Detective Work

In "Never Sniff a Gift Fish," Pat McManus has a story about "The Man Who Notices Things." The man's name is Fenton Quagmire. hilarious. In elementary school Pat remembers the teacher asking "Who noticed anything different about our room today?" She never called on any of the girls, of course, since it is well known that girls notice things. After calling on all the other boys, who notice nothing new, she finally gets to Fenton who points out some piddling detail like the cloakroom wall being knocked down, or all the chairs facing a different direction, or the teacher is dressed up like Woody Woodpecker. In my younger days I developed this into a running joke that I wanted to be a detective when I grew up, because they "notice things." Recently I had this great detective experience:

My great-grandfather Stephen Rudolph had a brother, Joseph, who wasn't listed in the county birth records. So in the 1940's his sister Victoria filed an affidavit that she was there when he was born. She also used as backup his baptism certificate from Holy Cross Church. The interesting thing was that she said he was the 10th child, not the 9th as my records indicated. I wrote to the church asking if there were any other children of Jacob and Maria Rudolph born/baptized in x, y, z years. I gave the gaps between siblings where there were 9 months or more between births.The priest sent me a list of all of the baptism dates and sure enough,there was the missing child, John. There was a 3 year gap between Stephen (child #4) and Victoria (allegedly child #5, but actually #6). John was born 10 months before Victoria. Another brother named John was born in 1901, suggesting that the first John died before 1901. I called the county and they had no birth or death record on John #1. I have written again to the church looking for his death info buthaven't heard back yet. Anyway, good news, eh? This was so exciting and fun for me to make this discovery! I felt like I was waiting for my grades to come out as I waited to hear back from the church, except maybe there was less fear involved.