Rare Book Monthly
Tracking Down Lost Lives: A Family For Sale on eBay
Adeline Rudd was in the seventh graduating class at St. Agnes School
With some help from the Hudson-Mohawk Genealogical and Family Memoirs, a 1911 book edited by Cuyler Reynolds, now available online through the Schenectady County Public Library, here is the list of characters. William Tracy Rudd was born in 1816, the ninth of ten children, and married Adeline Martha Platt in 1848. They had three children, William Platt Rudd, central character of our story, Adeline Martha Rudd, and Charles Beckley Rudd. Charles died at the age of three, long before this scrapbook begins. William P. was born in 1851 and married Aimee Allen in 1883. They had only one child, Tracy Allen Rudd, born in 1884. On reaching adulthood, Tracy moved to New York, then to Boston. He is virtually invisible in this album. Adeline Rudd was born in 1859 and married George Parker Howlett in 1886. The Howletts had at least three children, Parker Rudd Howlett, who died at six months, and daughters Marion and yet another Adeline Martha (the third). This family was very much into recycling names. They, too, are practically invisible in this collection.
The album begins with articles about graduation exercises at St. Agnes School, Adeline being a member of the graduating class of 1878 (in 1975, Episcopal St. Agnes merged with Catholic Kenwood Academy to form Doane Stuart, the nation's only merged Catholic-Protestant school). Next thing we hear is the passing of their mother, the first Adeline Rudd, in 1883. She seems to have been a pleasant, friendly, deeply religious woman, who suffered through a long illness before passing away at the age of 62. An obituary notice informs us she was "a lady who has borne the agonies of physical torture as only a devout and sincere Christian could...." Obituaries today are not quite so graphic. Her passing would lead to a reserved affair when William P. was married later that year.
There would be no such celebratory reservations when Adeline married George Parker Howell three years later. A clipping tells us "the presents were numerous, varied and beautiful, as well as costly." Howell worked for the Wright Brothers. No, not those Wright Brothers. The Wright Brothers' Umbrella House.
These remaining 15 years of the 19th century must have been good years for the Rudd family. William P's career was advancing rapidly and spectacularly, and George Howlett was doing fine. Meanwhile, patriarch William T. Rudd was alive and well, and probably basking in the respect his age had earned. At the age of 85 (which would have been 1901), he is written up in the newspaper as the oldest living railroad conductor in New York. Earlier in his career, he carried money, sometimes large sums, between stops on the railroad. In 1844 he signed on with the New York Central as a conductor, a career that would span 38 years. He survived several wrecks without ever being injured or losing a passenger. He was said to have been the conductor when the first sleeper car hit the road. At one point, he had to subdue a group of Indians, but this was not quite the wild west. They were a group of celebratory Indians riding the rails back home after a bit too much partying. He managed to hustle them off at Rome (New York) and ignore one man's challenge to get off and fight. By the time he retired, William T. Rudd was estimated to have traveled almost 4 million miles.
