Meredith Beyers (1899-1996)-Part Four

After fleeing Chicago and his wife's suit for divorce, Joseph A. Sadony went to Michigan, and it was there that I believe he lived out the rest of his life. His story is tangled. Some of what he claimed was almost certainly made up. He was a called a psychic and a philosopher. Implications are that he was some kind of scientist, researcher, or inventor, too. We might just as easily say that he was a fraud, a scoundrel, a crackpot, and a fake who nonetheless may have believed in his own fakery. Sadony was also an occultist of one kind or another who lived at a time when the bounds between religion and science (or history), at least in the popular imagination, were fluid and uncertain. That mixture has yielded all kinds of pseudosciences, pseudo-religions, and pseudo-history. Thus we have Mormonism, Marxism, Theosophy, Christian Science, Lysenkoism, and later still Dianetics and Scientology--which bear, with their creator, some resemblance to Sadony and his beliefs. We can add to all of that, I think, Sadony's own Society of Psychological Science, Institute of Mental and Athletic Development, and Society of Psychical Research of Chicago and the many more brainchildren of his life's work in Michigan. The main thrust of all of this seems to have been to establish or describe (like Charles Fort) some kind of continuity between science and religion, between the material and the spiritual or supernatural. Did he ever succeed in his work? I'm not sure that anyone can say. Whatever he did or failed to do, Sadony created and shaped a world for and around himself and his family, a world from his own vision and his own efforts. In that, he might be called a great man, great in his qualities and accomplishments but also in his flaws and failings.

* * *

Joseph A. Sadony married Mary Lillian Kochem (or Kochems) on July 3, 1906. Having been born in September 1886, she was at the time of their wedding nineteen years old. Sadony's marrying Mary Lillian would have made him (like Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard) a bigamist but his two sons by her legitimate (I think). In any event, Sadony, who lived in Michigan as a child, had acquired a place in or near Montague, Michigan, in April 1906. (It was purchased as a winter home for his society by a wealthy woman of Milwaukee.) When things fell apart in Chicago in 1908, he seems to have repaired to that place, and it was in Michigan that he was counted in the U.S. Census of 1910 with his wife, called Lillian; their two very young sons, Joseph A. Sadony, Jr., and Arthur J. Sadony; his daughter, who was called Stella (meaning star), aged eleven; and a servant, Florence Smith, aged thirty-two. Stella Sadony was almost certainly Mercedes Sadony, daughter of Sadony's first wife, Lola P. Sadony. Thereby hangs another tale of scandal:

From The Inter Ocean, Chicago, Illinois, April 26, 1908, page 2.

The encampment in Michigan, called "Camp Philosophy," must have, at some point, given way to a new, permanent home for Sadony, his family, and his followers. By 1909, they were living in "the Valley of the Pines," an 80-acre farm located southwest of Montague and not far from the shoreline of Lake Michigan. (The farm is still in the Sadony family, who have lent their surname to nearby Sadony Bayou and Sadony Road or Sadony Bayou Road.) In the 1920 U.S. Census, the Sadony household was more or less the same as it had been ten years before except that Pearl M. Smith had taken the place of her sister Florence. (Both had been followers of Sadony since his Chicago days.) By 1930, though, more were added to the household: Charles Abel, caretaker; Marie St. Claire, an elderly widow of Wisconsin (and perhaps the original benefactress of the Sadony society); and (finally, finally) Meredith Beyers, listed as a lodger and as a secretary and writer. The Sadony household was even larger in 1940. It included all of those who had lived there in 1930, as well as Edith Smith, cook (another Smith sister); and R. John De Fraga, an electrician, machinist, or machine operator.

In 1910, Sadony had given his occupation as farmer, in 1920 as machinist, and in 1930 as newspaper writer. (He wrote a newspaper column and other newspaper items for decades. He also wrote many books.) In 1940, though, he and his younger son were engaged in "educational research," and it was in this field that Meredith Beyers is supposed to have worked as well, for the elder Sadony's Educational Research Laboratories.

At some point, Beyers made the transition into more conventional research. Sadony's two sons seem to have done the same in their founding and operation of Sadony Brothers Boat Works, which later became Valley Research Corporation. But there are gaps in the record of Meredith Beyers' life, and I'm afraid I can't fill them. He attended and probably graduated from Northwestern University in the late 1910s and/or early 1920s. From as early as 1930 to as late as 1940, he lived and worked at the Valley of the Pines with Joseph Sadony. Sometime in the 1940s or '50s, he branched out into more conventional work at Convair and Ryan Electronics, located in California. In May 1925, though, he had had a poem, "The Golden Nail," in Volume 1, Number 1 of a journal called The Great Work in America, published by John E. Richardson of Hollywood, California. The lead article in that issue, after Richardson's introduction (or manifesto), is one by its associate editor, none other than Joseph A. Sadony. (1) And in his introduction, Richardson mentioned Meredith Beyers, or "Meredith Beyers," as his name appears, "a young man [. . .] who has come to fill a most important place in Joseph's life and work." (p. 6) By that, we can assume, I think, that Joseph Sadony was a formative influence on Meredith Beyers. Whether that influence held after Beyers left the Valley of the Pines and the state of Michigan, I'm not sure that anyone can say. Maybe there are answers buried in the papers left behind after Sadony's death in 1960. (Sadly, all things must pass.) Maybe the books on which Beyers was working late in life carried on in some way Sadony's researches. It seems certain to me that at least one likeness of Meredith Beyers is in the photo gallery on the official Joseph A. Sadony website, called The Valley of the Pines and reachable by this link. The last gap in Beyers' life, of course, concerns his final years, from 1978 to his death on April 27, 1996, at age ninety-seven. It seems to me that he would have had voluminous papers, but if a man dies without children, siblings, nieces, or nephews, where do his possessions go? I suppose into the lost and irretrievable past, as all things eventually do.

* * *

The story of Joseph A. Sadony is immense and untellable in a blog, probably even in a book. It's nice to know a little of how things turned out, though, and so here some facts on a few of the principals:

• Joseph Alexander Sadony, born February 22, 1877, Montabaur, Germany; died September 1960, Muskegon, Michigan; buried Valley of the Pines Cemetery, a place that may be hidden on his farm near Montague, Michigan. Sadony was married twice (I think), first to Lola Pauline Mielke, then to Mary Lillian Kochem or Kochems. These two marriages in fact overlapped. The first presumably ended in divorce, probably sometime in mid to late 1908. The second ended with his death.

• Lola Pauline (Mielke) Sadony Lincoln, born August 1, 1879, New Ulm, Minnesota; died March 19, 1960, presumably in Chicago. She married William Henley Lincoln (1880-?), November 3, 1908, in Indiana, after her presumed divorce from Sadony. She was also known for some reason as Lizzie A. Mielke and Lizzie A. Sadony.

• Mercedes P. Sadony Lincoln Bierbaum, aka Stella Sadony, born November 28, 1898, Chicago; died September 1978, presumably in Chicago. She was the daughter and only child of Joseph and Lola Sadony. She married Harold O. Bierbaum (1905-1982).

• Mary Lillian (Kochem or Kochems) Sadony, born September 1886, Kentucky; died December 27, 1966, presumably in Michigan; buried Oak Grove Cemetery, Montague, Michigan. She was Joseph Sadony's second wife and mother of his two sons:

• Joseph Alexander Sadony, Jr., born 1908, Michigan; died ?

• Arthur Joseph Sadony, born April 14, 1909, Michigan; died May 29, 1998; buried Oak Grove Cemetery, Montague, Michigan. He served in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II and was married to Beatrice H. Sadony (1920-2004). Both he and his brother had children who I think own and operate the Valley of the Pines farm and the official Joseph A. Sadony website of the same name.

Meredith Beyers' Story in Weird Tales

"The Last Entry" in Weird Tales (May/June/July 1924)

Further Reading

There is abundant reading on Joseph A. Sadony on the Internet. The best source I have found on the life of Meredith Beyers is a newspaper article, "He Holds All the Cards as County Votes" by Nancy Skelton, in the Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1978, page 20+.

Note

(1) In the same issue of The Great Work in America is an article about prenatal influences upon the mind of a child, written by the wife of the editor, Noneta S. Richardson. (Like Joseph Sadony, the editor, John Emmet Richardson, ran away from his wife with a younger woman and established a place, in California, for occult, spiritual, or philosophical activities. His brainchild, The Great School of Natural Science, is still in existence.) Researchers into the history of Dianetics and Scientology might want to have a look at Mrs. Richardson's article, moreover at the lives and works of John E. Richardson, Noneta S. Richardson, and Florence Huntley Richardson, and consider them as a possible precursors not only to L. Ron Hubbard's inventions but also to other West Coast wackiness, including George Adamski's yarns of contact and travels with aliens from outer space.

Professor Joseph A. Sadony, with his wife and associates, from the front page of The Inter Ocean, Chicago, Illinois, March 1, 1908, the day the scandal broke. Mrs. Sadony was Lola P. Sadony. Miss Pearl Smith was a longtime follower of Sadony and later a cook at his camp in Michigan. C.C. Christian was an officer, I think, in his society while in Chicago. Miss Bessie Brown was, I suppose, one of his votaries.

Original text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Meredith Beyers (1899-1996)-Part Three

Now, finally, going back decades, we get to Meredith Beyers' stories and poems. There are only a few of them in this list from the early twenties (and from Beyers' early twenties):

• "Dance of Destiny" in Top-Notch Magazine, March 15, 1921
• "The Dark Brown Dress" in The Black Mask, December 1921
• "Bit of Curls" and "Fat Man" (poems) in Poetry Magazine, June 1922
• "The Last Entry" in Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924

"The Last Entry" may have been his last published entry in a national magazine. I can't say for sure, but I don't think that the six books that he was working on late in life were ever published. However, Beyers may have done other creative work and creative writing in his thirties and forties. Now enters another remarkable personality.

Meredith Beyers was born Meredith D. Sleep. His father, Wilbert D. Sleep, was gone from the household in which Meredith lived by the time he was eleven years old. Meredith Beyers' mother, Jean Meredith, had by then married a man named Henry W. Beyers. It was from that man that Meredith Beyers took the surname that he would use as his own for the rest of his life. Henry Beyers didn't last very long as Jean's husband, either, for in 1922, when her only son was twenty-two, she married Charles A. Ransom and moved to Pasadena, California. In short, men--father figures--came and went during Meredith Beyers' youth. It should be no wonder to us that he would seek out another or that he would attempt an enduring relationship with such a man. Thus Joseph A. Sadony.

Joseph Alexander Sadony was born on February 22, 1877, in Montabaur, Germany. He came to the United States in 1884 and became a naturalized citizen on June 24, 1891, in Kalamazoo County, Michigan. On June 8, 1897, he married, presumably for the first time, in Chicago. His new wife was the former Lizzie A. Mielke. In the U.S. Census of 1900, her Christian name was again given as Lizzie. The two had had a daughter by then, Mercedes, born in November 1898 in Illinois. I'm not sure where the name Lizzie came from, as Sadony's wife and Mercedes' mother was later named (in 1908) as Lola P. Sadony. Oddly, Sadony's presumed second (and future) wife, then aged thirteen, was also enumerated in the 1900 census under the name Lizzie. She was Lizzie Kochems, aka Kochem, Kotchem, or Kochen. It wouldn't be long before she would cross paths with Joseph Sadony.

In that census of 1900, Joseph Sadony was counted at 1624 Wrightwood Avenue in Chicago. The handwritten entry for his occupation is hard to read, but I think it says "Character Reader." Now I find that "character reader" is an actual occupation. I guess it's akin to psychic, clairvoyant, palm reader, or fortuneteller. In any case, according to a biography by Hilda Duell on the website Find A Grave, Sadony claimed to have developed psychic powers in his childhood and is supposed to have helped Chicago police solve crimes using these powers. The only association I have found between Sadony and the law in Chicago, however, is when they were after him for running a scam and a cult (two words that mean mostly the same thing), like a real-life Svengali, or more recently, like a Keith Raniere.

The story broke in February 1908, a week after Sadony's thirty-first birthday. On February 29--yes, February 29, a day with folkloric implications for the relations between men and women--Sadony's wife, Lola P. Sadony, sued her husband in a Chicago courtroom for divorce and custody of their daughter Mercedes, whom Mrs. Sadony claimed he had kidnapped two years before.

If the tales be true [reads a contemporary account], this tall blonde man, hypnotist and healer, the originator of a cult known as the Society of Psychological Science or the Institute of Mental and Athletic Development has ruled his votaries with a rod of iron. (1)

Sadony's cult or society was headquartered in a three-story house located at 432 Winthrop Avenue in Chicago. (An article from a couple of days later gave the address of Sadony's "House of Mystery" as 62 Cass Street. [2]) Although his wife was never admitted as a member, Sadony had from two to ten "votaries" living with him. These votaries were a mix of divorced men and single women, some quite young, some older, who worked for Sadony for years and turned over to him "every cent that they earned." They all lived together on the first two floors of the house. On the third floor was a tabernacle, "marvelously decorated by hand" and housing an organ. (That's a pipe organ, people.) It was here that Sadony and his followers carried out their rites and ceremonies "from nightfall till daybreak[,] and some of the suggestions that are made make you shudder and grow chilled." (3)

All of that came crashing down, though, with Lola Sadony's suit of divorce. An article from March 2, 1908, described Sadony's house as being deserted, with the windows boarded up and "[t]he 'professor' of the free love institution [. . .] reported as missing." (4) He had had his fun for a while. Now it was time for Sadony to pull up stakes and go searching for a new home. It didn't take him long, nor did it take long for him to start a new family or to begin assembling a new household, away from Chicago and its prying eyes.

To be concluded . . . 

Notes
(1) "Founder of Religion Faces Grave Charges." Jackson Daily News (Mississippi), March 1, 1908, page 3.
(2) "Colony's Chief Closes Home." Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1908, page 10.
(3) "Founder of Religion Faces Grave Charges."
(4) "Colony's Chief Closes Home."

Original text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Meredith Beyers (1899-1996)-Part Two

Wilbert D. Sleep and Jean (Meredith) Sleep had one son, Meredith D. Sleep, born on April 13, 1899, in St. Louis, Missouri. When he was counted in the U.S. Census of 1900 in Cicero, Illinois, the son still bore his birth name. In 1910, though, after his father was gone, he was called Lewis Beyers. The name change had come about because of Jean Meredith's marriage to a widower, Henry W. Beyers (dates unknown). In 1920, the name of Jean Meredith's son changed again. This time he was L. Meredith Beyers. (In 1910 and 1920, the Beyers family lived in Evanston, Illinois.) Henry W. Beyers died in 1936, probably in Chicago, but by then Jean was out of his life and long gone.

Here is a curiously brief and relatively uninformative newspaper item from the Buffalo Evening News, February 20, 1922: "The marriage of Mrs. Jean Meredith Beyers of Evanston, Illinois, to Charles M. Ransom, will be quietly solemnized in Pasadena, Cal." So what happened in the marriage of Henry and Jean Beyers? Who knows. But in marrying Ransom, she seems to have finally settled, as she spent the rest of her life in Pasadena. Ransom, who had come from Buffalo, seems to have been a wealthy man. He had been a manufacturer of medicines in his hometown. In Pasadena, he switched to another kind of medicine: wholesale liquor. Ransom died in Pasadena in 1955 at age eighty-seven. Jean Meredith Ransom, who was selling real estate in 1940, survived him by seven years. She died on February 1, 1962, in Pasadena, at age ninety-two. Both were buried in Buffalo.

So, two big personalities have pushed Meredith Beyers, the subject of this biography, to below the fold. Well, when he was a child, he had this name and that to go along with whatever man was married to his mother. In the earliest record I have from his adulthood, though, he called himself Lewis Meredith Beyers. The record is his World War I draft card, filled out in 1918 when he was nineteen. Beyers was a student in the college of engineering at Northwestern University at the time. Not long after that he was inducted into the U.S. Army, with dates of service of October 5, 1918, to January 17, 1919.

Meredith Beyers attended Northwestern University and Harvard University. He was an engineer, mathematician, and physicist and worked in aerospace at Indian Bay Research Corporation in Michigan and at Convair and Ryan Electronics in California (probably other places, too). I don't know when he moved to California, but he married Florrie May Gosse, on November 8, 1958, in San Diego. She was a Canadian-born teacher. They were close and loving. In their dotage, they walked hand in hand to lunch every day. In 1966, Beyers came out of retirement to help with elections in San Diego County. An astute and exacting man with figures, Beyers kept election results in line for years. "He's always 100% on the mark," his wife said. What's missing in all of this is an account of Beyers' young adult years, a time when his work wasn't so entwined in science and mathematics but came closer to matters of the occult, or at least to a cult of personality.

To be continued . . .

Text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Meredith Beyers (1899-1996)-Part One

Né Meredith D. Sleep
Author, Poet, Engineer
Born April 13, 1899, St. Louis, Missouri
Died April 27, 1996, San Diego County, California

Sometimes I think that human history is just a chronicle of personalities. Meredith Beyers is a good example. He lived nearly a century, married for the first time and got a new job at age fifty-nine, started working in county elections in his sixties, and was writing away on half a dozen books in his eightieth year. "You can't sit in a rocking chair and watch TV and expect to grow into your 80s gracefully," Beyers said, and he lived by that credo. When he was young he wrote poems and stories, when he was in middle-aged he worked as an aerospace engineer, and when he was old . . . well, maybe Meredith Beyers never got old.

There were big and irrepressible personalities in Beyers' family before him. His grandfather, Welsh author and preacher Lewis Meredith (1826-1891), took to the pulpit at age eight. In his twenties, he preached in front of Wesleyan congregations, worked for a printer, and founded a literary society. Taking the nom de plume Lewys Glyn Dyfi, he published, at age twenty-six, a collection of his own verse entitled Blodau Glyn Dyfi. Three years later he was accepted to the ministry, and in the late 1850s or so, he went to the United States, to Chicago, there to preach as well. He continued to write, too, sending back to his home country pieces for a couple of Welsh-language magazines. In 1863 Meredith returned to his native land to advocate for the Union cause in the American Civil War. Once again he went to the United States and preached in Chicago. Known as "the bard of Glyn Dufvy," Meredith died in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park in 1891. Meredith's brother, Richard Meredith (1826-1856), was also a writer and a lay preacher.

Meredith and his American wife Millie had two children, a son, Arza, and a daughter, Jean, nicknamed Jennie, who was born on May 13, 1872. Jean Meredith's son, Meredith Beyers, remembered her as a great beauty--an international beauty, in fact, who "captured the heart of none other than the crown prince of Germany." When she was young, Jean slid down a rope from her upstairs bedroom to go to dances, even as her father read the Bible in the downstairs parlor. She attended Northwestern University when few women did such things and was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. After spending a year in Europe, she married, on April 15, 1897, in Oak Park. Her new husband, Wilbert Douglas Sleep (1872-1930) of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was supposed to have been well connected but worked as a salesman. By 1910, Sleep was out of Jean Meredith's life but not before fathering her only son. And in July 1930, with his residence given as Elgin State Hospital--yes, a mental hospital--he died in or near Peoria, Illinois.

To be continued . . .

Copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley