Graves
Mary Jane Warfield Clay
1815 – 1900
She held the family together, and the family went on to change the state.
Mary Jane Warfield Clay married Cassius Marcellus Clay in 1853 and spent the following decades holding everything together while he was off being famous — Russia, Washington, the whole loud career. When the marriage ended in separation in 1878, she did not disappear; she kept the household, the land, and the daughters.
The daughters are the part history keeps underplaying. Mary Barr, Laura, and Sallie grew up to be pioneering suffragists — Mary Barr led the American Woman Suffrage Association, and Laura co-founded the Kentucky Equal Rights Association. Whatever got handed down in that house, Mary Jane handed it down.
Cassius Marcellus Clay was my cousin. I keep his story on its own page — but I come to visit her stone.