Cassius Marcellus Clay was born in Madison County, Kentucky, to Sally Lewis and Green Clay, one of the wealthiest planters and slave owners in Kentucky. His cousin was Henry Clay. Clay attended Transylvania University and then graduated from Yale College in 1832, where he heard abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison speak, and was inspired to join the anti-slavery movement.
His abolitionist views and the anti-slavery newspaper, True American, which he published, earned him many enemies. A hired gun attempted to assassinate him, but the scabbard of Clay’s Bowie knife deflected the bullet. Clay used the knife to remove the assassin’s nose, one eye, and possibly an ear in the ensuing brawl. Several years later, he used the same knife to fight off six brothers who attacked him, killing one. Clay served in the Mexican war despite being against the expansion of slavery.
He was the founder of the Republican Party of Kentucky and a friend of Abraham Lincoln, who appointed him as Minister to the Russian Court where he was instrumental in getting the Tsar to threaten war on England and France should they recognize the Confederacy.
Clay was a rebel and a fighter. He divorced his wife of 45 years when she refused to put up with his infidelities. He married a girl who may have been as young as 12 when he was 84. He always carried two guns and a knife and had a cannon at his house for protection. He died of “general exhaustion” in 1903.
During the Civil War, he refused a commission as a Major General unless Lincoln would emancipate the slaves in the Confederacy. He donated land for the establishment of the town of Berea where Berea College, open to all races, was founded. Herman Heaton Clay, a descendant of African-American slaves, named his son Cassius Marcellus Clay, in tribute to him. His son, boxer Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr, was the heavyweight champion, but changed his name, rejecting Clay as a “slave name”.
Clay’s first census is the 1820 census for Madison, Kentucky. Only heads of households, in this case his father, are listed by name, so he is one of the six free white persons listed along with 73 slaves.
Click on the census for a larger view.
Sources
- Wikipedia.org
- Ancestry.com
- Onthisday.com
- Picryl.com
- Youtube.com
Famous People and Their First Census 