Newsletter-Late-Week

Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund (ASPSF) congratulates Spring 2025 scholarship recipients from Clay County, Destiny Hall and Rachel Jordan.

A powerful storm system tore through Clay County and all of NE Arkansas on April 2, leaving destruction and setting the stage for what officials are calling “generational flooding.”

For most of his life, John T. Wayne, born Terry Wayne Hammock, had no idea he was connected to Hollywood royalty. His father never spoke of it, and his grandmother, when pressed, would simply say it was “none of their business.” But after years of curiosity and research into his family tree, Wayne uncovered a long-buried secret that changed everything he thought he knew about his heritage.

Joe Boyd had only seconds to act when the March 14 tornado outbreak barreled toward his home on Highway 135. As the sky darkened and the wind roared, Boyd rushed his daughter Hannah to the bathtub for safety, then returned to the living room to check the weather—an action that nearly cost him his life.

John Middleton Clayton, the brother of General Powell Clayton, is considered by some historians to be the namesake of Clayton County, now Clay. John Clayton was a well-liked and respected Republican operative from Jefferson County. He tragically found his greatest renown when he was brutally assassinated in 1889 while investigating a stolen Conway County ballot box that helped defraud him of his U.S. Congressional race. The assassination remained purposely unsolved and the perpetrators were shielded by the local law enforcement, many of which were involved themselves. The corrupt election of 1888 and Clayton’s assassination cast a long shadow over the history of Arkansas, extinguished an emerging political revolution, and shackled the state to more than a century of nearly-unbroken one-party rule. To honor the legacy of one of Clay County’s possible namesakes, this is the story of John Clayton’s life and death.