David and Jeanne Heidler have applied their excellent scholarship to a biography of a giant political figure of the pre-Civil War era, Henry Clay. They begin their descriptive journey by leading us carefully through the geography of early Virginia and its western county of Kentucky.
Born there to a prosperous family, Henry Clay became an orphan early in his live. His mother remarried to a kindly man who placed Henry in a retail apprenticeship in the city of Richmond. As soon as a position opened he became a law clerk. As a young lawyer, he moved to Lexington, KY to join his mother new family in 1797. There he successfully became a competent and prosperous attorney. He not only gained the reputation of being an excellent orator and a determined attorney but also that of a gambler and a drinker. Nevertheless, he was able to arrange an advantageous marriage in 1799. Initially it might have been considered a marriage of convenience, but Henry and his wife Lucretia produced ten children and brought position and prosperity to the Clay family. The young family settled in a Lexington home he built and called Ashland. And so it would remain the Clay home for the remainder of his life.
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