Long before the first European surveyor set foot in what is now the Town of Clay, this land belonged to the Onondaga Nation. The Onondaga, whose name means "People of the Hills," served as Keepers of the Fire at the geographic and political center of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy -- the alliance of Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations that governed a vast territory across present-day New York 1. Three Rivers Point, where the Oneida and Seneca Rivers converge to form the Oswego River, was a site of particular importance: a council ground where Haudenosaunee diplomats addressed delegations from the Hurons, Adirondacks, and Abenaquis, and where French and English envoys met chiefs whom one early historian judged "equal to themselves in all that pertained to sagacity and skill" 23.
The American Revolution shattered this world. The 1783 Treaty of Paris made no provisions for Haudenosaunee interests, and between 1788 and 1822 the Onondaga Nation lost possession of approximately 95 percent of its ancestral land 4. New York State carved much of this territory into the Central New York Military Tract -- nearly two million acres divided into 25 townships of 100 lots each, awarded as bounty land to Revolutionary War veterans 5. The townships received classical names -- Cicero, Pompey, Marcellus -- selected by Robert Harpur, a Columbia College classics scholar serving as assistant secretary of state 5. Clay's territory fell within the military Township of Cicero, where each lot encompassed 600 acres and was distributed by lottery beginning on July 3, 1790 6.
Settlement was slow at first. The first white settler in what would become Clay was Patrick McGee, who arrived at Three Rivers Point around 1793. McGee had first seen the spot in 1780 while a prisoner of the British, marched northward toward Fort Oswego. Clayton's county history records that the British tied their prisoners to trees at the confluence, and McGee "was very much charmed by the beauty of the place" -- selecting it as his future home even while captive 3. He built a log cabin there after the war and was eventually buried on the same ground 3. At the time of his arrival, the riverbanks displayed an extensive clearing "without a shrub or tree, handsomely covered with grass, for a distance of more than a mile" -- the legacy of generations of Haudenosaunee council fires 23.
After McGee came Adam Coon in 1798, settling in the northeast corner of the town, and Simeon Baker on the Seneca River in 1799 23. John Lynn arrived near the center of the town around 1800 and was still living in 1847 at the age of ninety-seven 2. Joshua Kinne and Elijah Pinckney followed in 1807. Beginning in 1812, a wave of Palatine German families transformed the landscape: the Youngs, Wellers, Moggs, Beckers, VerPlanks, Van Hoesens, Hillers, and Ottmans established the hamlets of Youngs and Dutch Settlement 8. These families were descendants of Rhineland Germans whom Queen Anne had transported to America in 1709 as indentured servants; after near-starvation, they had relocated to Schoharie as free settlers 8.
By 1826 the population had grown large enough to justify a separate government. On April 16, 1827, the New York State Legislature passed a bill setting off the present Town of Clay from the civil and old military Township of Cicero 7. The new town was named in honor of Henry Clay, the Kentucky statesman -- a choice that was "at first objectionable to a portion of the inhabitants, who for several years after its organization petitioned the Legislature to alter it, but without effect" 2. At the first town meeting, held the same month, Andrew Johnson was elected supervisor and Jacob Terrill town clerk 27. The town contained fewer than seven hundred inhabitants and fifty military tract lots 29.
The early town records prior to about 1850 have been destroyed -- Bruce's 1896 history notes that "careful inquiry was made for the old books, but without avail; it is believed the records were burned" 7. What survives comes from the county histories and the memories of long-lived pioneers. The first log schoolhouse was erected at Clay Corners (now Euclid) about 1808, with a teacher named Hall; Moses Kinne taught at a second school near the river, having previously kept classes in his own home 23. The first physician was Dr. Olcott; the first post office was established about 1825 at "West Cicero," with Nathan Teall as postmaster 27. The first and most important article of trade was salt barrels, manufactured from the heavy timber covering the town and hauled to the Syracuse salt works -- an industry that "in many instances proved a source of individual wealth" 237.