ANCESTOR NO. 25: SARAH ELIZABETH LAING (1838-1911)

 Sarah Elizabeth Laing was orphaned before she was ten years old, worked as a hired servant as a young woman, and went on to build a family of her own that carries forward to this day. Piecing her story back together from old census pages, deeds, vital records, and a family Bible has been a bit like assembling a puzzle with only half the pieces.

My grandfather’s grandmother Sarah was born on August 22, 1838, in New York City, the fourth of seven children born to Abraham Laing, a stonecutter, and Sarah C. "Sally" Hale.[1] Her father's family, the Laings, had been rooted in New Jersey since the 1670s; her mother's family, the Hales, had lived around Newbury, Massachusetts, since the 1630s. Sarah was born into a family with terrible health. Her little sister Bethiah died in 1842. Her father died of “congestion of lungs” in the spring of 1846, when Sarah was just seven.[2] Two years later, in the summer of 1848, her mother died of consumption (tuberculosis), when Sarah was nine.[3] Within a few weeks, Sarah's grandfather on her mother's side died too, leaving no close family able to step in and keep the children together.[4] Of her four grandparents, only one, Sarah E. Ludlow Laing, was still alive. Of her father’s siblings, only one (Lewis) living nearby would live long enough to help her.

Neither Sarah nor her brothers, Robert, Matthias, and baby Abraham, were found in the 1850 census. Sarah's sister Emily lived with the Herman Foster family in Riverhead, Long Island, in 1850.[5] She eventually married into that family. Their brother Abraham ended up in Pennsylvania, and her brothers Matthias and Robert probably died before 1872. No record has yet turned up showing where nine-year-old Sarah herself was. Wherever she was, she seems to have grown up largely apart from her brothers and sisters. This is shown by her family Bible, where next to the names of her brothers, there was only a long line, no death dates.

However, in 1850, her uncle Lewis Laing petitioned the probate court in New Jersey to divide the land left when Sarah’s great-grandfather Abraham Laing died about 1804. His application named Robert, Matthias, Sarah, Emily and Abraham Jr. as heirs through their father. As a result, all the children received a city lot in Rahway.[6] In 1855, Sarah, age 17, lived with her uncle Lewis and her grandmother Sarah E. Ludlow in New York City, and worked making vests. None of the other children lived with that family when the census enumerator visited.[7] There is no record that says how many years she lived with her uncle.

By the time she turned 21 in 1859, Sarah was still living in New York City. That same week, she sold the lot she inherited to Matthias Ludlow, her father’s cousin in Rahway.

The following year, the 1860 census found Sarah, 22 years old, working as a live-in domestic servant for a childless couple in Manhattan.[8] Her uncle Lewis had recently moved to Michigan.

On March 15, 1865, Sarah married William Todd Ludlow, the son of the very man she'd sold her land to six years earlier.[9] The two were second cousins on the Ludlow side, which implies she had stayed in touch with that part of the family. The wedding was presided over by a minister of the Norfolk Street Baptist Church in Manhattan. She was 26 and her husband was 24.

Over the next twelve years, Sarah gave birth to six children:

-Matthias, named after her father-in-law, was born on March 29, 1866, in Rahway, New Jersey[10]

- Frank and Hattie Eloise, twins born in 1868 in New York City. Frank did not survive birth, and Hattie Eloise lived only three days. How awful to have to go through pregnancy and childbirth and have no baby afterward! We only know about them from the dates she wrote in the family Bible.

- Lewis W., named after her uncle, born February 11, 1870, in Rahway

- Laura Eloise, born on November 18,1871 in Rahway: she was my grandfather’s mother.        The Bible says 1872, but the city birth register recorded it in 1871.[11]

- Ida Victoria, born October 2, 1877, the youngest, born in Rahway[12]

For about twenty years the family farmed in Rahway, New Jersey, with William working the land and Sarah raising their children. In 1872, after her brother Matthias’ death, Sarah bought one of his Rahway lots, and in 1872, her sister Emily sold her lot to Sarah.[13] But by the early 1890s, they left the farm behind and moved to Brooklyn, where William found work first as a florist and plant salesman. Their son Matthias went into the hardware business in Newark, owning a store that took up an entire city block, according to my grandparents. Laura moved to Newark with her husband Eugene, but Lewis was in Brooklyn. All three started having children of their own in the 1890s, although only Laura’s branch of the family still has descendants today (neither Matthias nor Lewis’ children married and had children).[14]

By 1900, Sarah and William were empty-nesters living in a rented two-family house on Gates Avenue in Brooklyn.[15] That very month, Sarah’s daughter Ida, only 22, died at the Long Island State Hospital. We can only imagine why Ida was hospitalized, how long she was mentally ill, and what the family’s life was like during her teens and young adulthood.

William died in June 1905, after nearly forty years of marriage.[16] After William's death, Sarah's trail grows harder to follow. She doesn't appear in the 1910 census, and no city directory lists her between 1906 and 1911.[17] She resurfaces only in her death certificate: Sarah died on April 3, 1911, in Newark, New Jersey, at seven in the morning, apparently in her sleep, of a stroke. She was 72 years old. Unexpectedly, the informant on her death certificate, George Ludlow, was not one of her children or grandchildren, but who lived at the same address as she did.[18]

Curiously, she wasn't living with either of her two surviving children, who were also in Newark at the time, her son Matthias and her daughter Laura. Instead, she was staying in a boarding household with a family who doesn't appear to have been related at all.[19] Why she wasn't with her own children in her final months remains one of the open questions in her story. She was laid to rest by her husband, at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.[20] Surprisingly, neither has a grave marker.

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[1] Sarah E. (Laing) Ludlow Family Bible Records, 1809-1933, The Holy Bible (Philadelphia: E. Gately & Co., 1881), “Births”; privately held by Lise Doss, Austin, Texas, 2026.

[2] "New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F6MP-Y2F:  accessed 3 June 2020), Abraham Laing,

[3] Register of Deaths Aug. 21 1847 to June 1 1849 (New York: City Inspectors Dept., 1849), 208, 1 June 1848, Sarah C. Laing; “New York, New York, U.S., Vital Records, Births 1847-1897, Marriages 1847-1903, Deaths 1798-1900,” database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/62518/images/rec0051_03_03_016-00212?pId=595102: accessed 3 Aug. 2026) > image 213 of 411.

[4] “New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F69F-62K: accessed 14 Oct. 2021), Robert Hale, 8 Aug. 1848, image 167; citing Death, Manhattan, New York, New York, United States, New York Municipal Archives, New York; FHL microfilm 447,552.

[5] 1850 U. S. census, Riverhead, Suffolk County, New York, p. 262, family 229, Emily H. Lane [sic]  in household of Herman D. Foster.

[6] Surrogate’s Court, Middlesex County, New Jersey, Division and Partition of Lands, 1787-1850, 4:1453-1472, 20 Dec. 1850; images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G933-PXZ3?view=explore : accessed 8 Aug. 2026) > IGN 5670292 > images 181-192.

[7] 1855 New York State Census, New York County, Ward 12, New York City, ED # 3, unpaginated, dwelling 130, family 173, Sarah E. Lang in household of Louis L. Lang; “New York, U.S., State Census, 1855,” database and images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7181/: accessed 5 Aug. 2026) > image 30 of 62.

[8] “1860 United States Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com:

accessed 20 Nov. 2020); entry for Sarah E. Laing in household of John Loring, Sixth Division, 9th Ward, New York, New York County, New York, p. 115 (penned), line 36, dwelling 421, family 888, image 117 of 348; from NARA M653, FHL film 803796.

[9] “Marriages and Deaths,” New York Daily Herald (New York, N.Y.), 18 Mar. 1865, p. 2, col. 5; images, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com: accessed 14 Nov. 2020).

[10] Sarah E. (Laing) Ludlow Family Bible Records, 1809-1933, The Holy Bible (Philadelphia: E. Gately & Co., 1881), “Births”; privately held by Lise Doss, Austin, Texas, 2020.

[11] Union County, New Jersey, Birth Record, 18 Nov. 1871, Laura L. Ludlow, CD : 419; “New Jersey, U.S., Birth, Marriage and Death Records, 1711-1878,” database and images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/62483/: accessed 10 Aug. 2026) > image 494 of 557.

[12] Union County, New Jersey, Birth Record, 2 Oct. 1877, Ida V. Ludlow, CP : 421; “New Jersey, U.S., Birth, Marriage and Death Records, 1711-1878,” database and images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/62483/: accessed 10 Aug. 2026) > image 512 of 584.

[13] Union County, New Jersey, Deeds, 66: 156, Abraham Laing & wife to Sarah E. Ludlow, 27 Jan. 1872; “Deeds, 1857-1935,” FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-J3DZ-H9W4?i=665&cat=222831: accessed 11 Apr. 2021) > Deeds, v. 66 1871-1872 > image 666, FHL film 1887517, DGS no. 8715588. Union County, New Jersey, Deeds, 71: 508-509, Emily H. Laing to Sarah E. Ludlow, 27 Jan. 1872; “Deeds, 1857-1935,” FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-V3DZ-49TH-6?i=796&cat=222831:  accessed 11 Apr. 2021) > Deeds, v. 69-71 1872 > image 797, FHL film 1887519, DGS no. 8715590.

[14] Per census records in New Jersey from 1900 through 1950.

[15] “1900 United States Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com:

accessed 16 Nov. 2020); entry for Sarah Ludlow in household of William Ludlow, 23rd Ward, Borough of Brooklyn, New York City, Kings County, New York, ED 391, p. 7 B (penned), line 77, 535 Gates Avenue, dwelling 75, family 161, image 18 of 37; from NARA T623, RG 29, FHL film 1241061.

[16] “William Todd Ludlow,” Brooklyn Times Union (Brooklyn, N.Y.), 12 June 1905, p. 12, col. 4; image, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/555950760/?terms=Ludlow&match=1: accessed 19 Nov. 2020)

[17] Negative search results on Ancestry and FamilySearch.

[18] Essex County, New Jersey, death certificate no. 3250, (3 April 1911) Sarah E. Ludlow; New Jersey State Archives, Trenton, N.J.

[19] Newark city directory listings for 1910-1912 on Ancestry for the address on the death certificate, as well as listings for Sarah’s three children.

[20] Green-Wood Cemetery, Burial Register, 49:106, April 1911; “Burial and Vital Records: 1840-1937,” database with images, Green-Wood Cemetery (https://www.green-wood.com/scans/Volume%2049/Volume%2049_106.jpg: accessed 16 Aug. 2026).