Crawford Co., AR - Biographies - Leonard Clay Southmayd

***********************************************
This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb
Archives by: The Goodspeed Publishing Co

Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgenwebarchives.org
***********************************************

----------------------------------------------------------------------
SOURCE: History of Benton, Washington, Carroll, Madison, Crawford,
Franklin, and Sebastian Counties, Arkansas. Chicago: The Goodspeed 
Publishing Co., 1889.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Leonard Clay Southmayd is of English ancestry, and a descendant of Sir 
William Southmayd, of Kent County, England (to whom arms were granted 
June, 1604). He is a native of Connecticut, born at Middletown June 
17, 1822, being a son of William and Sarah F. Southmayd (nee Dunham). 
The descendants of Sir William, early in 1600, left England and 
located in Essex County, Mass. The father of our subject, who is also 
named William, and is the seventh generation of Sir William, was born 
in Middletown, Conn., November 19, 1792 (now living), and married in 
1818; he passed the most of his life in his native town, as a merchant 
and in commerce, and was moderately successful. His father, the sixth 
William, a native of the same town, was born in 1763 and died in 1856. 
He was by trade a saddler, and was a soldier and artisan in the 
American Revolution. Sarah F. Southmayd (nee Dunham) was born in 1794 
and died in 1867, leaving four children, now alive, viz.: Leonard C.; 
Sarah F., widow of Elliott Savage, Meriden, Conn.; Mary D., widow of 
Chauncey Scranton, also of Connecticut, and Horace, a merchant 
residing in Hartford, Conn. Leonard attended the common schools of his 
town and completed his education at the preparatory school of the 
Wesleyan University. At the age of fifteen he entered his father's 
store as clerk, and remained until September, 1845, when he located in 
Van Buren, Ark., where he has permanently resided. From 1845 to 1851 
he was in the employ of Wallace & Ward. From 1851 to 1856 he was a 
member of the firm, under the style and name of Wallace, Ward & Co. In 
1856, Mr. Wallace retiring, the business was continued under the style 
of Ward & Southmayd until, in 1863, the vicissitudes of the war 
suspended all business operations. In 1878 he was elected to the 
position of circuit and county clerk, serving three terms, when, his 
private affairs requiring his personal attention, he declined a 
renomination, and has since devoted his time to his planting 
interests. In December, 1850, he was married to Susannah R. Howell, a 
native of Kentucky, born in Hardin County, April, 1832. She is a 
daughter of Laban C. Howell. They have four living children: Laban H., 
of the firm of Wood Brothers & Southmayd; Martha W.; Sarah E., wife of 
George R. Wood, president of the Citizens, Bank at Van Buren and a 
member of the last-named firm, and Lucy S., wife of Henry F. Pape, of 
the firm of McKibben & Pape. He is a Mason, and his wife is a member 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------