Sarah Burge was the child of her mother's second marriage (Dolly Sumner Lunt Berge), and her only surviving child. The closeness between mother and child increased with the death of her father, Thomas Burge, in 1858. When "Little Sadai" appears in her mother's diary, she was only three. She is referred to in the diary of her step-sister, Louisiana Burge as "Saidee." The diary is full of nicely detailded impressions of a young woman, including a description of a trip to Niagra Falls, an Exposition, and social activities and sight-seeing in Nyack and Brooklyn, New York. Sarah married Rev. John Davis, a Methodist minister. She was widowed after 12 years and returned to the Burge Plantation.