The Tooth in the Jar: Why Mossgate Buried a Child's Name

The Tooth in the Jar: Why Mossgate Buried a Child's Name

A sealed glass jar sat for more than seventy years beneath the Mossgate County Courthouse containing a baby tooth and a genuine court order for a case that, officially, never existed - a vanished infant recorded as "no given name." Who put a tooth in a jar under a courthouse floor, and why was a child's legal existence erased from every public record?

In this episode, we trace the paper trail pulled from a crawl space photograph taken at 11:14 a.m. on a spring day in 1994 and follow the researcher who spent three days in the county clerk's office reconstructing what the records do and do not show. What did a court order to preserve evidence mean when the corresponding case cannot be found?

Person: Heather Bauer
Date: March 3, 1922
Location: Mossgate County Courthouse crawl space
Researcher: Dawn Larsen
Photograph time: 11:14 a.m., spring 1994

- The sealed glass jar was photographed by septic contractor Jerry Gardner beneath the northeast corner of the courthouse.
- The jar contained a folded document identified as a genuine court order and a single baby tooth.
- Birth registration entry reads "Bauer, infant female, no given name recorded," mother Heather Bauer, age 22.
- No infant death record, no marriage record, and no trace of Heather Bauer exist in official records after October 1922.
- The courthouse portrait of "C. Waite, 1918-1926" hangs face-to-wall in a second-floor corridor, explained locally as "for the town."

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