflicting, or not yet audited.
About the project
History with the evidence left visible.
Evidence Left Visible brings together films, biographies, family paths, and historical places. A compelling story never outranks its sources: documented facts, working theories, and open questions remain distinct. The archive protects living relatives and publishes historical images only after a separate rights review.
01Living people protected
02Image rights decided separately
03Allegations remain allegations
04Contradictions remain visible
Keep exploring
There is more to the story.
Watch a film, follow a family branch, or step into a historical place. The collection connects stories across time and geography.
The film collection
Documentaries, trailers, and music films.
Family paths
Follow the branches, surnames, and places.
Places in their time
Discover the world around each life.