Sara Ditto Weiss - Before We Say Ayon Mûya̤

Birth

5 Jan 1834 • Rushville, Fairfield County, Ohio

I was unable to find a birth or baptismal record for Sara, nor could I locate these for any of her ten siblings, so the names of her parents is still a mystery.

Sara reported her age inconsistently over the course of her life. In an interview after her death, Adolphe claimed she was 70 when she passed away, and this matches the birth year provided by the state of Missouri on her death certificate. This is the value I use here, which means that in her teens and twenties her age was off by as much as five years.

Sara’s middle name “Ditto” might seem to be a transcription artifact, but it appears in full in multiple death records. Her name is recorded as “Sara D. ____” consistently in most other records.

Residence

Somerset, Perry County, Ohio • age 6

Sara Ditto Weiss (16) marries William F. Möeller (44)

4 Jun 1850 • Somerset, Perry County, Ohio • age 16

Married by Rev A, J. Weddell, at the Lutheran Church in Somerset.

Residence

Reading, Perry County, Ohio • age 16

Birth of daughter Dora E. Möeller

abt 1850 • Ohio • age 16

There is no birth record for this child, only a record of a 6-year old girl living with Sara, Bernard, and Ada in Iowa, and a later record indicating that Sara had given birth to three children, with two deceased. After this census, Dora disappears from the historical record.

Sara never mentioned Dora in her books—only Bernard and her stillborn sisters ever appear as spirits. I chose to honor that omission and shifted Bernard’s birth into Dora’s timeline.

Birth of son Carl Bernard Möeller

Somerset, Perry County, Ohio • age 20

Birth of daughter Adelaide Carolyn Möeller

25 Dec 1855 • Somerset, Ohio • age 21

Residence

278 Fairfield, Jefferson County, Iowa • age 22

In this census record, Sara is listed as married but her husband is not in residence. She does live with her two children, and Louisa, her step-daughter, as well as a male McBride relative who was possibly one her brothers, though his first name is illegible.

My assumption is that she and Möeller were either separated or divorced at this point, though I could not find any definitive divorce record.

Residence

15 Nov 1862 • St. Louis, Missouri • age 28

I could not locate Sara in the 1860 census; either her name was mistranscribed or she was in transit. I can first confirm her presence in St. Louis through a newspaper notice indicating that she has undelivered mail to retrieve from the post office, under the name "Sarah D. Moeller," but I am unsure where she was living at the time.

William F. Möeller (61) is remarried to Martha Stevenson (33)

age 33

We can presume Sara and William Möeller were divorced prior to this year.

Residence

May 1873 • 827 Chouteau Ave., St. Louis County, Missouri • age 39

Sara (39) married to Adolphe Weiss (28)

5 May 1873 • St. Louis, Missouri

The ceremony was performed by Rev. John W. Robinson, of the Methodist Episcopalian Church, South, at Sara’s residence.

Ada married to Chauncy Humphrey Crosby

17 Feb 1875 • St. Louis, Missouri • age 41

Residence

Washington Ave. Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri • age 42

William F. Möeller died, age 71

age 43

History of the Big Bonanza published

I used this first-person account of touring the mines of Virginia City, Nevada to inform Sara’s description of her visit to her sister. In Journeys, she mentions she asserts that she has descended into “the deepest places on earth,” and this account makes it clear that, perhaps surprisingly, the actively-worked Comstock mines were open to tourists.

Residence

1115 Washington Ave., St. Louis, Missouri • age 46

This is the boarding house that Sara and Adolphe shared with Alberton Blanchard who was 25 at the time. He would later write in support of Sara’s story of Ada’s difficult birth, though he was careful to note he was not a witness, only someone who heard about it from Sara shortly after it allegedly transpired.

I was able to locate a letter from him to a family friend, written in 1930 when he was 75 years old. In it he describes his lifelong isolation, being neither fully hearing nor fluent in sign language. He says that he took refuge in books, and long rambles outdoors in Vermont where he settled late in life. He was fascinated at the time by Arthur Eddington’s work of transcendental physics, The Nature of the Physical World. I like to imagine that his conversations with Sara were of a similar bent.

“The longer I live,” he wrote, “the more I believe that the great majority of mankind are pretty decent—and Improving.” He passed away in 1946, at the age of 90.

Sara visits her sister Nancy in Virginia City, Nevada

5 Sep 1880 • St. Louis, Missouri • age 46

Census record records Nancy as being ill with influenza, and living at 141 North B. Street which she operated as a boarding house. Nancy would recover and in 1883 visit Sara in St. Louis after attending the funeral of their brother John Wesley.

Sara travels to New York City for Ada’s pregnancy

Oct 1881 • Manhattan, New York • age 47

In an interview with the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Sara would recount the “public” version of this story—of the ice storm she dreamt about and her inexplicable ability to successfully midwife her daughter’s difficult birth. In real life, this was the birth of Ada’s son, not Claire, who was already a young girl. I changed this in my story to give Sara and Claire a special connection.

Residence

St Charles Flats, St. Louis, Missouri • age 49

Death of Bernard Möeller (age 36)

19 Jan 1890 • 46 Bellevue-Place (Crosby residence), Chicago, Illinois • age 56

Adolphe establishes a new Spiritualists Society

14 Dec 1891 • St. Louis, Missouri

Residence

3710 Olive St., St. Louis, Missouri

Sara joins the Board of the Spiritualist society

17 Apr 1892 • St. Louis, Missouri • age 58

Long article with good detail about Sara’s group and social set.

Illness

age 58

This is the period in which Sara reported she became ill and began to journey to Mars with her spirit band.

World Columbian Exposition and Spiritualist conference

Sep 1893 • Chicago, Illinois • age 59

Sara recalls this trip in Journeys, making it clear that she drew inspiration from the White City when constructing her vision of a utopian Mars. I was able to independently confirm her presence at the National Delegate Convention of Spiritualists.

Residence

2130 Olive St., St. Louis, Missouri • age 59

Sara, Ada, and Claire attend a party at Florence Boogher’s home

6 Jan 1899 • St. Louis, Missouri • age 65

It is reported that Claire wore “white organdie over white silk, trimmed with an applique of bowknots in black lace, with gorgette and girdle of American beauty mirror velvet.” There are other newspaper accounts of Ada and Sara attending society events in St. Louis, but this was the most detailed.

Florence Boogher would later divorce her husband on the grounds of desertion. My copy of Sara’s book is inscribed to her.

Residence

4326 Cook Ave., St. Louis, Missouri • age 65

This would be Sara’s last residence. Today this address is an empty lot, though there are some remaining buildings on the street, in various states of revival and disrepair, that reflect the architectural style of Sara and Adolphe’s home.

Less than a decade after Sara’s death, this neighborhood would be the site of a racist terror campaign perpetrated by white residents designed to drive away a single Black family who purchased property on the street.

Nearly all of the homes, churches, and businesses that Sara and her family frequented in St. Louis eventually fell to brutal urban renewal and neglect, and no longer exist.

Interview with the St. Louis Dispatch published

2 Jun 1901 • St. Louis, Missouri • age 67

Full article facsimile

Sara travels to NYC to publish her book

14 Aug 1901 • St. Louis, Missouri • age 67

Journeys to the Planet Mars published

age 69

Death

22 Mar 1904 • 4326 Cook Ave., St. Louis, Missouri • age 70

Sara Weiss, a middle-aged woman with slightly curly hair, with her hand resting against her face.