Henry Clay Collection

The American political leader and secretary of state Henry Clay (1777-1852) was born on April 12, 1777, in Hanover County, VA, the seventh of nine children of the Reverend John Clay and Elizabeth Hudson Clay. Henry's father died in 1781, the year British and loyalist soldiers raided the area and looted the Clay home. Ten years later his mother remarried and his stepfather moved the family to Richmond, VA, where he worked as a clerk in a store and then, from 1793 to 1797, as secretary to George Wythe, chancellor of the High Court of Chancery. He moved to Lexington, KY., in November 1797 and quickly gained wide reputation as a lawyer and orator. He married Lucretia Hart in 1799. The Clays had eleven children, five sons and six daughters, seven of whom reached adulthood. Henry Clay served in the Kentucky legislature, was professor of law at Transylvania University and spent the short session of 1806-1807 in the U.S. Senate. Clay then returned to the state legislature, became speaker, and remained there until he was again elected to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Buckner Thruston, and served from 1810-1811. From 1811 until his death in 1852, Clay served in a variety of capacities as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Speaker of the House of Representatives, one of the commissioners to negotiate the treaty of peace with Great Britain ending the War of 1812, Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams, and as a U.S. Senator. Clay also has the distinction of being an unsuccessful presidential candidate three times, for three political parties; the Democratic Republican Party in 1824; the National Republican Party in 1832; and the Whig Party in 1844. He died in Washington, DC, on June 29, 1852 and is buried in Lexington Cemetery, Lexington, KY.

Note written by Chuck Hill