Grundy County IL Archives Biographies.....Claypool, Lawrence W 
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Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com April 29, 2006, 1:51 pm

Author: 1883 US Bio Dictionary

Lawrence W. Claypool

Morris

Lawrence Wilson Claypool comes of a family which originated about the time of 
Oliver Cromwell. Its first representatives in this country where two young 
men, brothers, who emigrated from England about 1650, and settled in Virginia. 
One of them subsequently removed to Philadelphia and became attached to 
William Penn. The family embraced his Quaker faith, and became prominent in 
the affairs of the colony. One of them, James Claypole, appears as a witness 
to Penn's charter, and his descendants to this day spell their name Claypole. 
William Claypool was a son of the Virginia brother, born in about 1690, had 
three sons, and lived to the great age of one hundred and two years. One son, 
James, also had three sons whom he reverently named Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 
He was Washington's chief of commissary for eastern Virginia, and furnished 
the revolutionary heroes with beef - when he could get it. Abraham, his eldest 
son, was the father of a baker's dozen, thirteen, of whom eleven, six sons and 
five daughters, reach maturity. The Claypools were all people of consequence 
in the Old Dominion, and owned plantations and slaves. Nevertheless, like all 
of the original old Virginia settlers, they were opposed to the continuance of 
the accursed system, and when Abraham removed with his large family to 
Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1799, he took with him his two slaves for the express 
purpose of giving them that liberty which by the ordinance of 1787 was 
eternally pledged to all who should settle in the great Northwestern 
territory. In his new home Abraham prospered exceedingly, and enjoyed the 
confidence of his fellow citizens, and bore all the honors they were able to 
confer on him, till the day of his death. He aided in the formation of the 
first state government in Ohio, was a member of its first senate, and occupied 
a seat in its halls as long as he would consent to do so.

Jacob, his second son, had two children only, Perry Amos and Lawrence Wilson, 
the subject of this sketch. He first settled in Brown county, Ohio, but in 
1822 removed to and helped to found the new city of Indianapolis, Indiana. It 
will be remembered that the ague and fever was so abundant in that region 
about that time, that it is said the early inhabitants cut it up and stored it 
away like corkwood for winter's use. At any rate they were never without a 
full supply, winter or summer, and Jacob, fortunately having a farm still in 
Ohio, returned to it, and left his share of the principal Indiana crop for 
others to harvest. In 1812 Jacob Claypool served his country in the war with 
Great Britain. He was a member of the 1st regiment of Ohio infantry, Colonel 
McArthur (afterward governor) commanding. His regiment served under General 
Hull, and was a part of the force surrendered by him to the British at 
Detroit. He kept a diary from the time he left home till he returned, and 
claims in it that Hull did not surrender till the British had crossed 1,000 
soldiers below the fort and collected 1500 howling savages in its rear.

In 1834 Jacob Claypool finally set his face toward the setting sun, and 
removed to Grundy county, Illinois. The Pottawatomie Indian Chief, Waupansee, 
had his camp at that time in what is now the township of Waupansee, south of 
the river, and the hardy pioneer and his family, who had been familiar with 
the Indians and their ways all their lives, had no hesitation in settling 
close to them on the ten mile tract, which the government had before bought of 
them. He secured for himself and his sons and their families a large tract of 
this rich prairie soil, became rich in consequence, and a prominent and 
powerful man in the state. He filled many important offices in the county, as 
the first county commissioner, probate judge, etc., and died in 1876, at the 
age of eighty-eight years. He was a true pioneer, a man of great strength and 
courage, and a natural leader and commander among men. His sons were both true 
sons, of their sire. The subject of this paper was born June 4, 1819, at Perry 
township, Brown county, Ohio. His mother's name was Nancy Ballard. His 
schooling in boyhood was confined within the limits of about eleven months, in 
a little log school house in Ohio, but like all strong minds his life has been 
a long and valuable school. In 1841 when not yet twenty-two years old, he was 
elected recorder of deeds for Grundy county, and served till 1847. He was the 
first postmaster in the town of Morris, and served from 1842 to 1845. In 1848 
he received an appointment as assistant agent of the canal lands, and served 
in that capacity till the lands were all finally sold in 1860. E. S. Prescott 
and Mr. Claypool had the duty and responsibility of reexamining, managing and 
assisting to sell this vast body of land, which they did to the perfect 
satisfaction of all parties, and much credit to themselves. He was also town 
supervisor, member of school board, etc., for many years.

During the war he was a very active and prominent worker in the important 
business of raising volunteers and providing sanitary supplies. As treasurer 
of the sanitary commission in Grundy county, he at one time sent $2,000 to the 
Chicago Christian and sanitary commissions.

It goes without saying it that Mr. Claypool was an old-line whig, an 
abolitionist, then a free-soiler, an anti-Nebraska man, and finally when all 
these elements crystallized into the republican party he made a tolerably 
large and solid crystal. He was of age at the time of the presidential canvass 
of 1840, and voted for old Tippecanoe. During the campaign he was at 
Cincinnati at one time when the General made a speech, and stood within a few 
feet of the old hero, and heard him reply to the charge of being an 
abolitionist. "I am accused," said he, "of being an abolitionist," pausing and 
raising his eyes and stretching his long arm at full length toward heaven, "I 
would to God that yonder sun might never again shine upon a slave."

November 15, 1849, Mr. Claypool was married to Miss Caroline B. Palmer, the 
daughter of John Palmer, of Ottawa, who with his family settled in that place 
in 1834. Eight children have been born to them, two only of whom survive to 
the present time, Henry Clay, the eldest, now thirty, and Lawrence Wilson, a 
lad of sixteen years.

Mr. Claypool is one of a type of men who have, under God, made this country 
what it is today. Tall and straight as an arrow; lithe and active as a 
greyhound, with sinews of steel and heart of oak; of undaunted courage and 
self reliance, of incorruptible integrity, to whom it is impossible to teach 
the crooked ways of self-seeking men; earnest, industrious, faithful, ever 
ready for any labor or sacrifice for the cause of freedom and the rights of 
man; simple and childlike in manners, with heart as tender as a woman's, and 
stern only in the face of wrong; these are the men whose characters have been 
moulded after the pattern of the heroes of the Bible; who have been reared in 
intimate companionship with nature, and with nature's God; who are the 
unspoiled children of nature, and have received the indelible impress of her 
nobility and purity. Alas! When they and their influences shall have passed 
away, and the nation shall be left to the guidance of the artificial and 
godless philosophy of a pleasure-seeking and self-worshiping geration of men!

page 72-74.


Additional Comments:
Source: The United States Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of 
Eminent and Self-Made Men, Illinois Volume; Chicago and New York: American 
Biographical Publishing Company, H. C. Cooper, Jr. & Company, Proprietors, 1883

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