Ashland (Henry Clay estate)

Ashland is the name of the

Henry Clay came to Lexington, Kentucky from Virginia in 1797. In 1804, he began buying land for the plantation outside the city's limits. He eventually became a major planter who enslaved 60 people and owned over 600 acres (240 ha).

Among the people enslaved by the Clays were Aaron Dupuy and Charlotte Dupuy as well as their children Charles and Mary Ann Dupuy. Clay took them with him to Washington D.C. when his congressional term began in 1810, and they were held there for nearly two decades.^[3] In 1829, 28 years before the more famous Dred Scott challenge, Charlotte Dupuy sued Henry Clay for her freedom and that of her two children in Washington D.C. circuit court.^[3] She was ordered to stay in Washington while the court case proceeded, and lived there for 18 months, working for Martin Van Buren, the next Secretary of State. Clay took her husband Aaron Dupuy and her children Charles and Mary Ann Dupuy with him when he returned to Ashland. The court ruled against Dupuy, and when she refused to return voluntarily to Kentucky, Clay had her arrested. Clay had Dupuy renditioned to New Orleans and had her held by his daughter and son-in-law, where she was enslaved for another decade. Finally, in 1840, Clay freed Charlotte and her daughter Mary Ann Dupuy, and in 1844, he freed her son Charles Dupuy.^[4]

The mansion

Using the profits of his forced-labor farming, Henry Clay used enslaved people to build his Federal style house in around 1806 (see

Kentucky University split into what became Transylvania University and the University of Kentucky, and sold Ashland in 1882.^[2]

Henry Clay's granddaughter Anne Clay McDowell and her husband

Several cities, the city of Ashland, Kentucky, in Boyd County, the city of Ashland, Missouri, in Boone County, the city of Ashland, Oregon, the town of Ashland, Virginia and the city of Ashland, Wisconsin, in Ashland County, were named in honor of the estate. The borough of Ashland, Pennsylvania, in Schuylkill County, an anthracite coal mining town, was named in honor of the estate as well.

See also

• Ashland Park
• Henry Clay's Law Office
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Fayette County, Kentucky

Notes

References

¹ Clay's first purchase was a 125-acre (51 ha) tract. Contract at Ashland, The Henry Clay Estate. ² Clay put a notice in a local paper asking for the return of a lost horse and listed his home as Ashland.

Further reading

• Archives of Ashland, The Henry Clay Estate, Lexington, KY
• Brooks, Eric. Ashland: The Henry Clay Estate. Images of America Series. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2007
• Remini, Robert V. Henry Clay: Statesman For The Union. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991.
• Clay Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress
• University of Kentucky Special Collections.
• Transylvania University, Special Collections.
• James F. Hopkins, editor, The Papers of Henry Clay.
  ISBN 0-8131-0056-9
  (v. 6)
• Fazio, Michael W. and Patrick A. Snadon. The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
  ISBN 0-8018-8104-8
• Hopkins, James F. A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky, Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1998.
  ISBN 0-8131-0930-2

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ashland (Henry Clay estate).

• Official Website
• National Park Service Website of the House
• "Henry Clay, Presidential Contender" from C-SPAN's The Contenders, broadcast from Ashland