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Susan Higginbotham · (This post was last modified: 03-30-2016 10:05 PM by Susan Higginbotham.)

Sarah is listed as "Sarah A. Spencer" on Find-A-Grave because that is the name she was buried under, meaning that the entries for her husbands will link to that name, not to her maiden name or to her previous married names. Linking Jacob M. Long to "Sarah A. Spencer" doesn't imply that she was using the name "Spencer" at the time of her marriage to Long. It simply reflects her name at the time of her death.

Some Find-A-Grave contributors who create entries will give a woman's maiden name and add some genealogical information, but whoever made the entry for Sarah probably didn't have any of this information. Other contributors on Find-A-Grave can suggest changes and additions to an entry, but it's up to the person who made the entry to approve them.

Rowan Slater isn't linked to Sarah on Find-A-Grave simply because he doesn't have an entry on Find-A-Grave, which requires a known place of burial.

If Sarah wanted to marry a second time just to hide, why wait until December 1867? And why make her marriage public? Her name had been in the papers for the conspiracy trial, again in the papers for her divorce in 1866, again in the papers for John Surratt's trial earlier in 1867, and once again in the papers (as Nettie Slater) when she married Long. If she remarried simply in order to lose the "Slater" name and to evade trial, it would have behooved her to do so immediately after her divorce instead of waiting until after John Surratt's trial.

Incidentally, there's an 1874 lawsuit in New York involving a married woman, Sarah A. Long, who incurred expenses when setting up a house of her own. Whether this is the same Sarah I can't say without seeing the actual court filings, but it is certainly consistent with the possibility of Sarah marrying Jacob and later separating from him.

https://books.google.com/books?id=FVMtAQ...an&f=false

(03-30-2016 08:21 PM)Gene C Wrote: If Sarah (Antoinette/Nettie) was divorced from Rowan Slater, why not just drop that last name when she got divorced and go back to her maiden name of Gilbert?

That's exactly what Nora Fitzpatrick Whelan's stepdaughter did after her divorce--reverted informally to her maiden name, although occasionally a mention of her under her married name crops up.