This is absolutely the best thing I’ve read all month. I love inconsequential mysteries like this. Kudos to the author for noticing an oddity in plain site, asking the question and doing the research!
It both amazes me that we as a species maintain such complete records that we can peer into the mists of history and discern what specific individuals were thinking at a particular time, and sobers me to think about just how incomplete those records are and how many facets of our world today are the way they are and we have no idea why.
As a genealogister, the most familiar thing to me was this:
My second thought was, "Wait, this whole time I could have solved this mystery from my couch? I didn't have to go to St. Paul, much less Kansas City?"
But yes! It is hard to get more clear than "A foot-bridge should be planned at Second avenue to serve Assumption school and church." That is why the bridge is there!
I once spent weeks trying to complete the history of a great aunt. As I was posting the final results, I found a note of mine, long forgotten and attached to the GA's (then) empty record. I wrote it following a conversation w/ a distant cousin. The note included the name of her final husband - the info I had spent weeks trying to learn and confirm circumstantially.
> This is absolutely the best thing I’ve read all month. I love inconsequential mysteries like this. Kudos to the author for noticing an oddity in plain site, asking the question and doing the research!
Agreed. It was an compelling piece of work-showing.
It both amazes me that we as a species maintain such complete records that we can peer into the mists of history and discern what specific individuals were thinking at a particular time, and sobers me to think about just how incomplete those records are and how many facets of our world today are the way they are and we have no idea why.