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Creator
Beers, Sarah Yardley, 1876-1946
Call number
MssCol 24818
Physical description
1.35 linear feet (2 boxes, 3 volumes, 1 oversize folder)
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Sarah Yardley Beers family papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library
Repository
Manuscripts and Archives Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.

Sarah Yardley Beers (1876-1946) was the great-niece of abolitionist James Miller McKim (1810-1874) and his wife Sarah A. McKim (1813-1891). Born in North Carolina, Sarah McKim Yardley was the daughter of Ellen Mulvany (1843-1924) of Millersville, Pennsylvania and William Buckman Yardley (1848-1885) of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Her mother married Edwin Ruthven Armstrong in 1886. In 1904 Sarah McKim Yardley married businessman Louis Gilbert Beers (1862-1935). Sarah Yardley Beers, as she was known, was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and an officer of the Broad Seal Chapter of Trenton, New Jersey. The Sarah Yardley Beers family papers, 1807-1983, comprise her genealogical correspondence and research papers relating to her maternal ancestry, particularly the McKim, Miller and Mulvany families of Pennsylvania; her mother's school autograph album and photograph album; family photographs and certificates; clippings and ephemera; and a Bible containing Miller family data and her parents' wedding certificate. Also present is a small amount of genealogical correspondence of her son Yardley Beers, 1965 and 1983; an engraved portrait of Lucy McKim Garrison by Gustav Kruell, circa 1890s; and printed materials.

Biographical/historical information

Sarah Yardley Beers (1876-1946) was the great-niece of abolitionist James Miller McKim (1810-1874) and his wife Sarah A. McKim (1813-1891). Born in North Carolina on September 30, 1876, Sarah McKim Yardley was the daughter of Ellen Mulvany (1843-1924) of Millersville, Pennsylvania and William Buckman Yardley (1848-1885) of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Her mother married Edwin Ruthven Armstrong in 1886. In 1904 Sarah McKim Yardley married businessman Louis Gilbert Beers (1862-1935), associated for many years with the New Jersey Wire Cloth Company. Sarah Yardley Beers, as she was known, was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and an officer of the Broad Seal Chapter of Trenton, New Jersey. She died in Trenton on February 20, 1946.

Yardley Beers, Ph.D. (1913-2005), the son of Sarah McKim Yardley and Louis G. Beers, was a scientist and author. Beers conducted research at M.I.T. during World War II, joining the faculty of the Physics Department at New York University after the war. He later worked at the National Bureau of Standards in Colorado. He and his wife Dorothy Sands Beers (1917-2015) were survived by two children, G. Jerome and Deborah.

Sarah's mother, Ellen Mulvany Yardley Armstrong (1843-1924) was the daughter of Samuel P. Mulvany (1819-1858), a resident of Maryland, and Mary McKim (1822-1850) of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. They married in 1842. Daniel H. Mulvany, Esq. of Norristown, Pennsylvania was her uncle; Thomas and Mary Hitner Mulvany of Barren Hill, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, were her grandparents. Mary McKim and her brother James Miller McKim numbered among the children of James McKim and Catherine Miller of Carlisle (married 1808; both died in 1831). James Miller McKim's children Lucy McKim (1842-1877) and the architect Charles Follen McKim (1847-1909) were thus Ellen's first cousins. Lucy McKim married Wendell P. Garrison (1840-1907), the son of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879). Sarah Yardley Beers claimed her D.A.R. membership through the service of Catherine Miller's father Jeremiah Miller (died 1817). The father of Miller's son-in-law, a Northern Irish emigrant and farmer also named James McKim, served on the Pennsylvania frontier during the Revolution.

Samuel P. Mulvany was buried at Barren Hill on July 25, 1858. After her father's death, Ellen Mulvany lived with various McKim, Miller and Mulvany relatives. She attended the Millersville State Normal School in Pennsylvania in the early 1860s, taught school, and married William Buckman Yardley on March 31, 1870. Their wedding took place at the James Miller McKim residence in Llewellyn Park, West Orange, New Jersey. In 1886 she married Edwin Ruthven Armstrong of Ireland (1846-1921), a Protestant Episcopal minister who retired from Trinity Church in Sharon Springs, New York. She signed her married name as Ellen M. Yardley and later Ellen M. Armstrong. Her middle initial M may refer to Mulvany rather than McKim; the name Mulvany is sometimes spelled Mulvaney in family records.

John L. M. (John Linn McKim) Yardley (1882-1960), Sarah's brother, was an engineer. He held degrees from Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania, and served as a captain in the U.S. Army during World War I. He married Euphemia Baggaley (1897-1949) and they had two sons, Ralph B. Yardley (1918-1995) and John Linn McKim Yardley, Jr. (1928-2016). He married, second, Margaret Daye Fell in 1951.

Scope and arrangement

The Sarah Yardley Beers family papers, 1807-1983, comprise her genealogical correspondence and research papers relating to her maternal ancestry, particularly the McKim, Miller and Mulvany families of Pennsylvania; her mother's school autograph album and photograph album; family photographs and certificates; clippings and ephemera; and a Bible containing Miller family data and her parents' wedding certificate. Also present is a small amount of genealogical correspondence of her son Yardley Beers, 1965 and 1983; an engraved portrait of Lucy McKim Garrison by Gustav Kruell, circa 1890s; and printed materials.

Sarah Yardley Beers's correspondence, 1891-1927, consists of letters received from her mother Ellen M. Armstrong, 1891-1904, and from Sarah A. McKim, John Linn McKim Yardley, members of the Hannan family, and others, 1909-1927, regarding family history. Armstrong encloses letters from her uncle John Linn McKim to herself regarding McKim family history; also included is a letter from John Linn McKim to her husband E.R. Armstrong, and her genealogical notes. Genealogical research papers, 1909-1921, consist of handwritten and typescript genealogical notes, charts, and documents, compiled by Sarah Yardley Beers and others on the McKim, Miller and Mulvany families, as well as the Hannan and Speakman families. A summary of John Linn McKim Yardley's World War I service, 1921, is included. Largely undated, the bulk of the papers were compiled by Sarah Yardley Beers circa 1910 in connection with her D.A.R. application; there are some later additions by family members.

Yardley Beers genealogical correspondence with James W. Gould, 1983, includes charts of William Lloyd Garrison's descendants. A 1965 letter from John (John Linn McKim Yardley, Jr.) is also present.

Ellen M. Armstrong's autograph album, 1862-1865, contains autograph remembrances addressed to Ellen Mulvany, known as Ellie and Ella, written mainly at Millersville, Pennsylvania, where she attended the State Normal School. Some individuals are also represented in the photograph album. An entry at the end of the book is written by her cousin Lucy McKim.

Family photographs, dating from approximately the 1840s to 1941, belonged to Sarah Yardley Beers or her mother Ellen M. Armstrong. A photograph album, circa 1860-circa 1890s, contains cartes-de-visite of relatives and friends of Ellen M. Armstrong, including members of the McKim and Garrison families. A list of "Millersville people" is written at end (see autograph album above). Many identifications are in the hand of Sarah Yardley Beers. Loose photographs, circa 1860-1941, are predominantly of her brother John Linn McKim Yardley (1882-1960), from childhood through adulthood, and his immediate family. Pictures of Sarah Yardley Beers (1876-1946) date from childhood through early womanhood. Other family members represented include J. Marshall Hannan, Quaker relative Elizabeth Lloyd, James Miller McKim, Sarah A. McKim, and Lucy McKim Garrison, Wendell P. Wendell Garrison, and their children. There are also two daguerreotypes of Mary McKim Mulvany (died November 22, 1850), circa 1840-circa 1850, and a large albumen photograph of Sarah A. McKim in middle age, probably 1860s. The collection also includes a wood-engraving by Gustav Kruell taken from a photograph of Lucy McKim Garrison, printed on tissue paper, circa 1890s. There are no photographs of William Lloyd Garrison in the collection.

The Miller family Bible (Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1807), according to Ellen M. Armstrong's notes, belonged to Susan Miller and was given to Armstrong by a member of the Hannan family. Listed on the verso of an illustration between pages 836 and 837 are Miller family births, 1781-1796, and deaths, 1817-1878, followed by a tipped-in marriage certificate for William B. Yardley and Ellen Mulvany at West Orange, New Jersey, March 31, 1870. Witnesses include J. Miller McKim, Sarah A. McKim, Lucy McKim Garrison, and Wendell P. Garrison. Photocopies of the entries and certificate are found in the genealogical research papers.

Certificates, 1881-1955, are academic, religious and membership certificates pertaining to Sarah Yardley Beers, Ellen M. Armstrong, and Yardley Beers.

Clippings and ephemera, 1886-1938, pertain to life events of members of the McKim, Garrison, Lloyd, and Hannan families.

Printed materials comprise a memorial volume for Sarah A. McKim, 1891, inscribed to Ellen M. Armstrong by Wendell P. Garrison, and a New York University yearbook, The Violet, 1958, dating from Yardley Beer's professorship there.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Donated by Deborah Yardley Beers-Jones, 2018.

Processing information

Processed by Susan P. Waide, 2019

Using the collection

Location

Manuscripts and Archives Division
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788
Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room, Third Floor, Room 328