From the Hunt Family History book, we get the following narrative:
"Perhaps no family in the history of genealogy has had more distorted information presented for it than the Clayton family. The overwhelming majority of accounts about our early Quaker Clayton ancestors is just wrong. People who research their family roots are always impressed with accounts given by noted researchers. They are also very excited if they ever run across an ancestry that can be traced back to the early Middle Ages. With our Clayton ancestors, they got both. Unfortunately, it was not correct.
“This incorrect information has been around for over a century. An account of the Clayton family was published in 1904 by Henry F. Hepburn of Philadelphia, in which he identified our Quaker immigrant ancestor, named William Clayton, as a member of the Yorkshire gentry Clayton family. Researchers of this family have traced their ancestry back to a Robert de Clayton, who allegedly came from Normandy to England with William the Conqueror and fought in the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
“The noted Quaker genealogist James Bellarts, who published the Quaker Yeomen newsletter for many years, printed an extensive account of our immigrant Clayton ancestor, tying him into the Yorkshire family. Bellarts, even when faced with new evidence showing that our Quaker ancestor was not related to the Yorkshire family, still mistakenly clung to the belief that his information was correct. It was probably the biggest error he made in decades of what was otherwise excellent genealogical research.[1]
“Other research by Col. Charles M. Hansen,[2] Louis E. Jones and Marilyn L. Winton-Misch has shown that William Clayton, the immigrant ancestor, was not related to the Yorkshire family of that name. What follows must be considered the most accurate information as of the published date of this work, and the numerous conflicting accounts that can be found to be obsolete in their findings.”[1]
Rychard married Dorothy Burkenshall on 24 Jan 1582 and they had the following children:
i. Richard Clayton - Baptized 24 Apr 1583, Richard Jr. married Elizabeth Peter at
Walberton on 16 Dec 1610.
ii. John Clayton - Baptized 26 Jan 1586, John died at age 13 and was buried at
Walberton on 7 Jun 1597, “son of Richard Cleton.”
iii. William Clayton - Baptized 24 Feb 1589 at Walberton
iv. Lawrence Clayton - Baptized 25 Nov 1593. No further information.
Hunt et all also explain that this family is unrelated to the Clayton family at Rudgwick.
William Clayton was married to an Elizabeth (Unknown) and both of their deaths are recorded in Boxgrove in 1644 & 1638 respectively. William is mentioned as the Elder and his son (also William) as the Younger.
“Winton-Misch identified either known or likely children of William Clayton “the Elder” as:
i. William Clayton - Born ca. 1610, William “the Younger”
ii. Joan Clayton - Born ca. 1612-1613, Joan married Edward Frost on 26 Jul 1631
at Boxgrove.
iii. Thomas Clayton - Baptized 21 Apr 1616.
William’s son, William the Younger is shown to have married Joan Smith in Boxgrove in 1631 – and the record found by these researchers more or less matches from William (III) and his father William the Younger what we see on Wikitree. The WT record breaks off between William the Younger and the Elder and joins to the de Clayton line in error. It seems that we can attribute this error to Hepburn & Bellarts in the early 1900’s.
1. Hunt, Roger D. The History of the Hunt Family. Oregon City, OR: Privately published, 2011. p. 210.
2. Hansen, Charles M. “The Parentage of William Clayton, Quaker Immigrant to Pennsylvania: A Correction,” The Genealogist 4 (1983): 169-73. http://fasg.org/fellows/current-fellows/charles-m-hansen/
