My Genealogy Hound

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 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.