More about John Clay and Sarah Clay

Yesterday's article about Clay and Glynne Emigrants to the USA from Susan Johnson drew a flurry of responses.

Val Glass emailed me about John Clay, a Scottish farmer, an online biography of John Clay that mentions daughter, Sarah Clay, later Glynne.

That biography says "John Clay was bom at Dykegatehead, a farm in the parish of Whitsome, in the county of Berwick, on November 5, 1824" and that his portrait used to hang in his daughter, Sarah's house in Castle Terrace, Berwick-on-Tweed.

Val also said "I went to a talk about 10 years ago on the Clay family by, I think, Trevor Swan of Coldstream. All about their lives in USA. It is probably the same family who emigrated." and Tom Esk commented "I seem to remember that Trevor Swan gave a talk about a Clay family, possibly around March 2005 and it might have been in the Borders Family History Society magazine."

They're both right, and a search of the Borders Family History Society Article Index for 'Clay' shows a long article in issue 58 (which I think is June 2005) titlled 'The Purves, Clays, and the Crimean War' by Will Murray and Trevor Swan; the article is the text of the authors' talk to the Society titled 'James Charles Purves: a Coldstream Lad at the Charge' on 20th March 2005 about one of the participants in the charge of the Light Brigade, the battle, and some of James' family.

Trevor rang me this morning and confirmed that it is the same family that he has been researching, so I've sent an email from him to Susan and I hope that she'll be in touch.

If you know know more about this family or related families, please add a comment.

Does anyone have any pictures ?