Will C. Jay
When there were but few settlers about Jonesboro the name Jay was placed in the Grant County directory, and the traditions of the family center about Samuel Jay of Deep River Quaker stock, Deep River, North Carolina, having been an anti-slavery stronghold in a country where human beings were in servitude.
Will C. Jay of Gas City is a well known representative of this branch of the Jay family, there being many distinctive Jay family relationships in the county, but he Samuel Jay descent antedates all of them. While David Jay, who is mentioned in the Mill Township and the Friends Church chapters, was the first of his immediate family to locate at Jonesboro, and while he came direct from Miami County, Ohio, his father, Samuel Jay, who left the Carolinas in the exodus of Quakers to the Northwest Territory early in the nineteenth century, was then a member of his household and he lied buried at Back Creek -a genuine Deep River Quaker buried a "stranger in a strange land" and all for conscience sake. He was opposed to human slavery. His grave is among those marked with quarry stones at the instigation of Northern Quarterly Meeting of Friends, already mentioned in the chapter on County Cemeteries.
W. C. Jay is a son of Elisha Benson and Ann (Scott) Jay, and the death of his father, April 7, 1904, was the final chapter in the family history of David and Sarah (Jones) Jay who came in 1835 in a wagon train from Miami County, Ohio, settling on a farm west of Jonesboro, living there one year before the town came into existence. This Jay farm is now owned by Fred Schrader. Some of the children were born in Ohio and some in Indiana. They were:
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Job
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Verlinda, who married D. M. V. Whitson
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Lydia
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Elisha, who married Ann Scott
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Samuel
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Thomas
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William, who married Martha Ellen Howell
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Susannah, who married Hezekiah Miller
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and the first born, who died in infancy.
All who married left posterity, and there are a number of Jays in the fourth generation of the family. Thomas and Samuel Jay later joined their brother and father at Jonesboro, and through Samuel, Sr., David and Elisha, Will C. Jay is in the fourth generation of Jays in Grant County. Through Mrs. Verlinda Jay Whitson, Charles J. Whitson and Verlinda Belle Johnston, there have been five children born in the sixth generation -a record not attained by all pioneer families, although the name Jay disappeared in the third generation of that branch of the family.
Samuel Jay, the original Carolina emigrant, did not sustain active business relations with the community in Grant County, but his sons had much to do with the development and early history of Jonesboro. Thomas Jay was among the emigrants from Jonesboro to Kokomo, when the first railway enterprise failed in Grant County. He had conducted a general store and operated a pork-packing plant there, and went to Kokomo to secure shipping facilities. He impressed himself on the Howard County metropolis, and his children are still Kokomo residents. Samuel Jay, who reared a family in Jonesboro, was for many years associated in the Jay & Bell Dry Goods Store, an establishment rivaling Marion stores at the time Jonesboro was bidding for the Grant County Court House to be located there. David Jay, grandfather of Will C. Jay, was always an agriculturist, and a man of strong convictions. "You could not influence old David Jay against what he thought was right," and he was an active Abolitionist during underground railway vicissitudes in Grant County. Old Slave Mammy Wallace always told of the protection given her when she was a refugee by David Jay, Jonathan Hockett, and Nathan Coggeshall, a group of Abolitionists west of Jonesboro. While she never reached the "cold and dreary land" of Canada, the old woman always had kindly recollection of David Jay. He allied himself with Antislavery Friends and helped to establish Deer Creek Antislavery Meeting. When he died at sixty-four he had read the Bible through once for each year on his balance sheet of time. He enjoyed a lasting friendship with Meshingomesia and whenever the Miami chieftain was hunting along the upper course of the Mississinewa, he always stopped and cooked a meal at the Jay farmstead near Jonesboro, and all the Indians accompanying him always slept under shelter -hospitality similar to that received from Samuel McClure in Marion.
In war times David Jay sold his farm at Jonesboro and bought the William Howell farm (the old Billy Howell place) when the Howell family emigrated to Iowa, and it was one of the best developed farms with the first two-story log house ever built in Liberty Township on Deer Creek. This farm in Liberty has not changed ownership often, its succession of owners being Howell, Jay, Whitson, Sutton, Stiers, from the government title secured by William Howell. With his family David Jay had much to do with the organization of the Bethel Church in 1864 (see sketch of Willis Cammack) and at the time of his death he was the recognized head of the meeting. He was the typical Quaker, and there was sham in his nature. It was in 1847 that David Jay's cousin, Denny Jay, located north of Jonesboro -the Jesse Jay homestead at present -and since their wives were sisters (Sallie and Polly (Jones) Jay), the Jay-Jones family which meets in annual reunion is the descendant relationship. The name Jay and the word Quaker were synonyms -interchangeable terms -in the early history of Grant County, but subsequently amalgamation has done much to change many family histories in this respect.
Besides Will C. Jay, the other children of Elisha B. and Ann (Scott) Jay were as follows:
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Miss S. Alice Jay
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Edgar B.
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Charles A. Jay
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Thomas F. Jay, who died after reaching manhood and is survived by a daughter, Miss Belle Jay
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James M., who died in infancy.
On August 31, 1889, W. C. Jay married Miss Cora Hill, daughter of Nathan and Emaline Hill. Their children are:
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Fred W.
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William A.
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Otis H.
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Richard H.
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James, the second in order of birth, died at the age of six years
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Mary died in a beautiful young womanhood.
Will C. Jay was a school teacher from 1884 to 1892, and after having a family about him went to the Eastman National Business College at Poughkeepsie, New York, where he learned bookkeeping and completed the study of stenography, having taken some work in short hand while a student in the Valparaiso Normal School. Mr. Jay acquired a full knowledge of shorthand at an opportune time. The development of the Gas City Land Company in 1892 afforded him a position which he retained as long as the company was in existence, and he still transacts business for members of the company since the dissolution of partnership. The Gas City Land Company maintained an office in Gas City from 1892 until the Century year, and four years later the company dissolved and the separate shareholders in realty have since employed him to look after their individual interests. Nearly all the stockholders in the Gas City Land Company were Panhandle Railway officials, and they thought they saw a great future for the town, but the story is all told in the failure of natural gas. Yet the work of the Land Company will always be apparent.
Mr. Jay acquired a thorough knowledge of business methods and real estate transactions while representing the Land Company, and since then real estate and insurance have been second nature to him. from 1905 to 1909 Mr. Jay served as Trustee of Mill Township, and he has served the town as a member of the School Board and as City Treasurer, being always active in community affairs.
Singularly enough, when Mr. Jay's son Fred was ready for business training, after graduating from the Gas City High School, he was sent to Poughkeepsie. The son was a student sixteen years after his father was there, and a most striking coincidence was that while students there, father and son each won a dictionary as a premium in a spelling contest. The father received an International and the son a Standard Dictionary in the same kind of contests, written spelling. When the son graduated from business college he had one and one half years employment at New Castle, Pennsylvania, and then went to Gary, where he is an Accountant in the office of American Sheet Steel and Tin Plate Works, beginning with the opening of the industry and remaining continuously.
Charles A. Jay, a brother of Will C. Jay, also acquired a knowledge of shorthand, and had employment with the American Window Glass Factory in Gas City, going with the company when its business was removed to Arnold, Pennsylvania, where he is now Cashier and General Superintendent of the factory. He married Miss Blanche Thomas and three little girls have been born to them: Anna, Florence and Edith.
While Miss Alice Jay has been Principal of the ward school in Gas City many years, she was for five years a resident teacher at White's Institute when it was a government school for Indians, and she made frequent stops to the different Indian reservations in the west in the interests of the institution. When Thomas F. Jay died, it was his request that his sister Alice educate his daughter, and for two years Miss Belle Jay has taught in the Converse Public Schools. Edgar B. Jay always lived at the family homestead until the death of the mother on June 18, 1913, the property having been acquired by Will C. Jay, and his mother having remained its mistress as long as she lived.
Source: Centennial History of Grant County Indiana 1812-1912. The Lewis Publishing Co., 1914.