John Clayton County?
Among Clay County histories, there are conflicting claims in regard to just whom Clayton County was named. Was it General Powell Clayton or his brother John Middleton Clayton? Local Historian Robert T. Webb in his 1933 History and Traditions of Clay County attests that Clayton County was named, and then unnamed, for General Powell Clayton as the previous Governor of Arkansas. His book was the first extensive history written of Clay County, and benefited from the oral history of old settlers that had been there at the founding of Clayton County. Later historians O.L. Dalton and J.M. Oliver, Jr., writing for the Piggott Banner and the Clay County Courier respectively, took the stance that Clayton County was in fact named for John M. Clayton. Oliverâs accounts describe how in early 1873, freshman State Representative Benjamin H. Crowley (grandson of Crowleyâs Ridge namesake, Ben Crowley) introduced the bill to create a county from parts of Randolph and Greene Counties but found no traction until partnering with John M. Clayton to pass the bill, stipulated by naming the county for John Clayton. In Oliverâs Corning Cavalcade he gives a slightly different account that the creation of Clayton County was delayed because legislators refused to name a county for the hated Powell Clayton, and that eventually a compromise was made to ostensibly name the county for the popular Senate President, John Clayton.
