The Clayton Brothers: John & William Clayton
- Ninfa O. Barnard
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
Clayton Brothers, John M. Clayton and William H. H. Clayton went from serving in the Union Army to becoming policy-makers as Arkansas political leaders, active in the Senate, House of Representatives, and much more.
Left to Right: John Middleton Clayton & William Henry Harrison Clayton
Image Credit: www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net
Twin brothers John Middleton Clayton and William Henry Harrison Clayton were born on October 13, 1840, to Ann Clarke Clayton and John Clayton in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. John and William were named after that year’s Whig presidential candidates, William Henry Harrison and John Tyler.
As part of a large family with ten children, the twins lived on the family farm and attended a local school alongside their older brothers, Thomas and Powell. In 1861, at the onset of the Civil War, John and William Clayton answered President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to serve in the Union Army.
William Henry Harrison Clayton
On August 15, 1862, William enlisted in the U.S. Army, becoming Company H of the 124th Pennsylvania Infantry’s second lieutenant. He saw intense combat, participating in the battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville.
In May 1863, William left the army after his company was disbanded. He taught military tactics at a school in Pennsylvania until the fall of 1864. In the winter of 1864, he joined his older brother, Powell Clayton, who had leased a plantation that the Union Army had seized and placed in the care of the Treasury Department. By 1865, Powell and William had earned enough money to purchase the 2,400-acre plantation near Pine Bluff.
In 1868, William sold his portion of the land and moved to Huntsville, Arkansas, to study law under Arkansas senator and judge M. L. (Marshall Lovejoy) Stephenson. During this time, he became an assistant assessor of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
On July 2, 1868, Powell became Arkansas’s ninth governor. Soon after, he appointed William as the superintendent of public instruction for the Seventh Judicial Circuit.
On October 13, 1869, William married Florence Alabama Barnes, a Pine Bluff native. They had eight children.
In 1871, William was admitted to the bar by Judge Stephenson, officially becoming a lawyer. On March 23, he became the district attorney for the First Judicial Circuit of Arkansas. In 1871, William also became a trustee of Arkansas Industrial University (now the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville).
From April 1873 to July 1874, William served as district judge. In August 1874, he was appointed district attorney for the Western District of Arkansas and Indian Territory by President Ulysses S. Grant. William served as district attorney from 1875 to 1885 and from 1889 to 1893.
In 1897, William was appointed the judge of the Central District of Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in McAlister by President William McKinley. From 1901 to 1907, he served as the senior judge of the federal courts and chief justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Indian Territory. In 1907,William opened a private law practice with his son, William Jr.
On December 14, 1920, he died at the age of eighty in McAlester, Oklahoma. He is buried at the Fort Smith National Cemetery.
Today, the Fort Smith Heritage Foundation operates the Clayton House, which William purchased in 1882, as Fort Smith’s only Victorian house museum.
John Middleton Clayton
During the Civil War, John served in the U.S. Army of the Potomac, engaging in several campaigns across the eastern United States.
In 1866, John married Sarah Ann Zebley. They had at least six children. The next year, he and his family moved to Arkansas to help his brothers run the plantation.
That same year, John was elected as House of Representative representing Jefferson County. In 1873, he served in the Arkansas Senate, representing Jefferson, Bradley, Grant, and Lincoln counties, and served as speaker of the Senate for part of the year.
In 1874, John became involved in the Brooks-Baxter War, in which Joseph Brooks and Elisha Baxter both claimed the governor’s office. John raised troops in Jefferson County and marched them to Little Rock to confront Baxter’s supporters on behalf of Brooks. John continues to adamantly support Brooks even after President Ulysses S. Grant restored Baxter to the governor’s office.
On September 27, 1875, the Branch Normal College (now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff), the first historically black university in Arkansas, was established after John sponsored the act that established the college.
After the Civil War Reconstruction, John supported black Republican voters. In 1876, he became sheriff of Jefferson County. He was reelected for five successive, two-year terms.
In 1888, he ran as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Congress against incumbent Democrat Clifton R. Breckinridge, who represented Arkansas’s second district, in the most deceptive election in Arkansas history. In Conway County, four white masked men stormed into a predominantly black voting precinct and stole the ballot box that contained a large majority of his votes at gunpoint.
John lost the election by a narrow margin of 846 out of over 34,000 votes cast. So, he contested the election. He went to investigate the stolen election in Plumerville, Arkansas. On the evening of January 29, 1889, someone shot through the window of the boardinghouse where he was staying, killing him instantly.
The Arkansas and the national press condemned John’s murder as a vile political crime. Despite a $5,000 reward, an investigation by Pinkerton detectives, and a study by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Elections, the murderer was never found. In 1890, the House voted that John had won the election in 1888. They also declared the congressional seat vacant because of John’s death. After almost serving the entirety of his two-year term, Breckinridge lost his seat in Congress.
John is buried in Bellwood Cemetery in Pine Bluff.
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Written by: Ninfa O. Barnard