About
Family history, held to a historian’s standard.
Sapling is a bespoke family-history service. We trace lineages through verified public records and turn them into documented, interactive histories families keep and hand down.
What Sapling is
A research service, not a database.
Every Sapling project is original research: your family’s names, dates, and places traced through civil registers, censuses, church and synagogue books, immigration and land records — each fact verified against a primary source before it enters your report. The finished history arrives as an interactive report you can explore in any browser and print to a keepsake PDF, with the complete results included in a full appendix.
Led by Professor Cisco Bradley
Professor Cisco Bradley is a historian and author — Professor of History at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, with a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
His newest book, I Hear Freedom: The Great Migration, Free Jazz, and Black Power (Columbia University Press, 2026), draws on hundreds of oral-history interviews to follow families and their music north through the Great Migration. His earlier books include Universal Tonality: The Life and Music of William Parker — which traces Parker’s family from West Africa through the Carolinas to the South Bronx — The Williamsburg Avant-Garde (both Duke University Press).
Following lives through the record is the craft Cisco has practiced his whole career. At Sapling he leads the research team and directs every project personally, from the first record pulled to the finished history.
Start a conversation with the teamThe standard
How every project is held.
From the record
Traced through public records — civil registers, censuses, church and synagogue books, immigration and land documents — as far back as they reliably reach.
Verified at the source
Every fact is checked against a primary document. Where the record is uncertain, the report says so plainly.
Documented to keep
A full appendix accompanies every report with the complete results of the research — your family’s story, documented to keep.
Held in confidence
Your family’s information is delivered to you privately, for you to share at your discretion.
Free consultation
Start with a few details, not a commitment.
Give us names, dates, and places — we’ll begin with a free assessment, no obligation, to see how far back your family can be traced.
Get startedOr reach us directly — (917) 522-1457 · cisco@sapling.family