In the spring I wrote to some of them.

Not all six hundred and eleven; I am not insane, and Greta had words with me about it twice.

I wrote to forty.

I picked them by decade, and I picked them by findability, which mostly meant the ones with unusual surnames, which is a sampling bias and I am aware of it.

The letter is short.

It says who I am.

It says that my late husband worked at the Ramsey County offices and that his signature is on their marriage record as a witness, and that this was because they had arrived without one and he made a practice of stepping in.