Notes for SARAH ELIZABETH BEARDSLEY VAN VLESOR:

Daughter of John Wells and Elizabeth (Tuthill) Beardsley.
Born: October 24, 1811 in Unknown.
Died: April 10, 1901 in Lyon's Farms, Essex County, New Jersey.
Buried: April 14, 1901 in Evergreen Cemetery, Hillside, Union County, New Jersey.
Married: Baily Van Velsor November 26, 1832 in Lyon's Farm, Essex County, New Jersey.

Sarah Elizabeth Beardsley was the third of nine children born to John Wells Beardsley and Elizabeth Tuthill. Sarah was a direct descendant of William and Mary Beardsley, two of the original founders of Stamford, Connecticut. One page 496 of "THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF WALT WHITMAN", Whitman states:
"Baily Van Velsor of Newark - he married a widow who has two or three children". NOTE: Sarah Elizabeth Beardsley Van Velsor was just barely 21 when she married Baily, who was then 31 years old. There is no record of the above mentioned two or three children.

Baily and Sarah Elizabeth Beardsley Van Velsor later lived on Broome Street in Lower Manhattan and their daughter, Jessie Louisa, was born there in April of 1843. She was the only one of their six children who was born in New York City. Baily and Sarah's Broome Street residence is where Walt Whitman, Sarah Margaret Fuller, Charles Anderson Dana and Horace Greeley collaborated many times as their guests. In fact, there was a small literary and philosophical coterie which met regularly at the Broome Street residence in the mid 1840's. Fuller was the editor-in-chief of the transcendentalist magazine, "The Dial", one of the most important periodicals in American literary history, and a writer of literary criticism for the New York Tribune from 1844 to 1846. Her book "Papers on Literature and Art" in 1846, grew out of her contributions to the Tribune. Dana was a writer for "The Dial" and managing editor of the New York Tribune. Greeley was the founder of the Tribune, at the time boasting the largest daily circulation in America. Walt Whitman lived in Manhattan until 1845 while working for a number of newspaper in the city.