Data & Methodology

Cape Fear Memoria compiles publicly available COVID-19 data for eight counties in the 910 region of southeastern North Carolina: New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender, Onslow, Columbus, Bladen, Duplin, and Sampson.

County-level case and death data is sourced from the CDC's Socrata API (dataset yviw-z6j5), which provides weekly aggregates of confirmed cases and deaths by US county. Our dataset covers March 4, 2020 through May 10, 2023 — the span of the federal Public Health Emergency.

Government timeline events are compiled from public records: North Carolina Executive Orders, NC DHHS announcements, and federal declarations. Each event includes its source document for independent verification.

Community stories are submitted through this site's public form and reviewed before publication. Every submission is cryptographically sealed at the moment it is received.

Every record in this archive is protected by three layers of cryptographic verification — what we call the three arches of truth.

The first arch is a SHA-256 content hash. At the exact moment a record is created — whether a county data row, a community story, or a timeline event — a unique fingerprint is computed from its contents. If even a single character were changed afterward, the fingerprint would be completely different.

The second arch is an RFC 3161 trusted timestamp. The fingerprint is sent to FreeTSA.org, an independent Timestamp Authority, which returns a signed token proving that this exact data existed at that exact moment. This is the same standard used by notaries, legal archives, and governments. It is court-admissible in most jurisdictions.

The third arch is the public verification page. Anyone can enter a record ID and independently verify that its contents have not been modified since sealing. No special tools. No trust required.

Together, these three arches ensure that this record cannot be silently altered. If data is changed, the evidence is visible to anyone who checks.