The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Chapman (1880), p. 675; Howard (1907) I, pp. 283–284
Clay Township was constituted in June 1840, and its first officers were settlers of the wave above. Chapman explains his chapter's own shortness: "it was not organized as a township until 1840, and therefore everything concerning its early history, particularly concerning the names of early settlers of the township up to that year, will be included in the history of German township." The June 1840 order of the county commissioners made Clay a separate township, "named after Henry Clay, who was just in the prime of his political glory"; Howard dates the order 5 May 1840 and prints the bounds whole (the frame pass carries them). The first election was held in "Brooks' barn," then on Section 30 — Samuel Brooks's barn, the same Brooks who had built the mill three years before — and "the first justices of the peace of Clay township were Jonathan Hardy and Samuel Brooks." No other first officers are named in the chapter. The township so made was composite — its river strip the old German Township east of the river, its east taken from Harris and Penn, adjusted again in December 1842 — and it remained a farm township for the seventy-six years between its making and Roseland's incorporation: Howard in 1907 still describes its people's occupations as "almost exclusively agricultural," its roads "finely graveled," with "excellent farms found in every section."