I’ve always been interested in doing a family tree but it was one of those things I just never knew how to do or get around to. And as the last of my line with no living relatives the work seemed a pretty daunting task, with no one to talk to about family history anymore. But I saw the advertisement on television for www.ancestry.com last week and decided to invest just $29.95 for a month’s premium service to tinker around with public records and see what might come up. I wasn’t expecting much, but found that the website, supported by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was a hugely powerful research device, that helped me learn about each generation of the Lacy family by popping up "hints" as I worked through Census Data, Marriage, Death, and government service records.
And boy, did I find something! I learned that I am related to Henry Clay, the iconic three-time Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senator and U.S. Secretary of State! My great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Eilzabeth Hudson, born in Hanover County, Virginia in 1750, gave birth to Henry Clay in 1777. Clay grew up the son of a Baptist Minister named John Clay, who died four years after Henry’s birth in 1781. After Clay’s death, my grandmother x 7 married Henry Watkins, and added seven children with Watkins to the nine she had with John Clay. Around 1784, according to www.ancestry.com, Hudson had a child with my grandfather x 7, Charles Lacy, a boy named Frances H. Lacy, who is my grandfather x 6.
Henry Clay was a self-taught lawyer, and became a Congressman and Senator from Kentucky, and U.S. Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams, and was a dominant figure in the development of our nation’s politics, including what would eventually become the Republican Party. Clay tried to get elected president a number of times but couldn’t quite pull it off, finishing a miserably 4th in 1824. He remained in government, opposed slavery before Lincoln’s time, and one of his achievements included "The Missouri Compromise," which allowed Maine to join the union as a "free" state and banned slavery north of the Arkansas border. There is a lot of written history about Henry Clay and he is a very interesting character.
Assuming www.ancestry.com is right about my family tree, which means I’ve got likely got the Clay blood, I should also humbly note that while there is politics in the Lacy/Hudson/Clay family, on the Lacy side it skipped 7 generations before it manifested itself again after old Henry. The Lacys in the meantime all show modest but honest means. I learned my grandfather, James C. Lacy, the first of the line to be born on the west coast in San Francisco, was a "Patrolman" at the Hercules Powder Company in Hercules, CA after serving as a veteran of the Spanish-American War. He later became a Motorman on the San Francisco Municipal Railway. His father, James B. Lacy, sold wood and coal in Virginia. James B’s father, John B. Lacy, was a farmer in Virginia, owning 28 acres, not much for a farmer in those days. The Lacy’s go back to the 1600s in the Virginia colony and I still haven’t finished the research available!
I recall in my darkest recollections something mentioned by Lacy family members at family gatherings about a guy like Clay being in the family line. But I really had no idea. I can say that, whatever the history, researching the family tree is a relaxing and fun thing to do and I highly recommend it, you don’t know what you’ll find!
July 12th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Henry Clay was also instrumental in the Compromise of 1850, which delayed
the Civil War for a decade, and secured the admission of California as a Free
State on Sept. 9, 1850 !
40 years earlier, Henry was a freshman member of the U.S. House, but
was so well-liked by colleagues that he was elected Speaker of the House
at age 34.