A Glimpse of Sarah J Avery, My Favorite Ancestor

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.

Buffalo, NY, 1870
Image in Public Domain

I say that Sarah J. is my ancestor, but she isn't really. She played an important role in Jennie Louise (Lucy or Lucia J) Sly Van Buren's life, even raising Jennie in her teens, but I am not descended from Sarah. Jennie was my 2nd great-grandmother, and Sarah was her maternal aunt. However, I know more about Sarah than I do about most of my direct ancestors, including Jennie and Jennie's mom, Mary. Her story is unforgettable, and think it explains a lot about the generations that followed.

The Van Buren connection is what set me on this genealogic road of discovery to begin with. The family myth was that Jennie was adopted by President Martin Van Buren after her parents died. The real mystery is: how could that myth have survived all the way to 2014 when it was debunked?

I think Jennie was a master storyteller, and she may have learned that skill from her aunt Sarah. When I started researching this part of my family, I made a list of what I knew about Jennie. Here it is, from the 3rd blog post in this series:

• adopted by Martin Van Buren
• 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 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

Here is the list now, updated with what we know: 

• Jennie was not adopted by Martin Van Buren. 
• Jennie very well may have been a hostess, but not for the Martin Van Buren family. She was probably a hostess at Sarah and James Van Buren's boarding house in Buffalo, NY.
• Jennie's father was indeed blind.
• Jennie's father's name was Benjamin F. Sly.
• Jennie's mother did not die when Jennie was young. When Jennie was 19, her mother may have married someone named John Newell/Nuell in Cherokee, Kansas.
• Jennie married Arthur Tappan Ham in 1877.
• We still don't know where Jennie was born, but we have narrowed it down to NY or IL.
• The Ham family always thought that Arthur had married beneath him.
• Jennie went to live with her aunt Sarah J. Avery Van Buren and her husband James in Buffalo, NY, in the 1870s. Jennie's mother was still alive then.
• Jennie and Arthur may have been married in Buffalo, NY.
• Jennie's mother's maiden name was Avery.

I find the 4th clue from the bottom, "The Ham family always thought that Arthur had married beneath him" quite intriguing, and I think this perception is how the Martin Van Buren myth started. 

When Jennie and Arthur married in 1877, they moved to Arthur's hometown, Harveysburg, in rural southwestern Ohio.

Harveysburg, Warren County, Ohio, year unknown
In author's private collection

Arthur Tappan Ham
in author's private collection

Jennie Louise Sly Van Buren Ham
in author's private collection

The Hams were a prominent family in Harveysburg. Arthur's great-grandfather, Rhoden Ham, moved to Ohio in 1815 and was one of the first residents of the area. The Ham family had lived there ever since.

Historical marker in Harveysburg, Ohio, mentioning Rhoden Ham, my 5th great-grandfather
in author's private collection

When Arthur married Jennie and brought her to Harveysburg from the big city of Buffalo, I imagine she was met with some skepticism. Jennie was surely determined to prove that Arthur had not married beneath him. I can just hear the conversation back in 1877:

Ham relative: "Your last name is Van Buren. Huh."

Jennie: "Yes."

Ham relative: "Are you related to President Van Buren?"

Jennie, desperate to elevate her status and gain sympathy: "Yes. He adopted me after my parents died."

We know from family letters that Jennie was "difficult," "possibly insane," and "the old battle axe." So this hypothetical attention-seeking behavior does not seem far-fetched. President Van Buren had been dead for only 15 years in 1877 and was also from New York, so the story may have seemed plausible to country folk in Ohio. I don't know if the residents of Harveysburg were impressed with Jennie's supposed adopted lineage. But the story stayed alive until 2014. That is definitely impressive.

So why did the Hams think Arthur had married beneath him? I do not think any of them ever met Jennie's real parents, Mary and Benjamin. However, I know Arthur met Jennie's aunt Sarah and uncle James Van Buren in Buffalo in 1877, before whisking her off to Ohio. 

1877 was five years before Sarah would start an infamous business, and seven years before she would be the center of a major scandal in Buffalo. When Arthur met Sarah and James, they were 43 and 67, respectively. James was a merchant, well respected, and a former elected local official. If Sarah was just a happily married boarding house owner who had welcomed - even adopted - her "orphaned" niece, then why the bad impression of the family? What Arthur probably did not know, but may have sensed, is that Sarah already had a colorful past by 1877. She was on her third marriage and had convinced her current husband James to pay for extensive renovations to the boarding house while also putting the house in her name. There was much more to Sarah than met the eye. 

From Arthur's many letters in our family collection, we know that he was a sensitive and observant man. My guess is that he sensed there was something off with Sarah. Once he and Jennie left Buffalo, they never looked back.

Mary L. Avery - What was her story?

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.

Kansas State Map, 1873. Cherokee County is in the southeast corner
Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/gmdtitlecolmaps.ks-002-21-gct00583

I took another long break from blogging about my family history. I think about this blog almost every day. What has kept me from writing more posts? So many things. Aside from crazy things like global pandemics, and more typical things like personal struggles and professional stress, the real reason I stopped blogging is that I was overwhelmed with how to write this next part. There is an unbelievable story headed your way, one with many twists and turns and, quite frankly, things that will make your head spin. It is a story that should be told - must be told! I just didn't know how to tell it. I still don't. I finally realized that I just had to jump in. And so I will. But before we dive into that story, we need to turn our attention to Jennie's mother, Mary L. Avery Sly. We know that Jennie ended up with her Aunt Sarah in Buffalo. Sarah was Mary's sister. And we know that Jennie's father, Benjamin Sly, died alone in a poor house in Cayuga County, New York. But we do not know what happened to Jennie's mother, Mary. Family lore is that she died when Jennie was young. Is that true?

Let's recap what we know so far about Mary L. Avery and her immediate family:

Mary was born in 1836 in Mentz, Cayuga County, New York. 

Mother: Polly, born 1807.

Siblings: Thomas, Sarah J, Edward, Henrietta, Enos, and George W.

Mary married Benjamin Sly sometime before 1855.

Benjamin and Mary were living in Mentz in 1855.

Daughter Jennie Louise (or: Lucy/Lucia J) was born in 1857, either in New York or Illinois.

Benjamin, Mary, and Jennie (Lucy) were living together in Mentz in 1860.

Benjamin and Mary separated sometime between 1860 and 1865.

The last census we have of Mary so far is in 1865, living with mother Polly and daughter Jennie. Benjamin is living elsewhere. Was this because Mary was already ill?

By 1870, Jennie was living with Aunt Sarah and her husband, James Van Buren in Buffalo, New York

1850    Mentz, Cayuga Co., New York        Polly Avery, 43
                                                                     Thomas Avery, 20              
                                                                     Mary Avery, 14
                                                                     Edward Avery, 10
                                                                     Henrietta, 8
                                                                     Enos Avery, 6
                                                                     George Avery, 4
                                                                     Marietta Avery, 83
                                                                     Lewis Newman, 21
                                                                     Jane Newman, 16

1855    Mentz, Cayuga Co., New York        Benjamin Sly, 32
                                                                     Mary Sly, 19

1860    Mentz, Cayuga Co., New York       Benjamin Sly, 40
                                                                    Mary L. Sly, 23
                                                                    Lucy J Sly, 3
                                                                    Samuel B Lent, 6

1865    Auburn, Cayuga Co., New York    Polly Avery, 59
                                                                   Mary Sly, 28 (listed as married)
                                                                   Thomas Avery, 37
                                                                   Edward F Avery, 24
                                                                   Lucia J Sly, 8

                                                                   (Benjamin living elsewhere, listed as married)

1870    Buffalo, Erie Co., New York         James Van Buren, 59
                                                                  Sarah J Van Buren, 38
                                                                  Henrietta Seaman, 27
                                                                  Jenny Sly, 13
                                                                  George Avery, 23

Here is the Avery family tree as I understood it:

Avery Family Tree with the new addition of Sarah J. Avery

So what happened to Mary after 1865? Did she really die young? I searched on www.ancestry.com for Mary L Sly, born in 1836 in NY. 

The first 3 results were census records I already had. The next 2 were seemingly random results from Kansas:

Search results on www.ancestry.com for Mary L. Sly

I skipped those results in Kansas. They had nothing to do with my Mary as far as I knew.

There were many other results for Mary L. Sly, but I ruled most of them out after a quick look. Then I came across this result:

Search results on www.ancestry.com for Mary L. Sly

A quick look revealed:

1870 census result for Mary L. Sly

Thomas Avery? This was Mary's oldest brother! I had found Mary, living with her brother in Trumansburg, Tompkins County, NY in 1870, at a time when Jennie was already living in Buffalo with Aunt Sarah. So Jennie had NOT moved to Buffalo because her mother had died. I needed to take a closer look at the census record. 

1870 Federal Census for Trumansburg, Tompkins County, NY
retrieved from www.ancestry.com

Nothing jumped out at me. Thomas was married with a son, and Mary was living with them. No other information was available. But this was a step in the right direction! I went into full search mode, looking at the New York 1875 State census next. Nothing. No Thomas, and no Mary. The 1880 federal census was next. Thomas was now living in Michigan, but Mary was not with him. She was nowhere to be found. I could not find any death or burial records in New York or Michigan, either. What happened to Mary after 1870?

It was time to cast a wide net again. If Thomas had moved, maybe Mary had gone somewhere else? I did a painstaking search of every record I could find between 1870 and 1880 in the United States, including mortality schedules, tax lists, vital records, and state census records. After hours and hours, I came across this unremarkable entry:

1875 Kansas State census

By then, I was so bleary-eyed and tired that I almost scrolled right past it. I didn't even know what collection I was looking at. All I knew was that I saw an M Sly born in New York close to 1836. I clicked on it.

1875 Kansas State census record for M Sly

Wait. What? Kansas? Why did this ring a bell? Surely, this was not my ancestor. Living in Baxter Springs, Cherokee County, Kansas, on her own? The record image did not reveal anything more, except that she did not have a profession listed. The census said she had arrived in Kansas from New York. Her neighbors' names did not ring any bells. What was going on here? Why was I spending time with this record? Why Kansas...? 

Then I remembered the results I had skipped over hours ago when I first tried to find Mary in 1870. I went back to those search results

Search results for Mary L. Sly

Cherokee, Kansas. Baxter Springs was in Cherokee County, Kansas. I clicked on the first result:

Sly/Nuell marriage record, 1876

I could not believe my eyes. Surely not? Then I looked at the original record:

Sly/Nuell marriage record retrieved from www.ancestry.com

There it was. MRS. Mary Sly. So she was previously married, which matched "my' Mary. She got married in Kansas in 1876 in the same county where she lived the year before. Her birth year was even correct. Was this 'my" Mary? 

I clicked on the second result:

Sly/Newell marriage record

Here, John's last name was spelled differently, but everything else was the same. Could this really be true?

And then, I remembered. Remembered something about George Avery, Mary's youngest brother. Or rather, about George's son, George Newton Avery.

In our family collection of old photographs, we have two pictures of "Newton Avery." After discovering that George Sr lived with Sarah and Jennie in Buffalo, I dug those pictures out of the file. Little George Newton was born in 1874 when Jennie was 17. No doubt she doted on her baby cousin. This would explain why the only Avery pictures we own are of George Newton. I treasure these pictures, of course, but the inscription on the back of one of them is why I dug them out of storage:

George Newton Avery, ca. 1877
in author's personal collection

George Newton Avery, ca. 1877
in author's personal collection

George Newton Avery, ca. 1890
in author's personal collection

George Newton Avery, ca. 1890
in author's personal collection

Kansas. George Newton's second picture was taken in Kansas. Did Mary L. Avery Sly, my second great-grandmother, move to Kansas sometime between 1870 and 1875 to be with her brother, George? When did George move to Kansas? Were they there at the same time?

This blog is not about George Avery and George Newton Avery, so I will not write much about them, at least not in this post. However, a close look at George Senior's census records shows that he moved back and forth between Kansas and New York a lot. His first appearance in Kansas was in July 1870. Then he was back in New York for a few years, before moving back to Kansas in the 1880's. From newspaper articles, I found that he owned several businesses in Kansas. He eventually ended up in Oklahoma before moving back to Buffalo in his early 70's, only to go back to Oklahoma where he died at the age of 77. I suspect that he lived in both Kansas and New York in the 1870's and 1880's. 

But here is the most important thing: Remember, George first moved to Kansas in 1870. He moved to - you guessed it - Baxter Springs, Cherokee County, Kansas, the same town where an M. Sly, female, from New York would show up on the state census five years later, and the same county where Mrs. Mary L. Sly would marry John Nuell (Newell) a year after that.

That cannot be a coincidence. It just cannot.

Baxter Springs, Kansas between 1870 and 1900
Image courtesy of the Kansas Historical Society

According to William G. Cutlers's History of the State of Kansas, George Avery worked in the grocery business in Baxter Springs for one year around 1870 before returning to New York for a few years. Did he work at G. W. Koontz Groceries (pictured above)? We may never know.

Back to Mary in Kansas. Unfortunately, that is where her story ends for now. After she married John Nuell (Newell), the two of them vanished. There are no records of either of them anywhere after 1876: not in Kansas, Oklahoma, New York, or any other state. The Kansas and the Cherokee County Historical Societies have no records of them after the wedding. They just disappeared. 

Which brings me back to Jennie. We have wondered about how much she knew about her father's demise after the fire and ending up in a poor house. How much did she know about her mother? Did Jennie end up in Buffalo with Aunt Sarah because her mother had plans to move to Kansas? Did Jennie know that her mother moved there? Jennie was close to George, so surely she must have known that her mother moved there? 

All we know for certain is that Jennie lived with Aunt Sarah and Sarah's husband, James Van Buren, in Buffalo. Then Jennie met Arthur Ham and moved to Ohio in 1877. Jennie was close to James Van Buren. We know this because she had two of his obituaries in her scrapbook, but none for her Aunt Sarah or either of her parents. She had the Van Buren spoons and took the last name Van Buren. So what was her life like in Buffalo? Why did it leave such an impression? To answer that question, we need to know more about Sarah J. Avery Van Buren, Jennie's aunt.