Lucia J., not Jennie Louise?

Please note:  this blog is a sequential narrative.  To start at the beginning, click on "Blog Archive" on the right and select the entry at the very bottom "Jennie Louise Van Buren...or was she?" or click here.

I couldn't wait to get started on researching Mary Avery.  More than that, I wanted to know everything I could about the Avery family. Who was Polly and when did her husband die?  How many kids did she have? Where did they all end up?  Were they all from Mentz originally? And more importantly: Did Mary Avery marry someone with the last name of Sly, and did they have a daughter named Jennie?  How did the Van Burens fit in to picture? And what about George Avery?

Let's do a quick recap:

After ruling out any connection to the Martin Van Buren family, I had found 13-year-old Jennie Sly (likely my 2nd great-grandmother) living with James and Sarah Van Buren, and George Avery, in the 1870 census in Buffalo, New York. I had researched George Avery for a few minutes and found an Avery family living in Mentz, New York in 1850. George was 4 then. He was living with Polly Avery, presumably his mother, and quite a few siblings.  One of them was named Henrietta. She may have been the same Henrietta living with George and Jennie in Buffalo in 1870.  It was all starting to come together.  This is the family tree sketch, based on the 1850 census.

Referring to the notes I had gathered on Jennie, I ruled Henrietta out as a possible mother for Jennie. That left Mary, born ca. 1836.  Was she Jennie's mother?

It was time to get to work!  My first search was for "Mary Avery, born 1836, living in Mentz, Cayuga County, New York".

Search results for Mary Avery in Mentz, Cayuga County, New York
www.ancestry.com

The top result was what I had already found.  The second result stopped me in my tracks. Sly? Was there really a Mary Sly in my search results?? This was the potential last name of Jennie's father, and the last name Jennie had when living with the Van Burens in 1870.  Could it be?

Auburn and Mentz were both in Cayuga County, not far apart:

Distance between Mentz and Auburn in Cayuga County, New York
www.googlemaps.com

Here is the image of the 1865 New York State Census:

Ancestry.com. New York, State Census, 1865 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.

There was Mary!  Mary Sly!  Living with Polly Avery (her mother) and her 2 brothers, Thomas and Edward.  And right underneath Mary's name was "Lucia J Sly, daughter, female, 8 years old (born ca. 1857), birth place of Illinois.

Lucia J.... not Jennie Louise  Well, at least the initials matched!
1857 ... that matched what I knew thus far.
Illinois ... not New York. Huh.

I had originally started with 6 possible places of birth for Jennie:

www.googlemaps.com

After some sleuthing, I had narrowed it down to 2: New York and Ohio.

www.googlemaps.com

But that was before I had found "Jenny" in the 1870 census. That record listed New York as the place of birth. The New York 1865 census listed Illinois.

After finding the 1870 census, I had been leaning towards New York as the probable place of birth, but only because it meant that my "sleuthing" had been correct.  Now I had to consider the source of the information on the 1870 census. I did not know yet exactly how the Van Burens were related to Jennie. Based on my notes, they were close relatives at best; more likely, they were distant relatives. In 1865, Lucia (if she was the same person as Jennie) was living with her mother and grandmother. That source of information on Jennie's birthplace was more credible.  Maybe I had been too quick to rule Illinois out!  I was back to 3 possible places of birth:

Illinois was back in the running as a possible place of birth

This question was on hand at the moment: were Lucia and Jennie the same person?  I thought it was likely. In 1865, Lucia was living with Polly and Mary, with same birth year, and at least the same initials as the 1870 census. The name Sly only strengthened the case.  I was excited.  It was possible I had just identified Jennie's mother: Mary Avery Sly, born 1836 in Onondaga County, New York. My 3rd great-grandmother!

Of course, a new question was racing around my head:  In 1865, Mary was living with her mother. Where was her husband? Was it possible that he was serving in the Civil War? Is that how he went blind?

Closer inspection of the census showed that Thomas and Edward Avery were both serving in the Army in 1865, yet they were still listed in Polly's household. If Mary's husband was serving in the war, why was he not listed, as well?

Was it possible that Mary's husband had died before 1865?  If so, why was Polly listed as a widow, but Mary was listed as married?  Something didn't quite add up.

It was another clue that there was more to this family than met the eye.

So many clues, so little time!

Please note:  this blog is a sequential narrative.  To start at the beginning, click on "Blog Archive" on the right and select the entry at the very bottom "Jennie Louise Van Buren...or was she?" or click here.

My mind was reeling.  Right in front of my eyes was the record for Jennie (Jenny) Sly, 13 years old, living in Buffalo, New York, with James Van Buren, and someone named George Avery. There were too many pieces of the puzzle that fit together for this to not be "my" Jennie.

Van Buren, Avery, Sly, Buffalo, born in 1857...it was a treasure trove of clues coming together.

The name Sly carried more weight now, as did New York as a possible place of birth.  The names Van Buren and Avery were now definitely connected to Jennie, and here she was right in the middle of Buffalo in 1870! 

It seemed too good to be true!

Only a few days before, I had felt like this was the future of my pursuit of the story of Jennie:

Now, I had so many paths to choose from!

I was reminded that genealogists say that when you find one answer, you gain 5 questions. This was an exciting and interesting problem to have!

First things first.  I knew exactly where to find Jennie in 1880. By then she was married and living in Harveysburg, Ohio with her husband, Arthur Tappan Ham. And I could practically track her every move after 1880 until her death in 1945.

Now, I was pretty sure I knew where she had been in 1870, but what about before then? I needed to check earlier years for Jennie (Jenny) Sly in Buffalo.

Alas, my hopes were dashed:

Search results for Jenny Sly born 1857, living n Buffalo, NY
www.ancestry.com

Other than the top result for in the 1870 census, that search yielded nothing.  I knew I had to dig deeper than this!

I had several avenues of research I could pursue, so where to start?  Should I research James Van Buren?  His wife, Sarah?  Should I start looking for any and all Slys in New York State? What about Avery?  George Avery was with James Van Buren in the 1870 and 1880 census records.  Who was George, and how did he fit into the picture?

After looking closely at those records, I decided to try to find out more about him.  I knew he had to be more than "just" a boarder.  I strongly suspected that he was related to James or Sarah Van Buren. I hoped that finding out more about George might lead me to Jennie and her parents.

I made a list (yes, a list!!) of what I knew about George so far, based on the information in the 1870 and 1880 census records:

George W Avery
Born 1846-47
Born in NY
Listed as widowed in 1880
unemployed for 2 months before 1880 census
no occupation in 1870
George N Avery, age 5, living with George W in 1880

Was it possible that George W Avery had married between 1870 and 1880?  If so, then he had also had a child during that time (George N) and had lost his wife.  What a turbulent decade!

I decided to cast the net fairly wide again, to see what I could find.  I searched for George W. Avery, born 1846 +/- 5 years, living in New York State.

The first result was for a George W Avery in Buffalo in 1910, but I decided to save that one for later. There were other George Averys here and there, including one in Baxter Springs, Kansas, of all places, but none of them caught my attention, until I got to the 15th result: George W Avery, age 14, living in Mentz, Cayuga County New York in 1860.

Result for George W Avery, 1860 census
www.ancestry.com

To this day, I don't really know why this result caught my eye more than the others. Maybe it was because it was the only result in New York I could see for the 1860 census. Maybe it was intuition. Whatever the reason, I clicked on the image to get more information.

George W. Avery in the 1860 US Federal Census
Year: 1860; Census Place: Mentz, Cayuga, New York; Roll: M653_729; Page 792; Image: 315; Family History Library Film: 803729; accessed on www.ancestry.com

There was just something about this result that grabbed me.  Mentz was not a place I had ever heard of.  Polly and Edward were new names to me.  I decided to pursue the matter further.  I did a search in the 1850 census in Mentz, Cayuga County, New York for Polly Avery, born about 1805 +/- 5 years.

This was my top result:

1850 Census result for Polly Avery
Year: 1850; Census Place: Mentz, Cayuga, New York; Roll: M432_481; Page: 118A; Image: 240.
Accessed on www.ancestry.com

Wow!  Polly had a big family in 1850!  I started sketching out a hypothetical tree.  I included everyone in this census record except for Lewis and Jane Newman.  I had no idea how they fit into the picture, so they didn't make the cut for now.

My original Avery family tree sketch.

I was tempted to go down every rabbit hole and research everyone on this tree that day. I knew I would do this eventually. For now, however, I decided to focus on the 2 presumed daughters of Polly.  I was trying, after all, to find Jennie's mother, whose maiden name I thought was Avery.

Here were my 2 candidates:

Mary, born ca. 1836

Henrietta, born ca. 1842

Something about the name Henrietta was bugging me.  I couldn't quite put my finger on it.  It seemed like I had seen that name somewhere recently.  I looked back through the records I had found so far -- and there she was -- or, I should say, there was a Henrietta:

Henrietta Seaman, living with James and Sarah Van Buren in 1870, born ca. 1843.  I felt certain this Henrietta Seaman and Henrietta Avery had to be the same person, but only time and research would tell for sure.  Was she the connection between James and Sarah Van Buren and Polly Avery?

Even though Henrietta was listed right above "Jenny" in the 1870 census, I decided to research Mary Avery first.  The assumption I was working under was that Jenny was living with James and Sarah after her mother died.  If that was true, then Henrietta couldn't be her mother.

I have to admit, I was disappointed that I had not found a "Sarah Avery" living with Polly in 1850. I had suspected from the beginning that George Avery and Sarah Van Buren were siblings.  It looked like this might not be true, after all.  Then I remembered that one of my sources had said that Jennie went to live with distant relatives after her mother died.  I would not consider an aunt to be a distant relative.  So, maybe they were cousins, not siblings.  It was one more avenue to pursue later.  I also considered that Sarah might not have been living with her mother in 1850.  She would have been about 18 years old by then.

I decided to deal with Sarah another day.  For now, I wanted to put Mary Avery, born ca. 1836 under the microscope.  If my assumptions were correct, she was a likely candidate to be Jennie's mother -- and my 3rd great-grandmother.

Van Burens, Slys and Averys, Oh My!

Please note:  this blog is a sequential narrative.  To start at the beginning, click on "Blog Archive" on the right and select the entry at the very bottom "Jennie Louise Van Buren...or was she?" or click here.

I had finally found the first real hint as to who Jennie Van Buren's adoptive father had been. In her scrapbook were those 2 newspaper clippings referring to his death. The only problem was, I had no idea where or when he had died!  So what does every good genealogist do when she has only one, tiny clue?  She casts a wide net and hopes for the best!

Late that night, I gathered my thoughts. From the obituary, I knew that James Van Buren died at the age of 76.  The obituary mentioned that he had not been engaged in business for a long time.  He had been an elected official as late as 1873.  Jennie married Arthur in 1877.  Assuming that James died after Jennie got married, and guessing that he had been in his fifties and sixties when he was an elected official, I estimated that he had been born between 1810 and 1820.  That is the wide net I cast:  I searched on www.ancestry.com for a James Van Buren, born in 1815, plus or minus 10 years.

The initial search results:

Search results for James Van Buren, born 1815 +/- 10 years
www.ancestry.com

The first result in New Jersey was interesting, but I decided to skip it as soon as I glanced at the second result.  Buffalo, New York!  This is where my mother thought Jennie and Arthur might have been married!

This is what came up when I clicked on the result:

1880 US Federal Census result for James Van Buren in Buffalo, NY
www.ancestry.com

Now this was interesting!  James was born in New York, and so was his wife, Sarah, on closer inspection. This was A LOT of New York! Oh, how I loved New York all of a sudden! This was one of the states where I had tried to find a birth record for Jennie.  And the birth year for James was about 1811, close to what I had estimated.  There was definite potential here!!!

In 1880, Jennie was already married and living in Ohio, so it didn't worry me that she wasn't listed with James Van Buren in Buffalo then.  I started taking furious notes and was suddenly wide awake, despite the late hour.  I decided the next step should be to look for James Van Buren in the 1870 census, to see if Jennie was with him then.  But before I started a new search, I decided to look at the scan of the 1880 original, just to make sure I hadn't missing anything.

Year: 1880; Census Place: Buffalo, Erie, New York; Roll: 831; Family History Film: 1254831; Page: 32C; Enumeration District: 159; Image: 0066
Accessed on www.ancestry.com

This was a really big household!  And then I realized - this was a boarding house.  A boarding house run by James and Sarah Van Buren.  Immediately, the word "hostess" sprang to mind.  Was is possible that Jennie had indeed been a hostess? Not for Martin Van Buren, but for James?


The address of this boarding house was 192 Franklin Street, Buffalo.  This is what it looks like today:

Buffalo Academy of Science Charter School, Buffalo New York
www.googlemaps.com

The school's address is 190 Franklin Street. Number 192 was where part of the building and the parking lot now are. Too bad!

Finding this boarding house was exciting! I started counting all of the boarders who were living with the Van Burens in 1880.  14 boarders and 2 servants lived with them.  It must have been a very large house!  I was fascinated with this large household.  And then.....I saw it.  Why hadn't I noticed it right away?  Right under Van Buren, Sarah J was:

Avery, George W, age 32, Boarder, born in New York
    ''    , George N, age   5, Boarder, born in New York

Avery.  This was the potential maiden name of Jennie's mother.  And here that name was, written right underneath James' and his wife's names.......  my head was spinning.  It was all starting to come together, and suddenly I had so many leads to track!  Were these older and younger Georges related to James or Sarah?  I suspected the answer, but didn't want to jump to conclusions.  I knew the first thing I needed to do was look at the 1870 census.

This time, I had more parameters for my search. I had an approximate birth year and a city. I searched the 1870 US Federal Census for James Van Buren, born 1811 +/- 2 years in Buffalo, New York.

Search results for James Van Buren in the 1870 census.
www.ancestry.com

This was not result I had expected....but fear not!  I remembered from my Martin Van Buren research that his last name was often spelled all in one, as in "Vanburen". A quick edit of the search, and Bingo!

Search results for James Vanburen in the 1870 census
www.ancestry.com

I could hardly stand it.  This next click might be the breakthrough.  I selected the first search result: James Vanburen in Buffalo Ward 9, Erie, New York. I was desperately hoping to find a girl named Jennie who was 13 years old.  She was my 2nd great-grandmother. Part of me didn't want to click on the result, for fear of being disappointed.  But that would have been silly. Momentary hesitation overcome, I clicked on the top result:

1870 Census search result for James Vanburen
www.ancestry.com

I looked at the laptop screen and screamed.  My cat who was sleeping next to me hissed and ran off.  The dogs started barking. I jumped up from my chair.  The kids were asleep upstairs, but I didn't really care if I woke them up.  I needed to share this with someone, but it was 2 in the morning.

There, after James, Sarah, Libbie, Edward, Henrietta, and before George, was

Jenny.

Sly.

13 years old.

I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep at all that night.  More than anything I wished my Grandpa Arthur could have been there to see it. I had just found his grandmother in the 1870 Federal Census.

A different Van Buren

Please note:  this blog is a sequential narrative.  To start at the beginning, click on "Blog Archive" on the right and select the entry at the very bottom "Jennie Louise Van Buren...or was she?" or click here.

This past weekend, I drove to the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.  It was a spur-of-the-moment road trip.  I am very fortunate to live only 3 hours away from this wonderful repository for genealogists.

It only takes me 3 hours 

Would you believe that I drove there to look at one, single book?  Crazy, right?  Don't worry -- I had plenty of other research to do, but really I went there to look at just one specific book.  I didn't learn anything new from that book, by the way, but that's the subject of another post.

I love road trips. My whole family does.  We love to just get in the car and go.  On the way to Ft. Wayne, I thought a lot about Jennie.  I always think a lot about Jennie.  I was thinking about why she is my favorite genealogical "brick wall."  I feel connected to her, in ways that are hard to describe.  The more I learn about the people who came before me, the more I understand my life and my immediate family, for better or worse.  Jennie and her family may have been highly dysfunctional, but I can't point any fingers.  After all, I am, as of one week ago, twice divorced.  There are events in my life that I will never get over. Jennie had plenty of that, too. She may not have been a warm and fuzzy person, but she was incredibly strong. I see her backbone in the strong and whacky generations that came after her.  But we really should get back to the story.....


This is where we left off:

Jennie wasn't born anywhere!

After getting frustrated with trying to pinpoint a place of birth for Jennie Louise Van Buren, I took a little break.  During that time, my mother was going through a box of memorabilia that belonged to Edith (Jennie's daughter) and her husband Theo.  In this box were treasures like the tiny violin my grandfather Arthur learned to play on when he was just a little guy.

Arthur Lloyd Irion ca. 1921

My grandfather's tiny violin.  We're not sure when the neck was lost....

And in this very same box was the scrapbook that my mother thought was Edith's, but on closer inspection, decided that it had to be Jennie's. It contains mostly newspaper clippings, in no particular order, as far as I can tell.  Many of these clippings are jokes that Jennie saved.

Like this one:

Or this one:

And this one:

(I have no idea which newspaper these are from, so please forgive the lack of citing the source.)

The scrapbook also contains many of Marion Franklin Ham's published poems.  Marion (Jennie's brother-in-law) was a Unitarian minister and gifted poet.

Jennie also saved other poetry and some news reports about birthday parties....

This party must have taken place soon after they moved to Chattanooga, TN

Or this little tidbit about their new cottage in Chattanooga

In between jokes, you might come across an obituary, like this one:

Lebanon Western Star, 25 August 1881

Georgie was Jennie and Arthur's 13-month-old son, Edith's only sibling.  He died one month before Edith was born.  What must it have been like for Jennie to bury her son in the hot August weather, being 8 months pregnant?  The cause of death was "Cholera Infantum", a bad stomach virus, which had a high fatality rate among little children back then. How sad this must have been for Jennie and Arthur.

George Walter Ham 1880-1881

On the very next page of the scrapbook, was the following death notice:

Death notice of James Van Buren, newspaper and date unknown

This made me sit straight up and pay attention.  Van Buren?  Van Buren!  But where?  And when? Who was this James Van Buren?

More determined than ever, I decided to finish looking through the rest of the book before trying to figure out who James Van Buren was.  In the following pages, there were more jokes, more poetry, other obituaries, and then:

Obituary of James Van Buren, newspaper and date unknown

No other person in Jennie's scrapbook can claim 2 death notices/obituaries.  James must have been a very important person in her life. There are no Slys or Averys in her scrapbook.  Just this mysterious Van Buren.  Could this have been her adoptive father?

It was late -- definitely time to go to bed -- but so what!  I fired up the computer and did an initial search.  One big puzzle piece instantly fell into place.

For real, this time

Please note:  this blog is a sequential narrative.  To start at the beginning, click on "Blog Archive" on the right and select the entry at the very bottom "Jennie Louise Van Buren...or was she?" or click here.

It was time to face the cold, hard facts:  Jennie Louise Van Buren was not adopted by President Martin Van Buren.  It was time to debunk that family story and get down to the truth.

I decided to revisit Rule Number One (start with what you know) for real this time.  I knew I had my grandfather's notes somewhere.  I definitely needed to revisit those.  I also had notes from a third cousin, once removed, named Debi Ham.  Debi is descended from Arthur Tappan Ham's brother, Marion, and has been doing genealogy much longer than I have.

Marion Ham (my third great-uncle) on the steps.
His wife, Mary Louise Jenkins Ham, sitting in the chair.
Arthur Tappan Ham (my second great-grandfather) standing behind her.
(ca. early 1900s)

I just love this picture. Marion has such a warm expression on his face, while Mary is looking away, smiling.  Arthur is looking straight at the camera with his characteristically serious face. Who was behind the camera?  Could it have been Jennie?

In any case, while Debi Ham is not descended from Jennie, she had gathered a lot of information from my grandfather while he was still alive, and from her great-aunt Marcia Ham Rightmire, who was Jennie's niece by marriage, and Marion's daughter.

Marcia Ham Rightmire, (ca. early 1920s)

I also asked my mother to gather anything she could find in her boxes of family memorabilia.

After an initial inventory, I revised my original list.  It now looked something like this:

• adopted by Martin Van Buren (Who started this rumor, and why?  So much for the muttonchops!)
• was a hostess for the Van Buren family (How, in God's name, did this rumor make it all the way to the year 2014?)
• biological father may have been blind
• biological father's last name may have been Sly, Sligh or Sleigh
• biological mother died when Jennie was young
• Jennie married my 2nd great-grandfather, Arthur Tappan Ham, sometime before 1880 (when their son, George Walter Ham, was born)
• Jennie may have been born in New York, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio or Wisconsin
• The Ham family always thought that Arthur had married beneath him
• Jennie went to live with distant relatives, the Van Burens, after her mother's death
• Jennie and Arthur may have been married in Buffalo, NY
• Jennie's mother's maiden name may have been Avery

Well!  This list gave me more to work with, but the long litany of possible birthplaces made me want to bang my head against the wall. At least Jennie had limited the options to the eastern part of the country.  I had that going for me!

Possible places of birth for Jennie

Even though it seemed an impossible task, I decided to look for birth records first. Missouri and Wisconsin were mentioned only in my grandfather's notes, and nowhere else.  I decided to tentatively rule those 2 states out, while keeping them in the back of my mind (and notes).  I knew that several census records in the 1900s listed Illinois as Jennie's place of birth, so I decided to start there.  Sadly, Illinois did not provide much help, as birth records were not kept until 1877, a full 20 years after Jennie's birth.

https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Illinois_Vital_Records

A search in the 1860 US Federal Census for Illinois did not yield anything, neither for Van Buren, nor for Sly.  I decided to put Illinois on the back burner, as well.

Moving eastward, my attention shifted to Michigan. While birth records were kept a little earlier (1867), they still didn't go back as far as I needed.  The 1860 census search in Michigan did produce one significant hit, however:

"Jennie Sly born 1857 in Wisconsin, living in Minnesota in 1860.  Father: Andrew B Sly, born in New York.  Mother: Hannah Sly, born in England.  Jennie had 1 older and 2 younger brothers."
(Year: 1860; Census Place: Concord, Dodge, Minnesota; Roll: M653_568; Page: 755; Image: 294; Family History Library Film: 803568)

Gosh, this sure looked promising!  Father born in New York!  Jennie was the right age and was born in Wisconsin, one of the 6 possible birthplaces my notes had generated!  My heart started to beat a little faster.  Was Jennie born in Wisconsin, after all?

However, one thing bothered me:  If Jennie had 3 brothers, surely we would have heard some little snippet about them?  None of the anecdotes about Jennie ever hinted at siblings.  Nevertheless, I dove into researching this Jennie Sly.

It was a complete bust.  This Jennie, contrary to my Jennie, was well-documented throughout her early life, and was clearly of no relation to me.  Michigan and Wisconsin were both shelved for now.

This left me with the two most likely candidates:  New York and Ohio.

New and improved map of possible birth places

Now we were in business! Both of these options made sense:  Family lore pointed to New York, and Ohio was a place I knew Jennie had lived for sure, after marrying Arthur.  Bingo! With newfound energy, I dove into the task at hand:  find a birth record or 1860 census record of a Jennie Sly or Van Buren in New York or Ohio.  Should be simple, right?

No.

I spent weeks looking for Jennie in New York and Ohio.  There were many possible candidates, and I faithfully (or foolishly) pursued each one of them.  I found nothing worth writing home about, nor writing in a blog about.  Frustrated and exhausted, I decided to abandon this avenue of research and went back to my list.  It now looked like this:

• adopted by Martin Van Buren (Who started this rumor, and why?  So much for the muttonchops!)
• was a hostess for the Van Buren family (How, in God's name, did this rumor make it all the way to the year 2014?)
• biological father may have been blind
• biological father's last name may have been Sly, Sligh or Sleigh
• biological mother died when Jennie was young
• Jennie married my 2nd great-grandfather, Arthur Tappan Ham, sometime before 1880 (when their son, George Walter Ham, was born)
• Jennie may have been born in New York, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio or Wisconsin (For Pete's sake!  I CAN'T DEAL WITH THIS ONE RIGHT NOW!!!!!)
• The Ham family always thought that Arthur had married beneath him
• Jennie went to live with distant relatives, the Van Burens, after her mother's death
• Jennie and Arthur may have been married in Buffalo, NY
• Jennie's mother's maiden name may have been Avery

And my map looked like this:

Jennie was not born anywhere!

I desperately needed a break from Jennie for a while.  It's ironic that she seemed to have the same effect on people when she was alive.  Her husband, Arthur, called her "The Old Battleaxe" and one reason her daughter, Edith, may have become such a fabulous violinist, was because she spent hours as a girl practicing in her studio.  Did she do this to get away from Jennie, or to improve her fiddling?  I suspect it was both.

Edith Grace Ham, my great-grandmother (1915)

After a few weeks, I returned to the "Jennie project" with new courage, and a new weapon in my arsenal:  Jennie's scrapbook.

Start with what you know, even if it's not much

Please note:  this blog is a sequential narrative.  To start at the beginning, click on "Blog Archive" on the right and select the entry at the very bottom "Jennie Louise Van Buren...or was she?" or click here.

My research didn't really start with the scrapbook that belonged to Jennie, my 2nd great-grandmother. For one, my mother thought it was Edith's scrapbook (Jennie's daughter).  And two, I didn't even know it existed at the time.  Instead, my research started with a date.

My 2nd great-grandmother was born on February 9, 1857.

Jennie Louise Van Buren, ca. 1860

Starting this post and my research with something as simple as a birthdate may strike you as strange, but when it came to Jennie, it was about the ONLY thing I knew about her for certain! Jennie may have twisted the truth about many things during her life, but her birthdate was not one of them. As you can see, it was just past a full moon on the day she was born:

www.timeanddate.com

It seems that the weather in February 1857 was somewhat interesting in New York State, where Jennie was likely from:

www.weather.gov

Rule Number One for any genealogist is to start with what you know, so that's what I did -- I wrote down her birthdate. And stared at it.  And pondered it.  Alas, none of this brought any more information to light, so I decided to make a list.  I love lists.

I wrote down the things I thought I knew about Jennie, focusing on Jennie's life before she met and married my 2nd great-grandfather, Arthur Tappan Ham. All of the information I had was based on family lore. The list looked something like this:

• adopted by Martin Van Buren and family
• was a hostess for the Van Buren family
• biological father may have been blind
• biological father's last name may have been Sly, Sligh or Sleigh
• biological mother died when Jennie was young
• Jennie married my 2nd great-grandfather, Arthur Tappan Ham, sometime before 1880 (when their son, George Walter Ham, was born)
• Jennie may have been from New York State
• The Ham family always thought that Arthur Ham had married beneath him

This list didn't really give me a lot to work with, but it was a starting point.  Without anything else to go on, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.  The one thing I knew I could count on was that Jennie had been part of the Martin Van Buren family, so I started there. 

Martin Van Buren, image in Public Domain

Martin Van Buren was, as you might imagine, easy to track down.  I was able to find him easily in the 1860 US Federal Census in his hometown of Kinderhook, Columbia County, New York.  But the 1860 census was not what I really needed to look at to find Jennie living with him.  She would have only been 3 years old in 1860.  This was hardly an appropriate age to work as a hostess.

Lindenwald, in Kinderhook, NY. Home of President Martin Van Buren (Public Domain)

Undeterred, I searched for Martin Van Buren in the 1870 US Federal Census.  I could not find any Martin Van Buren.  How hard could it be to track down a former president?  As it turned out, it was difficult.  I turned to internet sources about the president's life, hoping to find his place of residence in 1870.  Jennie would have been 13 by then, possibly old enough to be a hostess.  I was giddy with excitement at the thought of finding my ancestor working for and living with the 8th president of the United States!

Alas, none of the biographies I could find about the president mentioned him living anywhere other than Kinderhook after serving as president.  I was at a loss, until I happened to see what I should have noticed from the very start:

President Van Buren died in 1862, when Jennie was 5.  

I was embarrassed that I hadn't checked on Martin Van Buren's vital statistics from the get-go.  Sure, I was a little green behind the ears when it came to doing genealogy research, but really?   This was downright humiliating and pathetic.  Even my 9-year-old daughter knew that this is where one should start. I questioned by mental capabilities and research know-how.

www.crayola.com

Eventually, I had to stop beating myself up.  I had a bigger problem on my hands.  How could Jennie have been a hostess for Martin Van Buren if she was only 5 years old when he died? Maybe she had lived with him as a little girl, before the president died?  Maybe she was adopted by one of his children?  I spent the rest of the day carefully checking any 1860 and 1870 census records for Martin Van Buren and family.  My search yielded absolutely nothing.  There was no Jennie with any of them.

Deflated and still chastising myself for not checking important facts from the beginning, I stopped for the day.  What I had hoped would be a relatively easy beginning to my search for Jennie's family had come to an abrupt halt.  

Questions plagued me. How could Jennie have been adopted by President Van Buren?  The dates just didn't add up, and she was nowhere to be found with the family.  If she wasn't adopted by the president, then by whom?  Where did the Van Buren name come from? Why did my family believe that she had been adopted by the president?

And then, the most difficult question:  How in the world was I going to break it to my daughter, Beth, that Jennie was probably NOT adopted by Martin Van Buren?  Would Beth ever be the same? Part of me dreaded finding the truth and the other part couldn't wait to solve the mystery.  Who was Jennie Louise Van Buren really?