The Dictionary of Virginia Biography is published online through a partnership with Encyclopedia Virginia. Biographies that do not also appear in the three print volumes (surnames Aaroe�Daniels) link to lists of sources consulted.
Sources consulted for the biography of:John Clayton (1695–1773)
Biographical Information
- Benjamin Smith Barton, "Memorandums of the Life of Mr. John Clayton, the Celebrated Botanist of Virginia," Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal 2 (1805): 139–145, with variant death date of Dec. 15, 1773, and recording death "in his eighty-eighth year."
- Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley, John Clayton: Pioneer of American Botany (1963).
- Caroline Heath Tunstall, "A Virginian in Dutch Eyes: John Clayton of Virginia and Frederick Gronovius of Holland," Virginia Cavalcade 28 (1979): 149–153.
Primary Sources
- Clayton's correspondence in:
- John Norton and Sons Papers (age seventy-seven in John Clayton to John Norton, Aug. 31, 1772, enclosure, and also in Clayton to Norton, Aug. 2, 1773), John D. Rockefeller Library, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, printed in part in Frances Norton Mason, ed., John Norton and Sons: Merchants of London and Virginia (1937), 155, 197–198.
- William Darlington, Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall (1849), 406–412 (first quotation on 224).
- "Letter of John Clayton to Linnaeus, 1748," William and Mary Quarterly, 2d ser., 4 (1924): 246–248, and "Letters of John Clayton, John Bartram, Peter Collinson, William Byrd, Isham Randolph," ibid. 6 (1926): 317–325.
- "Virginia Game, and Field Sports: Description of Them by the Botanist Clayton in 1739," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 7 (1899): 172–174.
- C. G. Chamberlayne, ed., The Vestry Book of Petsworth Parish, Gloucester County, Virginia: 1677–1793 (1933), 154 (first mention in Virginia).
- Copy of Clayton's will in Jenings Family Papers, Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond.
Newspapers and Obituaries
- Williamsburg Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), May 13, 1773.
- Death notice without death date in Williamsburg Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), Jan. 6, 1774.
- Obituary in Williamsburg Virginia Gazette (Rind), Jan. 6, 1774, with death date of "Thursday the 23d ult." (i.e. December 23, 1773) and second quotation, Special Collections, John D. Rockefeller Library, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
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