Clay County is located in the U.S. state of Missouri and is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Clay County was settled primarily from migrants from the Upper Southern states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.

They brought slaves and slaveholding traditions with them, and quickly started cultivating crops similar to those in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky: hemp and tobacco.

[5] The 1828 execution of Annice, a slave owned by Jeremiah Prior, was the first to occur in Clay County.

In 1836, mobs and the Missouri State militia viciously drove the members of the church from the county.

[8] Leaders of this church, most notably Joseph Smith, were imprisoned for some months in Clay County in the jail at Liberty.

Clay County is divided into eight legislative districts in the Missouri House of Representatives, five of which are held by Republicans and three by Democrats.

Clay County, like the rest of Missouri, has swung to the Republican Party in the 21st century, though the margins have been very close.

In 2016, Donald Trump won the county while Hillary Clinton failed to improve on Barack Obama's percentages with only 41% of the vote.

Joe Biden, however, did improve on those margins, winning nearly 47% of the vote in 2020; Trump still carried the county by 4%.