The Clay family;

PART FIRST The Mother of Henry Clay

BY

Hon. ZACHARY F. SMITH

Member of The Filson Club

PART SECOND The Genealogy of the Clays

BY

Mrs. MARY ROGERS CLAY

Member of The Filson Club

Louisville, Kentucky JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY

COPYRIGHTED BY

THE FILSON CLUB

W " . >treet

1142723

Preface

A FEW elderly citizens yet living knew Henry Clay, the renowned orator and statesman, and heard him make some of his greatest speeches. Younger persons who heard him not, nor saw him while living, have learned much of him through his numerous biographers and from the mouths of others who did know him. Most that has been known of him, however, by either the living or the dead, has concerned his political career. For the purpose of securing votes for him among the masses in his candidacy for different offices he has been represented by his biographers as being of lowly origin in the midst of impecunious surroundings. Such, however, was not the condition of his early life. He was of gentle birth, with parents on both sides possessing not only valuable landed estates and numerous slaves, but occupying high social positions. Indeed, he could look back upon a long line of ancestors from whom descended a family record worthy of being inherited.

The unapproachable eminence attained by Henry Clay as an orator and statesman has made every thing coniv Preface.

nected with him almost sacred. He has made us want to know something about every one bearing his name — every one in whose veins flows the Clay blood. We would know all that can be learned of his nearest of kin, and especially of that fortunate woman who brought him into the world. A mother who could give birth to such a son as Henry Clay deserves universal remembrance. But has this mother been awarded such remembrance? Who outside of some of her immediate descendants, perhaps, can tell the story of her life, recount her virtues, or even pronounce her maiden name? There are biographies enough of her illustrious son. A dozen or more of them are now before me, and some of them in more than one large volume ; but some of them are silent even as to her name, while none of them devotes more than a sentence or paragraph to the mother of the hero they are striving for words to justly eulogize. One can scarcely learn from these biographies that Henry Clay had a mother at all, and they could certainly learn from none of them the womanly virtues which characterized this noble mother.

The Fourteenth Publication of the Filson Club, entitled "The Clay Family," supplies much of this lacking information. It is divided into two parts, and is by two different authors. Part First, by the Honorable

Preface. v

Zachary F. Smith, is devoted to the Clay and Hudson families generally, and especially to Elizabeth Hudson, the mother of Henry Clay. Part Second is by Mrs. Mary Rogers Clay, and embraces the genealogy of the Clays. Both parts were prepared for The Filson Club and are now published for the purpose of making them more accessible to the members than they could have been in a single manuscript filed among the archives of the Club.

Genealogy is now the fashion, and the Clay family affords a fine theme in this line. The Clays have had an enviable history in our country for more than two centuries, and although none other bearing the name has risen to the eminence attained by the "Sage of Ashland," a goodly number of them have filled positions of honor and trust which would shine more brightly but for the eclipsing rays of the ' ' Great Commoner. " All of the Clay family are interesting to us because of the good deeds of some of them and the bad deeds of none of them, and their genealogy can hardly fail to be acceptable to the members of The Filson Club.

The twenty illustrations of this publication will be found to be the best that can be produced in the halftone style. It was much regretted that a likeness of the mother of Henry Clay could not be found to take its vi Preface.

place in this work. Her illustrious son appears in a full - page halftone from an oil painting by the celebrated Matthew H. Jouett. Colonel Robert T. Ford, who has recently purchased of one of the Clays a large bluegrass farm in Bourbon County, Kentucky, kindly furnished for this publication a photograph of the original, which he owns, and it is believed that this is the first time this likeness of Henry Clay has been made public in book form.

It is not likely that The Filson Club will publish another book during the year of 1899. Taking into consideration the importance imparted to the subject by the world-wide name of Henry Clay, and the fame of other members of the family as cabinet officers and senators and representatives, and foreign ministers, and governors, and judges, and legislators, and soldiers, and men of affairs, it would seem that this fourteenth volume of The Filson Club publications may be esteemed one of the happiest of its series, and may be regarded as a fitting close of the good work of the Club in the century now

rapidly approaching its end.

R. T. Durrett,

Presiden t.

Honorable ZACHARY F. SMITH.

PART FIRST The Mother of Henry Clay

BY

Member of The Filson Club

The Mother of Henry Clay.

THE woman who gave to our republic its greatest statesman and orator — perhaps in all the most gifted of his generation — can not but be a person of interest to every Kentuckian, and indeed to every American citizen of to - day and of future time. Whether the masterly genius that moulded political sentiment, led great parties and policies through victory and defeat, and swayed the destinies of the nation for half a century was an ancestral heritage or the result of early parental training of mind and character, or both, the subject is interesting. It is worthy of more conspicuous mention upon the pages of history, as well as in the private realm of the literary circle.

The solitary greatness of Washington and the ingenerate exclusiveness of the family from which he sprang have led to inquiry that has given us some insight into the life and character of the woman who gave to our country the greatest of great men. But who can speak familiarly to - day of the mothers of Thomas Jefferson, of James Madison, or of others of the collegiate of statesmen who, under the inspiration of opportunity, proclaimed the gospel of personal and civil liberty but a little over a century ago ? These have made illustrious the history of America. The irreverent neglect which has permitted the names of so many worthy women to pass from public view may too long and too fatally consign to oblivion the noble matron, the mother of the immortal Clay.

Virginia has been honorably mentioned as the "mother of States and the cradle of statesmen." Why not add: "And of immortal women"? In the year 1750, in the county of Hanover, in the grand old colony, was born Elizabeth Hudson," an event that, indirectly, was destined to play an important part in the history of the American people and of the nations of the world outside.

About the year 1700, John Hudson, a gentleman of English descent, settled in Hanover County, Virginia, and married Elizabeth Harris. There were born to these eight sons, Christopher, John, William, George, Charles, David, Cuthbert, and Thomas, besides three daughters, of whose names we have no record. One son, George Hudson, married Elizabeth Jennings and settled in the same county of Hanover, Virginia being then under the colonial government of England. The last named couple, George Hudson and Elizabeth Jennings, were the parents of Elizabeth Hudson and the maternal grandparents of

Henry Clay, afterward of Lexington, Kentucky, the orator and statesman. The Hudson family were possessed of a liberal estate of land and slaves, and lived in the somewhat pretentious style of the landed gentry of colonial days.

The accredited stories of the early life of Henry Clay having been cast in an environment of poverty and toil and sore want are apocryphal legends not sustained in the light of well-known family traditions and facts. His biographers have written more with a view to political effect than in the interests of the truth of historic research. It is more probable that the grandparents, at least, both paternal and maternal, were accustomed to drive in their coach - and - four with servants in livery, and to supply their costlier wardrobes and other elegancies and luxuries unobtainable at home from the shops of London and Paris. If this ostentatious style of living was later modified in the Clay family, it was because of the blighting presence of hostile armies during the War of the Revolution, carrying desolation to the homes of the people, as in the Southern States during the late Civil War. Hanover County was a part of the theater of campaign and strife in that struggle, as it was the border of strategic movement and bloody carnage in the later contest.

Elizabeth Hudson grew to womanhood and married Reverend John Clay, a minister of the Baptist Church. They first settled in Henrico County, Virginia. At this period religious proscription, though of a mild type, was rife in Old Virginia on the part of the established English Church against all dissenters. The Baptist preachers in those days had but a meager and feeble following. They even at times went to prison under the charge of disseminating pestilent heresies, as the orthodox orders were pleased to term their preaching. We readily infer that the Reverend John Clay was but poorly rewarded from the contributions of the brethren, and that he needed to look mainly to secular sources for the support of his household.

To the Reverend John and Elizabeth Hudson Clay were born nine children : Betsy Hudson, George Hudson, Henry, who died in infancy, John, Sally, Molley, Henry, Porter, and a posthumous child, a daughter. Betsy Hudson and the first Henry died before their father ; George died just as he reached manhood, and the daughters died young and unmarried. Of the order of the ages of these we have no certain information, beyond the mention in the will of the father. We know that Henry Clay, our Great Commoner, was born April 12, 1777, and named after an older brother Henry, who died about four years or a little more before the death of his father. We also learn that Porter Clay was younger than Henry, and the youngest of the brothers.

The infancy of the Great Commoner began, therefore, in the midst of the scenes of the Revolution. Among the earliest impressions upon his mind were those made amid the turbulent strifes of insurrectionary war, never effaced in life. These cruel memories may have been largely the incentive to the passionate ardor and eloquence with which he urged war with England, on the floor of Congress, in 181 2.

George Hudson and wife had another daughter, Mary, who married Captain John Watkins, of whom we shall have occasion to speak again. She was the elder sister of Mrs. John Clay. George Hudson was a staunch Tory in the Revolution, while his two daughters were pronounced rebels, and availed themselves of every opportunity to render aid and comfort to the struggling patriots. Divisions among neighbors and kindred and friends in the same communities and households were as common in that dramatic period as among their descendants in our later Civil War in the border Southern States.

Reverend John Clay, the father, died in 1781, when his son Henry had but reached his tender boyhood's fifth year of age, leaving Mrs. Clay a widow of thirty - one years. The strife and rage of war continued for one year after the sad event, until at last tidings of the surrender at Yorktown gave the inspiration of hope to the people that the angel of peace was nigh, with the promise of repose and security to the country. Authentic records and traditions give us the information that Reverend John Clay and family moved from their home in Henrico County to Hanover County in 1777, and settled at the old Hudson homestead farm, three and a half miles southeast of Hanover Court -House. Here Henry Clay was soon after born. The famous dwelling - house was destroyed by fire many years ago. This homestead Hudson plantation was to be disposed of by the terms of the will of George Hudson after the demise of his widow. But before such events Reverend John Clay purchased the undivided half interest of the other heirs, John Watkins and wife, and died before the same was paid for. A friendly suit was brought to legally settle the questions whether this plantation should be sold or disposed of under the provisions of the will of George Hudson or under the contract of sale to Reverend John Clay. The Court decided in favor of the latter, and, by its decree, the plantation was finally sold and purchased by Henry Watkins, who had then married the widow of John Clay.

Both George Hudson and his son - in - law, John Clay, were possessed of numbers of slaves sufficient to cultivate their plantations and to render such domestic service as was needed. Each disposed of thirty or more slaves in his will, most of them by names. From these facts, and from other sources, we readily infer that the home establishments were well supplied with the comforts of life, and that the members of these families were not strangers to such things of luxury as were attainable then, either at home or from the marts of Europe. There is a well-preserved family tradition that George Hudson lost eight thousand pounds sterling by security debts, a too common occurrence of loss in those days of neighborly accommodation.

The Clay posterity was well represented a century ago in our infant Commonwealth of Kentucky, in the families of General Green Clay, of Madison County ; of Henry Clay, of Lexington ; and of old Colonel Henry Clay, of Bourbon County, cousins not very remote and of nearly the same age. They were of goodly Welch ancestry, being descended from Sir John Clay, of Wales, whose sons came to America in the earliest years of the Seventeenth Century and settled on James River. In Volume I, page 18, of the Memoirs of Cassius M. Clay, we quote from a letter of Reverend Porter Clay, who was then preaching at Alton, Illinois, in 1848, as follows:

IO The Clay Family.

"In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh brought over to the Virginia plantations, among others, three brothers, sons of Sir John Clay, of Wales, England. He gave them ten thousand pounds sterling each. They were named Charles, Thomas, and Henry. They settled on James River, near Jamestown. Charles and Thomas had large families. Henry had none, but the name has been handed down with great tenacity in both families ever since. Cassius M. Clay is a descendant of Charles Clay, Henry and myself from Thomas Clay."

In the same autobiographic memoirs, Cassius M. Clay has to say :

' ' I believe I have the only reliable record of the Clay family extant ; and that our families (Henry Clay and General Green Clay) unite in my great-grandfather, Henry Clay, son of Charles, son of Sir John, of Wales. My grandfather was named Charles ; his father, Henry ; and his father again, Charles, who, with his two brothers Henry and Thomas, came to America. . . . My great-grandfather, Henry Clay, was born in 1672. The descending line after is all regular down to my birth in 18 10."

The record given in the letter of Reverend Porter Clay is so brief as to be obscure on its first perusal. The Charles Clay from whom Cassius M. descended, and the Thomas (John, it should be) Clay from whom he and his brother Henry descended, as he mentions, are evidently not the sons of John who came" over from Wales, but of Henry Clay, the great-grandfather of

The Clay Family.

1 1

Cassius M. and of Henry the Great. This construction partially agrees with the record written by General Green Clay, which we have. Both agree, or rather seem to agree, that the father of Porter and Henry Clay was Reverend John Clay ; his father, John Clay ; his father, Henry Clay, in whom the two lines meet. All agree that the first known ancestor was Sir John Clay, of Wales. In a recent letter E. F. Clay, of Paris, Kentucky, son of Brutus Clay and grandson of Green Clay, says of old Colonel Henry, of Bourbon County: "I have always heard that this branch of the Clay family was more closely related to the Great Henry than my own." The relation seems to be the same.

This ' ' Old Henry, " so called to distinguish him from the numerous Clay descendants of Bourbon County and elsewhere, was the son of Henry Clay, junior, M. D., and he the son of Henry Clay, senior, of Virginia, the great-grandfather of our Henry and of Cassius M. Clay. He was born September 14, 1779, in Virginia, and came to Kentucky in his eighth year of age with his father, Doctor Henry Clay, who settled southeast of Paris, in Bourbon County, in 1787. Doctor Henry, of Bourbon, was therefore a first cousin of General Green Clay and of Reverend John Clay, the father of our Henry. The Clay descendants are numbered by the hundreds in

Bourbon and adjacent counties, in the families of the Clays, the Bedfords, the Buckners, the Kennedys, the Lewises, the Woodfords, the Hedges, the Spears, the Rogers, and others beyond mention here.

On the authority of Reverend Porter Clay we are told that the first ancestors of all the Clay families of which we have made mention settled early in the Seventeenth Century in the Jamestown Colony, with a dole each of ten thousand pounds sterling, equal to fifty thousand dollars, from their father, Sir John, of Wales. If the Clays were as thrifty and provident at that end of the line as they are known to have been at this end for over a century, we may readily infer that the father of our Henry was established in Virginia with a comfortable estate of land and slaves when he was wedded to Elizabeth Hudson under English dominion. It is a remarkable fact that the splendid homestead farms acquired a century or more ago by the ancestors, respectively, of the three Kentucky families, among the best of our Bluegrass lands, are all to - day held and occupied by their descendants in direct line of succession. We mention these facts of ancestral history as conclusive evidence that the early boyhood life of Henry Clay was not cast in an environment of extreme poverty and enforced toil ; nor were his lineal antecedents obscure and inconsequential. That he figures as "The Mill -Boy of the Slashes," riding to and from Mrs. Darricott's mill, on Pamonkey River, on a bag of grain, and assisted in the lighter work on the plantation, as represented by his biographers, we accept without question. Many now living know this to have been a common practice with boys reared upon farms by slave -owning parents.

What may have been the experiences of or the part taken by the Reverend John Clay in the Revolution, and the belligerent movements thereof, are questions about which our authorities are mainly silent. The noble dames of that period, however, with rare exceptions, were in alignment with their husbands on all party questions, and especially on the one that divided Tory and rebel. We have mentioned that Mrs. Clay was an irrepressible rebel ; we may take for granted that her husband was not a Tory.

A thrilling episode of those days of peril, which the mother of Henry Clay often related in after life to her friends in Kentucky, shows that the family was not exempt from the sore trials incident to the pending strifes of war. Two accounts were given the writer, agreeing in the main, but each containing some details not related by the other. Both were given as heard from the lips of Mrs. Clay herself.

We have made mention of the untimely death of Reverend John Clay, leaving to the matronly young widow the care of their infant children and the burden of the management of the plantation and slaves. In the hours of bereavement and intensest grief the solemnities of the burial services were ended and the stricken household left alone to their first night of mourning. It happened that the British forces, known as Tarleton's troopers, were marauding in that section of Virginia at the time and committing many depredations. On the day after the burial a detachment of this command appeared upon the premises and began a series of outrages such as only a band of outlaws under military license could have been guilty of. Not satisfied with supplies of food for themselves and provender for their horses, they wantonly destroyed the widow's property, at the same time taunting her with brutal jibes and insults.

The story as first told to the writer was noted down nine years ago from the lips of Mrs. Lucy Trabue, of Bourbon County, formerly Miss Cosby, of Woodford County. Mrs. Trabue was at the time nearing her eightieth year of age. She was born and reared to young womanhood an intimate neighbor of the mother of Henry Clay, who was then Mrs. Henry Watkins. Mrs. Trabue's mind was a treasure - house of reminiscences of the olden times, and she could entertain a good listener by the hour with the relation of these.

When the detachment of loyalist troopers were seen approaching, there was but one white male person present, the overseer of the plantation. At the instance of Mrs. Clay he escaped by the back way and eluded capture. The soldiers, a number of whom were recruits from the country, unceremoniously entered the house and began their brutal work. They first ransacked the kitchen and larder, and satisfied their hunger. Next they turned their attention to the destruction of the furniture and to general pillage. Bureaus were chopped to pieces, trunks and chests broken open, and every room and closet ransacked for such articles of value as were portable. Other property which the vandals could not well carry off was wantonly wrecked and scattered about the house. One hundred years ago it was the custom of our grandames to provide a fat feather tick and a straw tick for each bed, and to alternate these for winter and summer. After breaking up the bed frames, the roystering troopers ripped open half a dozen of these feather ticks and emptied their contents out at the windows. The air was as thick with flying feathers as with leaves from the forest after an autumn frost. The remorseless raiders finally rode off with their stolen booty, to which they added scores of chickens and turkeys which they had killed. They carried off with them a number of the slaves of the plantation, how many we know not. These abducted slaves were most probably a small part of the many thousands forcibly borne away to Canada or England by the British armies during hostilities. In the execution of the treaty of peace, after the close of the war, the return of these to their owners was demanded on the plea that, under the laws of England and Virginia, they had always been recognized and held as property. The English Government, arrogant and insulting as it then was, refused to accede to this demand. In spirited retaliation the Virginia Assembly enacted a law preventing the collection of any debts due to English creditors by her citizens in the Virginia courts. In revenge for this law, the government of England refused to give up the forts on the lake borders on the territory ceded to the United States. This deadlock was not broken for over ten years after the treaty was signed, and in all this time the British officials were arming and equipping stealthily the savage Indians to war on the whites along the border settlements, though they were sworn to observe the stipulations of peace. Kentucky bore the brunt of these Indian hostilities, and during the ten years four thousand of her citizens, men, women, and children, fell victims to savage barbarity through English malice and cruelty.

Mrs. Trabue remembered Mrs. Clay -Watkins as a very entertaining conversationalist. The flush of resentment would animate her features and flash from her eyes as she would recall the memories of these desecrations enacted at the sacred shrine of home and over the remains of her dead husband but barely cold beneath the sod. She remembered one incident not related by others, over which the heroic matron dwelt with more than usual pathos. Among the things of value of which her chests were rifled was her wedding dress, made of white satin and richly trimmed, and no doubt from the artist hands of some famous maker in London or Paris. It was a relic treasured with a tenderness of sentiment and pride which only a good woman can know who has been a bride, and beyond all earthly price to her alone. The ruffian who stole the endeared relic was an officer. He threw it across his saddle and mounted. The last wistful view of the beautiful robe was as he rode away, not to return. Mrs. Trabue said that as the venerable matron would come to this incident of her narrative her voice would tremble with tenderer emotion, while tears would fill her eyes and trickle down her cheeks.

We introduce now a letter of Mr. Thomas B. Watkins, a grandson yet living of Mrs. Clay -Watkins. It is dated "Lexington, Kentucky, September 19, 1S94:"

x8 The Clay Family.

"In reply to yours, I can only tell you a part of what my mother has many times told me. She was very intimate with my grandmother. The father of the latter was George Hudson, and her mother was Miss Jennings. There were two children born to them, Mary and Elizabeth. Mary married Captain John Watkins. You will find a trace of him in Collins' History, in mention of Woodford County.

' ' Elizabeth, the youngest, first married John Clay. Of the children born to them, I can give you the names of only four now, Henry, Porter, John, and Betsy. From the best information I have, she was rather below the medium in stature and of well rounded form, dark hair and eyes, and ruddy complexion. She was a woman of great determination, industrious and economical.

"She was born in 1750, and died in 1829. I have never heard of a picture or portrait of her of any kind. There may be some heirloom about Versailles. I can recall only one story told me by my mother. It occurred about the time of the death of her first husband, John Clay. Colonel Tarleton made a raid into Virginia and came to her place. Her husband had been buried the day before. Her children were all young and dependent. Aside from her own family, there was but one white person on the place, her overseer, whom she made leave by the back way.

" Tarleton's men searched her house. They ripped open her beds and emptied the feathers out of the windows, killed her fowls, and took away some of her slaves. One of the men threatened to, or did, thrust his sword into the new-made grave.

' ' She complained to Tarleton about this villainous treatment of a helpless woman. He told her to point out the guilty and he would have them punished. She reprimanded him roundly, and told him he knew it was impossible for her, during so much

The Clay Family. Ic,

confusion, to point out the guilty ; they were all strangers to her and dressed alike. He then said : ' Madam, you shall be paid for your losses,' and at once had a sack of coin emptied on a table near by. She was afraid to openly refuse the money, but when Tarleton left, she scraped it off into her apron and cast it into the fire, saying her hand ' should not be polluted with British gold. '

"Her father was a Tory; she and her sister ardent rebels. She had often taken a servant and pack-horse and traveled for miles from home, carrying provisions to the American soldiers.

' ' Her second husband was Henry Watkins, who was ten years younger than herself. A number of children were born to them. Four only lived to be of age : John, Frank, Nathaniel, and Patsey.

' ' George Hudson, her father, was of English descent. He had a liberal estate of lands and negroes, and lived in the best style of that day, drawing upon the mother country for such articles of luxury or fashion as were not obtainable at home."

The homestead plantation probably fronted on some river or considerable stream of water not always fordable. Our traditions repeat from Mrs. Clay - Watkins that she often ordered the servants to throw apples, potatoes, and other lighter food supplies across the river to the pickets and scouts of the patriot army when in that vicinity. On the other hand, when the enemy occupied and foraged the country, she had at times to bury from sight her bacon, provisions, and other things of value.

Of the brothers and sisters of Henry Clay, our information is meager. John is said to have most resembled the mother. A portrait of him in possession of Mrs. James B. Clay, of Lexington, as described by a member of the family, would more nearly picture to the mind the form, features, and person of the noble dame than would any other object. General Nathaniel W. Watkins resided for many years and until his death with his family, at Morley, Scott County, Missouri. He was the seventh child of Henry and Elizabeth Clay Watkins. We are permitted to quote from a letter of his, written over thirty years ago and not very long before his death, to Clay Taylor, of Pendleton, Warren County, Missouri, a grandson of Reverend Porter Clay :