CLAYTON, (Hinton News) – It is time for another edition of A Peek into Summers County’s Past. Each week, local history collector William Jones talks about pieces from his collection and their significance to local history. This week, Jones is discussing the town of Clayton and items related to the naming.
The community in question, like the rest of Summers County, has a rich history. However, this area’s name holds a fascinating story. This story is the tale Jones intends to unwind.
To begin, Jones said, “This week’s piece has a unique twist to it, in that it is not directly related to the topic per se but is rare in its own right. As I delve into the topic and the time frame it happened, you can see why there more than likely could not have been anything tangible to this piece of Summers County history. To begin with, the community of Clayton, W.Va., has a very unusual history of how it got its name. It received the name of Clayton due to an unusual occurrence that took place on April 9, 1835, at approximately 2:30 a.m. when balloonist Richard Clayton or an aeronaut which they were known as at that time is a traveler in a hot-air balloon, airship or other flying craft.”
Clayton obtained worldwide fame from the incident that brought his balloon to the hills of what would become West Virginia. Jones stated, “Mr. Clayton became world famous when he flew his balloon nine and a half hours from Cincinnati, OH to where he landed unexpectedly in a tree at 2:30 a.m. in the mountains of what was at that time part of Virginia. His balloon was called Star of the West. Mr. Clayton manufactured and sold watches; he was also a metalsmith and made flatware on the corner of Second St. and Sycamore St. in Cincinnati.”
At the time of the trip, traveling via balloon was still a relatively new accomplishment, and long-distance travel in a short amount of time with this method was unheard of. Jones noted, “Balloonists at that time were known to be quirky, and quite the entertainers as the craft of flying in a balloon was relatively new and had not been seen by many. He sold tickets to witness the launch that would ultimately bring about the formation of what is now Clayton, W.Va. Tickets were .50 cents at that time or about $11.50 with today’s prices. I can only imagine what a spectacle this must have been! To have justified spending that price for a ticket to see his 50-foot balloon take off. When the average salary at that time was only $1.25 a week.”
“Again, he was definitely an entertainer, He took his 20-pound dog with him. After he made it to an altitude of about 1 mile, he tossed the dog out of the basket. But no worries, this had all been well planned out and the dog parachuted safely back to the general vicinity where he first took flight,” Jones said. “He makes me think of Mr. Rose, the pharmacist in Hinton I talked about in one of my previous articles. Someone who was not afraid to take any chance, many of them were especially unusual. Not always managing to profit from them and further advance their craft.”
After landing in the tree, Clayton knew he would need assistance. Jones said, “In Mr Clayton’s personal journal of the event he refers to the basket that he was riding in that was attached to the balloon as ‘his car’. He recalls securing the basket in the tree where he landed about 40ft off the ground with a rope and after looking at his watch and realizing it was 2:30 in the middle of the night, he thought it useless to go for help until daybreak. In the morning, he ascended his car as he called it to begin to look for help, but as he tells it, ‘there was no trace of human footsteps, no mark of change produced by man.’ He scouted the mountainness area for hours until he finally came upon someone that took him to the home of Joseph Graham for assistance.”
Jones went on to say, “It is probably a good thing that he decided to stay in ‘his car’ for the night as you can only envision being the locals in that community and getting a knock at your door in the middle of the night. Only to have a man say his balloon, or car as he called it, got stuck in a tree as he was attempting to reach the ocean. I like to think they were, at first, skeptical of what most likely came off as a tall tale. Mr. Clayton finally procured the assistance he needed from Mr. Graham for three days while the locals in that area helped search for his balloon. During his stay with Mr. Graham, he had countless visitors from that area. Once they located it they took Clayton and the balloon to the Ohio River where he boarded a steamboat and once he returned home and they heard him recant his journey he was treated like a hero.”
While some may have regarded Clayton as a hero of sorts, many doubted his claim of traveling such a distance in only nine and a half hours. He went on to perform several more unlikely flights.
As to the historical pieces related to this story, Jones said, “He had the ad you see here printed in all of the local papers that read ‘Grand Aerial Voyage’ with a photo of the balloon that was called Star of the West and the tale of his trip that led him to the Allegheny Mountains. Even though he was not successful in making it to the ocean, everyone still wanted to see this new, almost unimaginable flying contraption.”
In conclusion, Jones stated, “Another noteworthy fact about this is that a post office was first established on November 3, 1879, under the administration of President Hayes in the Joseph Graham home. David Graham Ballengee became the first postmaster of the newly established post office. It was given the name of Clayton because of the happenings of Richard Clayton 44 years prior. A new post office was erected in 1892. Mr Ballengee was the 10th longest-serving postmaster in US history having served his 59-year tenure from 1879 to 1939. The Clayton Post Office closed on March 31, 1959. David’s son Homer Ballengee had replaced his father as postmaster until it closed. The early photo you see is of the Joseph Graham home which was the first post office prior to the more stately two-story structure that was built in a late Victorian style.”
This brings us to the end of another edition of A Peek into Summers County’s Past. Did you know how Clayton got its name? Be sure to come back next week for another look at the area’s history.
If you have a story from local history that you would like to share, send us an email to news@hintonnews.com.
