William Clayton (Mormon)

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William Clayton
Member and Clerk of the Council of Fifty[1]
March 11, 1844 (1844-03-11) – December 4, 1879 (1879-12-04)
Called by	Joseph Smith
Personal details
Born	(1814-07-17)July 17, 1814 Penwortham, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom
Died	December 4, 1879(1879-12-04) (aged 65) Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, United States
Resting place	Salt Lake City Cemetery 40°46′37.92″N 111°51′28.8″W / 40.7772000°N 111.858000°W / 40.7772000; -111.858000
Known For	An early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement, clerk and scribe to Joseph Smith, and credited with inventing a version of the modern odometer
Spouse(s)	10
Children	42
Parents	Thomas Clayton and Ann Critchley

William H. Clayton (July 17, 1814 – December 4, 1879^[2]) was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement who was a clerk and scribe to the religious leader Joseph Smith. Clayton, born in England, was also an American pioneer journalist, inventor, lyricist, and musician.

Early life and conversion in England[]

Clayton was born in Penwortham, Lancashire, England, the son of Thomas Clayton and Ann Critchley.^[2] He was the eldest of 14 children. He married Ruth Moon on October 9, 1836. In 1837, Clayton investigated The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Taught by church apostles Heber C. Kimball and Orson Hyde, Clayton was baptized October 21, 1837;^[3] ordained a priest in December; and a high priest on April 1, 1838.^[2] Clayton's parents and siblings also joined the church.^[3] In 1838, he served as second counselor to the British mission president Joseph Fielding, with Willard Richards as first counselor.^[4] Clayton became a missionary in England, where he grew a branch of the church in Manchester to about 240 members.^[3]

In September 1840, Clayton led a group of British converts who emigrated to the United States on the ship North America. They arrived in New York on 11 October 1840. He and his family first tried to farm in Iowa Territory, then settled in the predominantly Latter Day Saint community of Nauvoo, Illinois.^[3] There he was a clerk and scribe to Joseph Smith from 1842-1844, where he recorded Smith's sermons and helped him write letters. He also wrote in the record book of the Nauvoo Masonic Lodge.^[5] In an 1840 letter, Clayton wrote to church members in Manchester about interacting with Smith:

We have had the privilege of conversing with Joseph Smith Jr. and we are delighted with his company. We have had a privilege of ascertaining in a great measure from whence all the evil reports have arisen and hitherto have every reason to believe him innocent. He is not an idiot, but a man of sound judgment, and possessed of abundance of intelligence and whilst you listen to his conversation you receive intelligence which expands your mind and causes your heart to rejoice. He is very familiar, and delights to instruct the poor saints. I can converse with him just as easy as I can with you, and with regard to being willing to communicate instruction he says, "I receive it freely and I will give it freely." He is willing to answer any question I have put to him and is pleased when we ask him questions.

^{[citation needed]}

Clayton also played in the Nauvoo brass band and worked as the city treasurer.^[3] Other positions in the church and community included:

• recorder and clerk of the Nauvoo City Council,
• an officer in the Nauvoo Music Association,
• a member of the church's influential Council of Fifty, and
• a member of Joseph Smith's private prayer circle where the Latter Day Saint temple ceremonies were first introduced.^{[citation needed]}

Plural marriage[]

Clayton accepted plural marriage as a religious principle. He is reported to have preached that a man could only enter the Celestial Kingdom by having more than one wife in 1873. Other church leaders disagreed with the teaching. They did agree that a man should take more than one wife when "Personally commanded [...] by the Almighty through his servants".^[6] Clayton ultimately married ten wives though three of his wives later left him.^[7] He married his first wife, Ruth Moon, before leaving England. He married four wives in Nauvoo^[8] and five more in Utah. His ten wives together bore him 42 children,^[3] with Ruth bearing him ten children.^[8]

Clayton married four women in Nauvoo. Margaret Moon, Ruth's younger sister, on April 27, 1843, when plural marriage was still done in secret. At the time, Margaret was engaged to marry Aaron Farr, who was on a mission elsewhere. Seeing Margaret's emotional distress when Farr returned, Clayton asked Joseph Smith if they could annul the marriage, but he said no. Margaret insisted that she wanted to stay with Clayton, perhaps because she was already pregnant by him. On finding out that Margaret was Clayton's second wife, Margaret's mother, Lydia Moon, expressed her strong disapproval, threatening to commit suicide or move out.^[9] In order to avoid rumors about Margaret's pregnancy, Joseph Smith advised Clayton that Margaret should stay home until the baby was born. Margaret gave birth in February 1844 to a baby boy who died six months later.^[10] Margaret and Clayton later had five other children together.^[11] Clayton married Alice Hardman on September 13, 1844. He knew her from his time in the LDS Church in Manchester. Alice did not live in the Clayton home, but Clayton visited her in her own home, and they had four children together.^[12] They divorced in 1858.^[13] Clayton also married Alice's cousin, Jane Hardman, on May 31, 1840. They were sealed on November 20. 1844, but their marriage failed and she did not accompany Clayton when he left Nauvoo in 1846.^[12] Clayton also married Diantha Farr, younger sister to Margaret's once-fiancee, Aaron Farr. They were married on January 9, 1845. Diantha continued to live with her parents and was in late pregnancy when Clayton left Nauvoo with his other family members in February 1846.^[14] Diantha died on September 11, 1850, shortly after the birth of her third child.^[15]

After settling in the Salt Lake valley, Clayton married several more teenage women. He married Augusta Braddock, aged 17, on October 5, 1850. They had eight children together. He married Sarah Ann Walters when she was 18 years old on November 30, 1856, and they had eleven children together. Their youngest child was born after Clayton's death in 1879. He married Amasa Lyman's daughter, Maria Louisa Lyman, age 17, in 1866, and they had one child together.^[16] Maria taught Clayton's children until she left Clayton's household to join her father Amasa when he joined the Godbeites. They were separated when she filed for divorce with the state in 1871.^[17] In 1870, he married Anna Elizabeth Higgs, also when she was 17 years old, with whom he had four children.^[16] There were rumors that a non-Mormon had romanced Anna. She left home, selling many of her possessions while travelling south in 1873, but was shortly afterwards reconciled with Clayton. ^[18] Clayton also married a widowed cousin of Ruth and Margaret at her request, Elizabeth Ainsworth, when she was 48. They did not have any children together.^[19]

Journal and personal records[]

Clayton's impressions of day-to-day activities, recorded in a series of personal journals, describe the social activities of mid-19th century America and the evolution of Mormon religious culture.

Clayton's handwriting is not identified in Smith's History of the Church.^[5]:441 George A. Smith reported using Clayton's notes on Smith's sermons to fill out the text of the sermons, which was difficult because the notes typically only had two or three words per sentence of sermon.^[5]:472 After Smith's death, Clayton helped complete Smith's official church history, using his personal journals as a major source. Clayton's personal records were at times incorporated into official Mormon scripture and history without recognition of their source.^{[citation needed]} His notes were one of four sources used to reconstruct a sermon by Smith known as the "King Follett Discourse". Published sections of Clayton's journals also provide a detailed description of the Nauvoo Temple and an account of the Latter Day Saints' efforts to complete temple endowments for all interested members before being forced to leave Illinois.

Migration to the west[]

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Late in February 1846, Clayton left Nauvoo after a flurry of work making and packing records in the office and new Nauvoo temple.^[20] He spent the winter of 1846–47 at Winter Quarters, Nebraska. The following year, he was a member of the vanguard company that crossed the plains to select a western site for Mormon colonization. He was a recording scribe for Brigham Young, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, during the journey. Several months later, Clayton returned to the mid-West to prepare his family for the overland trek. Travelling in the Heber C. Kimball Company, they arrived in Salt Lake City in September 1848.^[3]

Clayton's pioneer journal, later published, is the most well-known account of the expedition. He noted that land in the Salt Lake valley would be easy to clear as it had limited timber, and expressed concern over the apparent scarcity of rainfall. Clayton later prepared and published The Latter-day Saints' Emigrants' Guide, a meticulous description of the route from Winter Quarters to Salt Lake City, with suggestions for camping places. Using his odometer, the guide had the most accurate distances of the day. It was a valuable guide for Mormon migrants, but was also used by pioneers bound for the Oregon and California territories.

"Come, Come, Ye Saints" and other hymns[]

In April 1846, while camped near Locust Creek on the plains of Iowa, Clayton wrote the words to the popular Mormon hymn, now known as "Come, Come, Ye Saints", which is sung to the music of a traditional English song, "All is Well". The hymn was in response to good news from Mormons still living in Nauvoo. One of his plural wives, Diantha, had given birth to a healthy baby boy, William Adriel Benoni Clayton.^[21] In his journal, he stated that he "composed a new song—'All is well.' I feel to thank my heavenly father for my boy and pray that he will spare and preserve his life and that of his mother and so order it so that we may soon meet again."^{[citation needed]}

To modern Latter-day Saints, this hymn signifies the difficulties and faith involved in the Mormon migration to the west.^[22] Some of Clayton's other poems have also been put to music, including "When First the Glorious Light of Truth", also used as a hymn by the LDS Church.

The Roadometer[]

Clayton is credited with inventing a version of the modern odometer, during this trip across the plains from Nauvoo, Illinois to Utah, with the help of apostle and mathematician Orson Pratt.^{[citation needed]} Clayton was assigned to record the number of miles the company traveled each day. One day, Clayton personally counted the revolutions of a wagon wheel and computed the day's distance by multiplying the count by the wheel's circumference. Clayton asked Pratt to develop a design for a wagon odometer. It consisted of a set of wooden cog wheels attached to the hub of a wagon wheel, with the mechanism "counting" or recording by position the revolutions of the wheel. The apparatus was built by the company's carpenter Appleton Milo Harmon.^[23] Clayton's journal records: "About noon today Brother Appleton Harmon completed the machinery on the wagon called a 'roadometer' by adding a wheel to revolve once in ten miles, showing each mile and also each quarter mile we travel, and then casing the whole over so as to secure it from the weather." The "roadometer" was first used on the morning of May 12, 1847.

Life after immigrating to Utah[]

Clayton served a second mission in England starting in September 1852. He was briefly president of the Sheffield and Lincolnshire Conferences before being released in April 1853 and returning home to Utah in October of the same year.^[3]

Once settled in Utah, Clayton continued to maintain church records and also participated in public and private business activities. He became an auditor for Utah Territory, as well as recorder of marks and brands, holding both positions until his death. Clayton also worked as treasurer of the Deseret Telegraph Company and as secretary of Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI), a church based cooperative business enterprise. Private ventures included collecting debts, filing land claims, acting as a legal advocate, lending money, merchandising, farming, and mining speculation.

Clayton was active in cultural activities in the Salt Lake Valley, particularly those associated with music. He died in Salt Lake City on December 4, 1879. He was buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery.

See also[]

• Nauvoo Brass Band

References[]

Works cited[]

External links[]

• Works by William Clayton at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about William Clayton at Internet Archive
• "Come, Come, Ye Saints"
• History of the Odometer
• William Clayton's diary at Brigham Young University library
• William Clayton receipt, MSS SC 1286 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
• William Clayton receipt, MSS SC 1254 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
• William Clayton diary, MSS 423 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
• William Clayton certificate, MSS 1127 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
• Clayton, William (1848). The Latter-Day Saints' Emigrants' Guide. St. Louis: Chambers & Knapp.