Part Two of West Andover’s Aimee Green Abbott Jett shocks community

The more I researched Aimee Green Abbott’s life, the more questions I had. The West Andover graduate, only child of Elmer and Lucretia (Lindsley) Green, was born in Andover in 1867. She was an only child who grew up on Owen’s Hill, the highest point in the county. The Green farm was called Hilltop for its high elevation. Since she had so many last names, I will refer to her as Aimee. In 2024, the beautiful Green family Victorian home remains a beauty and is lovingly maintained by its current owners. I rode down Stanhope-Kelloggsville Road leading to West Andover and drove up the high hill to the picturesque home. Finding no one around, I left my business card and hoped to hear from the owners. Next door was the West Andover Cemetery where I had hope to find Aimee Green’s headstone or her parents. Taking a friend who is as crazy as I am, maybe more, and we walked separately, then together, checking and rechecking the headstones. I came up with nothing except a knee that has not been the same since. Only readers more than 70 will understand what I mean. We left the cemetery and traveled a short distance south and found the West Andover Baptist Church, which I learned from my Williamsfield friend was the former West Andover Congregational Church which Aimee once attended and helped with events. Last week, I included a wrong picture of the church. The only Congregational church I could find in the area was in Andover and I incorrectly assumed it to be the one Aimee attended when she was living in the area and when she returned after her divorces. I had several history sleuths helping me find the important answers to the puzzle of Aimee’s life. Where was she buried, where in all the records was a picture of her and did she marry the second time to her stepson or her brother in law? I spent part of the same afternoon searching through the archives of the Andover Library and found a verification that Aimee’s father was the justice of the peace. He served as a leading county attorney for 50 years and on the board of education for nine years and yet I cannot find anyone who remembers Attorney Elmer Green of West Andover. My appreciation goes to Carrie Wimer, local History/Genealogy/Archives Coordinator for the Ashtabula Public Library. She has searched census records, plat maps, online sites and other places to help me in this search. I am presenting the facts as they were recorded in the books and sites we found. From Moina W. Large’s “History of Ashtabula County, Ohio,” 1924, Vol. I. page 798, I found the very first and only local mention of Aimee and her parents. The book was written before her marriage to Chan Jett in 1932, therefore it is not mentioned. We do know that Aimee dreamed of being an actress and after graduating from Andover High School and the Jefferson Institute in Jefferson, Ohio, circa 1890, she left for New York. While there, she attended some college and fell in love with the Chinese Culture. She took college courses to further her understanding of Chinese arts and met Chan M. Jett, a wealthy owner of several restaurants and an aide to the visiting Ambassador representing the Chinese Emperor in 1896. (An interview from the visit is listed in an online book, “Interview with His Excellency Li Hung Chang…” By the American Bible Society, 1986.) Aimee began to lecture on Chinese arts and culture and was very popular among the high social society. She met the wealthy baker, Charles E. Abbott, who became enamored with her. They were married on Jan. 30, 1900 when Aimee was 27 and Charles E. was 40. According to the “History of Ashtabula County, Ohio” by Moina W. Large. In the "The Farm Journal Illustrated Rural Directory of Ashtabula County Ohio, 1918-1923,” Aimee is listed as Abbott, C.E. (Amy), farmer, 180 acres, 6 horses and 33 cows.” This verifies the fact that she was still married to Charles E. Abbott in 1923. Carrie Wimer was able to discover through the Plat Book of Ashtabula County Ohio, 1922-25, published by the W.W. Hixson &Co., that Aimee’s father died in 1912 and she was the sole heir. The Green property once extended both sides of the farm site on Stanhope-Kelloggsville Road and north. But the mystery continues as I found conflicting reports that Aimee divorced Charles E. and either married his brother, Everett, or his Charles’ son from a previous marriage. Everett died in Vermont in 1924. I will have to do further study to find the answer to this part of the puzzle. According to the Erie Times, Aimee divorced the second Abbott, either Everett or the stepson, and amidst the New York scandal, left for the Orient. Upon her return, she came home to the Hilltop Farm in West Andover. She helped out at the West Andover Congregational Church and entertained the “high society” of the area, a local woman who witnessed it reported. The Depression hit West Andover as it did everywhere else. Aimee had heavily invested in the Green farm, improving and adding buildings as well as developing a herd of Holstein cows. When finances got tough, she mortgaged the herd to a tenant who took care of them. She also obtained a “chattel mortgage” on all her possessions. Last week’s column found Aimee at her husband’s hospital bed where they married the second time. The news story does not give the first name of the Abbott she remarried. She was left his entire estate of $5 million, including a palatial summer home in Milford, Connecticut on Long Island Sound and one other estate. She reunited her friendship with Chan Jett, a Yale University graduate. He was one of the wealthiest Chinese business men in the world at that time. He supported, along with Aimee, the Chinese youth movement for years. Some of his most precious Chinese objects are in the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard. In 1930, according to the census, Chan Jett was living with Aimee in Milford, Connecticut and listed as a servant. In 1931, she sold all of her West Andover property and home to Grace W. Hill. To the shock of all her New York friends and Ashtabula County friends, Aimee Green Abbott chose to marry Chan Jett. In the New York Daily News of April 23, 1932, it was recorded that the east met the west when Aimee Abbott, wealthy widow, married the restaurant magnate, Chan M. Jett. She announced the marriage at their palatial mansion in Milford, Connecticut. We do know Aimee returned to West Andover with her Chinese husband because of a woman who was living there at the time. Former county resident whose grandmother and parents lived just north of the Hilltop Farm remembered the story of the appearance of Chan Jett in Andover upon the couple’s return. Nora Villela’s mom, Claire Porter Ames Keep, was just two when her mother, Gertrude Bailey Porter, widow of Harry Porter, her and children moved from Kingsville to Andover in 1921 to be near Gertrude’s parents. Claire Porter grew up to marry Lewis Ames and they bought the century home on 4669 Stanhope Kelloggsville Road in 1940, north of the Hilltop farm. Aimee was gone from the area by then, but Nora still remembers the story of Aimee Green. Nora can remember her grandmother telling the story of Aimee and her Chinese husband driving through the Andover Square in a horse and buggy. The townspeople were shocked and craned their necks, she said, trying to figure out who the Chinese man was. Some thought it was her servant. That is until they learned Aimee had married the fourth time and inherited, according to news reports, $30 million. The couple had a world-wind honeymoon to China. The current owners of the former Hilltop Farm told me that when he moved in 50 years ago, an older woman who lived across the road told him that she always knew when Aimee was entertaining guests. The long drive up the hill would be filled with horses and buggies as the “finest of the area’s society group, including the Morleys” would be parked out front. Aimee would entertain them in her “tea house,” an outdoor open cemented pagoda. The roof line is shaped like Chinese pagodas. The owner took me out to the still charming tea house pagoda and in my mind, I imagined sitting there with the illustrious Aimee Green Abbott Chan. I found out why I could not find the Aimee in the West Andover Cemetery. Through the efforts of Carrie Wimer, she found Aimee and Chan Jett buried in the Mountain View Cemetery, Pasadena, California where they have moved in 1940 and lived there for six years. Aimee died on July 25, 1946, and her husband Chan Jett died the same year. If you have any information to add to this story, I would love to hear from you. If I can confirm whom she married the second time and then remarried, I will add it to a future column. My appreciation is extended to the current owners of the former Hilltop Farm for allowing me to take pictures and giving me a house tour.

Part Two of West Andover’s Aimee Green Abbott Jett shocks community

Continuing series They Called Ashtabula County, Home

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