Rare Book Monthly
Tracking Down Lost Lives: A Family For Sale on eBay
Cartoon of William P. Rudd
And then there is one more piece of evidence pointing to Adeline. Of all the people who might be candidates, she is the only one without an obituary. Of course. She could provide them for her mother and father, her brother and sister-in-law, her husband, her daughter and son-in-law, her son, even her granddaughter. What she could not do was provide her own.
I can tell you no more about what happened to the family. Of the descendants of railroad conductor William T. and the first Adeline Rudd, the only ones that appeared to be alive at the close of this album were their daughter Adeline, then 83 (but her death is probably why the album ends), her daughter Marion, grandson Edward, Jr., and William P.'s son Tracy. If there are any living descendants today, they would have to be either an aged Edward, Jr. (about 90), or his issue. I have not been able to trace any such descendants, which is too bad, as it is with them that this album belongs. Then again, I don't know whether such descendants even exist. William T. Rudd's family may have joined his railroad, the New York Central, once mighty, but now a fading part of history. But for a moment, they come back to life in Adeline's scrapbook, and for a moment, they are with us again. They are remembered.
