Daniel Bragg Clayton

From Philosopedia

Daniel Bragg Clayton (18 April 1817 - 12 November 1906)

Clayton, who was born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, was a Universalist who became known as having "preached Universalism for Sixty-Eight Years."

He is thought by Steven Rowe and other fellow Universalists as having had a slight formal education of a year or two but then taught, which was not unusual in those days.

His seminary training was under the Rev. Allen Fuller. His Doctorate of Divinity was an honorary degree.

In addition to running hotels in Columbia, South Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia, Clayton fathered eight or nine children, outliving half of them.

He published some secular newspapers in Mississippi and edited the Atlanta Universalist.

On the day of his death, according to Rowe, "he was dressing to go to preach at Greenville, North Carolina, from the house of his son in Columbia, South Carolina, 250 miles away."

Wendy Shaw of BookFinder.com has found that Clayton's Forty-Seven Years in the Universalist Ministry "has been one of the most popular titles in the Biography and Memoir category." As to its popularity, Rowe has a suggestion:

• The appeal for book searchers now possibly is that this is one of the few first-hand accounts of the history of one branch of liberal Christianity in the antebellum and reconstruction south. This includes names of families, churches, and politicians from Virginia to Texas. So folks looking for information on their families and their locations would be looking for this book. I suspect not many copies show up on BookFinder, as it was self-published (in two variant editions with different bindings, one with a picture of Father Clayton, one without). I've seen 3 copies, and I know where a total of about 8 are.

Emma Eliza Bailey, in Happy Day: Or the Confessions of a Woman Minister (1901), describes Clayton in her autobiography. A Universalist minister, she mentions his being a "saintly" person who attended a Universalist convention:

• . . . saintly Father D. B. Clayton, all the way from South Carolina, whose efforts and sacrifices as a missionary in the South can hardly be overestimated or appreciated.

Bailey, she wrote, is one of several deserving of being called "saintly," another being Hosea Ballou.

{Steve Rowe, 12 July 2007 e-mail to Warren Allen Smith}