As anyone who's researched Clayton history over the years can tell you, there are a lot of tangled branches to sort through. This particular branch begins with the Claytons of Clayton-le-Moors in Lancashire around the year 1066. From there, the line moves to John de Clayton's Clayton Hall in Yorkshire before making its way down to Sussex, stopping to obtain a few advanced degrees from Cambridge along the way.Incentives from the British Crown bring these Claytons to the Colonial Province of Virginia in the 1540s, and shortly thereafter, they follow the burgeoning tobacco industry into the Province of Carolina before seeking vast acres of fertile land in Kentucky. When tobacco moves north after the Civil War, they follow the lumber boom into Missouri.This booklet was created for my family using nearly 70 sources, scattered from 1666 to the present, all contained within the Bibliography in the back. It's as researched, sourced, and accurate as I'm capable of making it. That said, understand that I'm not a genealogist, and this is not meant to be a scholarly work. My hope is that readers find information to help them untangle their own branches, and if in that process they find new twigs and leaves I may have overlooked, that's even better.

Ancestors of the author beginning with John Clayton, born in 1665 in London, England. He married Anne Page about 1685 in England. They had 6 children. John died 18 Nov 1737 in Virginia. Their descendants have lived in Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, Kentucky, and other areas throughout the United States.

Genealogy of William Clayton of Chichester (1625-1689), who was born in the parish of Rumbaldswick, near Chichester, Sussex, England, and died in Chichester, Chester Co., Pennsylvania. He came to Pennsyl- vania with other Quakers, arriving in New York 1677, and then sailing on south. He married Prudence Lanckford, daughter of William Lanck- ford, 1653 in St. Pancras parish, Chichester, Sussex, England. She was probably born in Surrey. The early ancestor of this line was Thomas Clayton (b. c. 1500), who have made a will in Rudgwick parish, Sussex, England in 1557. Includes some genealogies of New England, Delaware, New Jersey and Virginia branches of Clayton families.