Hanson Mitchell is the author of a series of books collected together as The Scratch Flat Chronicles that focus on a single square mile of agricultural land in eastern Massachusetts.
He is also the author of Looking for Mr. Gilbert, the story of his discovery of the lost glass plate negatives of the first African-American landscape photographer. It was while he was researching that book that he uncovered the story of Marcus Aurelius.
He also happens to be the descendant of one of the players in this book.
