William C. Clayton
William C. Clayton (January 24, 1831 – March 11, 1915) was an American educator, lawyer, politician, and businessperson in the U.S. state of West Virginia.
[1][3][6] He continued his studies at the University of Virginia in the 1846, 1847, and 1848 academic sessions,[2][3][6] and graduated from his separate classes there.
[1][3][6] According to an advertisement for a female teacher in The Baltimore Sun on November 9, 1853, Clayton was serving as the principal of the Romney Classical Institute in 1853.
[7] Just after the American Civil War, in 1866, he again served as the principal of the Romney Classical Institute for several academic sessions.
[9] In November 1874 Clayton won his election to the senate seat and represented the district alongside R. B. Sherrard of Hardy County.
[3][10][11] Clayton first served in the West Virginia Legislature's 12th Legislative Session, which convened in Charleston on January 13, 1875, and adjourned on December 23, 1875.
[15][16] During his tenure in the state senate, Clayton introduced and procured the passage of a bill creating the Independent School District of Keyser.
[1] Clayton became a special judge, and held several terms of the circuit court in Grant, Hardy, and Mineral counties.
[22] In March 1891, Clayton and C. Wood Daily of Keyser argued on behalf of the West Virginia Central and Pittsburgh Railway Company in a mandamus case at the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia brought by a director of the company, W. Irvine Cross.
On March 24, the court ruled that the company was governed by the cumulative method, and therefore, Cross was entitled to his director seat.
[23] In April 1892, Clayton was under consideration as a Democratic candidate for a long term on the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.
[24] At the West Virginia Democratic Party State Convention in August 1892, held in Parkersburg, Marmaduke H. Dent was elected as the party's candidate for election to the long term, beating out Clayton, Joseph Moreland, and Robert W.
[26] In July 1889, Clayton was an incorporator with $100 in shares of the Alexander Boom and Lumber Company, which constructed, operated, and maintained log booms across the Buckhannon River near the confluence of the river's Left Fork and Right Fork tributaries in Upshur County.
[27] Clayton was an incorporator and a director of the Patterson's Creek and Potomac Railroad Company, which was chartered on March 15, 1900, with a capital stock of $20,000.
[28][29] The railroad was to be constructed from Patterson Creek on the North Branch Potomac River, to a point along the North Branch Potomac River between Short Gap and Pinto, thus acting as a 5.42-mile (8.72 km) cut-off around the congested Cumberland Rail Yard in Cumberland.
[28] On April 5, 1900, the company was formally organized at a meeting held at a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad office in Keyser where Clayton was elected as a director.
[38] Her sister was Elizabeth "Bessie" Jane Schultze, the first wife of Christian Streit White, Hampshire County Clerk of Court and, later, President of the West Virginia Fish Commission.
[38] On September 27, 1891, at 19:00, Clayton's wife died at their residence in Keyser as a result of contracting typhoid fever.
[15][16] In May 1895, Clayton served on a special committee that conducted in an investigation over the expulsion of members of the Presbytery's church in Gerrardstown.
