HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY  5

and grasses, with but comparatively little attention to cultivation. That
part of the bottom farthest from the stream and skirting the hills is
mostly a tough, gray clay, with a surface deposit made by successive
overflows. Between these extremes, is a belt of second bottom, variable
in composition. The clay soil of the flat uplands is mostly tenacious and
wet, but rendered porous and abundantly productive by proper cultiva-
tion, aided by alkaline and manurial applications. It yields all the varied
products adapted to this particular climate.
    Much the larger area of the county, in its primitive state, was
heavily timbered. On the bottoms the principal growth was the oaks—
white, burr and water—shell-bark hickory, ash, beech, gum, elm and
other varieties; on the margin of the streams, sycamore and cottonwood,
and on the highest grounds, black-walnut and burr-oak. of the largest
size; on the uplands, the red, black and white oaks, smooth hickory,
sugar maple, beech and some ash, and on the strongest uplands an
abundance of stately poplars—the undergrowth, red-bud, sassafras, dog-
wood, pawpaw, black-haw, hazel, etc. In the western central part of the
county are two small openings, called Clay Prairie and Christie’s Prairie,
and in the southern part, a third one, known as Puckett’s Prairie. The
first named covers an area, approximately, of ten square miles, the second
twelve, and the third fifteen. Besides these there are several smaller
areas skirting the sloughs, which have the characteristics of the prairie.
Bordering all these sections the growth of timber is a scrubby oak, with
persimmon, the latter found also in families, or clumps, in the interior.
    Approximately, the geographical center of the county is in town 11
north, range 6 west, at a point very near the town of Ashboro. Were
the county a perfect parallelogram in figure, or outline, 30 by 12 miles,
the crossing of midway lines of latitude and longitude would mark the
exact center, a mile and a quarter southwest of Ashboro, immediately
on the east line of Perry township, east side of Birch creek, between the
course of the stream and the track of the Brazil Branch Railroad; but as
thirty-six square miles, one-tenth the area of the county, lies east and
outside of the east line of our assumed parallelogram, twenty-four miles
of which lies north of a middle east-and-west line as against but twelve
miles south of such line, the center is correspondingly east and north of
the point defined, say one mile short eastward and a third of a mile
northward, at a point within three-fourths of a mile west of south of the
brick school-house, as the assumed central part of the town of Ashboro.