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?