Sarah Jackson Tappan's obituary, published in 1884, touched on the fractious history of the abolitionist movement and its effect on Sarah's own family: "The lady was the eldest of a family of seventeen children and the factions into which the Abolitionists split severed her people at one time, four of the Jackson brothers going with [William Lloyd] Garrison and the father, daughters and other brother with Dr. Lyman Beecher and the orthodox church."

Note: While both Garrison and Beecher were abolitionists, they differed in their beliefs about colonization, or the resettling in Africa of Africans and African-Americans freed from American slavery. Beecher believed it best to remove free Black people from white society in the United States, while Garrison opposed such efforts. Garrison also saw himself as a pacifist, whereas Beecher was not opposed to more directly confrontational methods of advancing the cause of abolition.