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FAMILY SECRETS & SCANDALS: CONWAYS, COUSINS & COWBOYS: Conway, Hays & Simms family stories passed down by settlers of Dutch New York, Virginia, Tennessee, Illinois, Missouri and the Wild West

Family Secrets: Conways, Cousins & Cowboys is the first of a series. There is a collection of stories waiting in the wings that revolve around other family branches and investigates other mysteries. Upcoming tales will include family lore from branches of the Arbogast, Battles, Beauvais, Beeves, Bogardus, Creekmore, Holladay, Lindley, Longstreet, Matheny, Mullanax, Pierce and Webber lineages. These families boast fur trappers and beguiling Indian maidens, civil war generals and revolutionary war heroes, devout Quakers and cautious Catholics. One man was admittedly married four times and had a long list of children, but someone else apparently used his name since there are records showing he fathered dozens of other children without the benefit of matrimony. One family engaged in legal battles over the inheritance of a swampy piece of land for more than 200 years!

Who Was John Clayton?

There were two men named John Clayton in early Virginia. The older John Clayton arrived from England with his family sometime after 1715. He held numerous political positions and was appointed as an Attorney General for colonial Virginia. His son, John Clayton, was a famous botanist. He served as the clerk for Gloucester County, Virginia from 1720 until his death in 1773 yet found enough spare time to travel to collect plant specimens, study botany on the side and engage in an immense amount of correspondence with expert botanists around the world. Some of John Clayton’s specimens are still preserved and housed in the Natural History Museum in London within the John Clayton Herbarium.

William Clayton, one of John Clayton’s sons, was a delegate to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, a group who met in 1788 to ratify or reject the United States Constitution. A part of Virginia State Route 14 that runs through Gloucester County, Virginia is a four lane highway dedicated as the John Clayton Memorial Highway.

Are You Irish?

If so, then your ancestors may have faced persecution and discrimination. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle Brooklyn, New York 18 Nov 1868, p3

In the mid nineteenth century, it is estimated that up to a third of the entire Irish population emigrated to the United States. These people fled the Irish potato famine of 1845-1852 that ravaged the economy and disrupted their country.

“[The Famine] is a punishment from God for an idle, ungrateful, and rebellious country; an indolent and un-self-reliant people. The Irish are suffering from an affliction of God’s providence,”

said Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary to Her Majesty’s Treasury, in 1847. Trevelyan was given a knighthood in 1848 for overseeing Britain’s mostly indifferent and ineffectual famine relief.

This disdainful attitude towards the Irish was firmly entrenched in British society and pointedly mocked more than a century earlier by satirist Johnathan Swift in his famous essay known as “A Modest Proposal.” The full title is, “A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick.” In the essay, published anonymously in 1729, Swift suggested that selling their children to the rich would offer an easy solution to the plight of the poor Irish.

"A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout."

In the United States the frequent appearance of “Irish Need Not Apply” signs were matched with newspaper editorials that raged against “papal aggression” and lobbied for laws that limited voting to citizens with twenty-one years of residence.

Aging Outlaws of the Wild West

Aging outlaws such as Emmett Dalton had to clean up their act and make a living once the wild wild west was tamed (and they were released from prison). Some of them capitalized on nostalgia. And who knew that the term "dudes" has been around for more than 100 years? In 1911 Emmett Dalton said,

" There is only one thing in the world that equals a manly man, and that is a womanly woman. The world is full of dudes and butterflies, but men and women are at a premium. "

Scout Younger kept up abreast of the times and when silent movies became the latest fad, he began producing films for display at theaters, one of which was “The Daltons” with a presentation that included a personal appearance by Emmett Dalton. Younger knew many of the old west outlaws and incorporated them into his movies and exhibits.

John Tackett, the photographer who famously snapped the photos of four dead Dalton gang members in Coffeyville, Kansas, collaborated with Emmett Dalton in a film about the famous raid. He later teamed up with Scout Younger to make a western movie in Tulsa, while Emmett went on to make a new version of his moving pictures. It first appeared in 1911 under the title “The Last Raid of the Dalton Gang” and in 1912 it was released as “The Last Stand of the Dalton Boys” and later still it was called “The True Life History of the Dalton Boys."

It's Genealogy, So Spelling Doesn't Matter

Turn your spell checker off ! Your ancestors didn't use them!

Ben Conway’s middle name was Seymour. It’s genealogy, so spelling doesn’t matter. There are records where Seymour is variously spelled Seymore, Seemore, Semore, Seamore, Cemore and Ceemore.

There are Hays, Hayes and Haze, Wrights and Rights, Vaughans and Vons. Van Hoeckziel was shortened to Van Hoeck and then became Van Hook.

Another ancestor in the deep South named Roseanne was difficult to trace until it was discovered that her name had been entered on a census form as “Raisin.” You can almost hear the woman, speaking with a pronounced southern drawl, telling the census taker her name!

If it was good enough for the person and his family it should be good enough for you. Eliga McDonough Hays spelled his first name with a “g” and that is etched right on his headstone. This is genealogy and the spelling doesn’t matter.