Author: Clay, John
Biography:
CLAY, John (1758-1841: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised at St. Edward’s, Cambridge, on 6 Oct. 1758, the son of Thomas Clay and Ann Barker, who had married in the same church on 3 Apr. 1753. Nothing is known of his education. He ran a school from his home in Peas Hill, St. Edward’s Passage, Cambridge; was vestry clerk for more than fifty years; and later became an overseer of the parish. He married Mary Hodges (1757-1809) on 3 Jan. 1784 at St. Edward’s, Cambridge. They had ten children with several infant deaths. The eldest son, Richard Clay (1789-1877), was apprenticed to Richard Watts and then to the University printer, John Smith at the Pitt Press. Richard set up as a printer in London in Devonshire Street, Bishopsgate, in 1817 and moved to Bread Street Hill, City of London, around 1830. In 1836 John Clay joined his son in London where he died on 17 Feb. 1841, aged 83, at his son’s Bread Street Hill offices. Richard Clay collected his father’s poems, Elegies and Miscellaneous Pieces, including the two elegies listed here, and signed the preface from his offices on 25 Feb. 1841, the same day as his father’s burial at St. Nicholas, Cole Abbey, City of London. He left his sons Richard and Percival £500 each, with various other bequests to nieces, grandchildren, and his housekeeper. He also left Richard Clay a silver cup presented by parishioners and a salver presented by members of the Bull Book Club, Cambridge, which met at the Bull Inn and had a library of more than two thousand volumes. (ancestry.co.uk 15 Oct. 2023; Cambridge Chronicle 20 Feb. 1841; James Moran, Clays of Bungay [1978], 12-14) AA
Other Names:
- J. Clay