[1] When the 1907 Monongah, West Virginia coal mining disaster occurred on December 6, 1907, killing 361 men, 250 of them fathers,[2][3][1] Clayton suggested to her local pastor of the Williams Methodist Episcopal Church South in Fairmont, West Virginia, Reverend Robert T. Webb, that a commemoration service be held in their honor.

The combination of extreme jubilation and intense sadness may have directed attention away from the planned Father's day remembrance service.

Ten years earlier on August 10, 1962, however, an attendee to the Clayton-Webb memorial service by the name of Ward Downs wrote a letter to then United States House of Representative Arch Moore stating: "It has recently come to my attention of a movement establishing a Father's Day by an act of Congress to be observed the same as Mother's Day.

Clayton's father was a traveling minister, serving the Marion Circuit throughout 1878; before being appointed elder of the Methodist Episcopal Church South in the Fayette District.

[6] The Fairmont Times reported that a church in the area of Stafford, completed in 1896, employed an organist named Mrs. Grace Clayton.

Many years later, the city of Fairmont in Marion County, West Virginia erected approaching state signs that read: "Welcome to Fairmont the friendly city - Home of the first Father's Day Service July 5, 1908"; while the State of West Virginia itself signed governor resolutions giving Clayton proper credit for having founded Father's Day.