The Clay Family

rilson Oub Publications NUMBER FOURTEEN The Clay Family PART FIRST The Mother of Henry Clay PART SECOND The Genealogy of the Clays BY Honorable Zachary F. Smith —AND- Mrs. Mary Rogers Clay Members of The Filson Club \ 1 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant http://www.archive.org/details/clayfamilysmit Honorable HENRY CLAY. FILSON CLUB PUBLICATIONS NO. 14 The Clay Family PART FIRST The Mother of Henry Clay 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 Ttrinturs to TItb Filson ffiluh 1899 COPYRIGHTED BY THE FILSON CLUB 1899 PREFACE FEW elderly citizens yet living knew Henry Clay, A the renowned orator and statesman, and heard him make some of his greatest speeches. Younger per- sons 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 inher- ited. The unapproachable eminence attained by Henry Clay as an orator and statesman has made every thing con- iv 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 con- sideration 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, President. Honorable ZACHARY F. SMITH. PART FIRST The Mother of Henry Clay BY Hon. Z. F. SMITH 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 Amer- ican 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 train- ing 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 ingen- erate 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 states- 4 The Clay Family. men 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 Hud- son, 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 The Clay Family. 5 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 some- what 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.

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