Edward Williams Clay, the son of Robert Clay and Eliza Williams, was born on April 19, 1799 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of well-to-do parents. His father was a sea captain, and his grandfather, Curtis Clay, a merchant of his native city.
Clay attended law school and was admitted to the Philadelphia bar as an attorney on March 12, 1824.
It is asserted that Edward Williams Clay was a midshipman under Commodore Perry, but his name does not appear in the Navy Register. He was for a time an accountant. He started to practice art in Philadelphia about 1829. Very few examples of his etching or other work survive. For the American Monthly Magazine, 1824, he furnished a drawing, engraved by C. G. Childs, and in 1827 he made the drawing of Sedgeley Park, for Childs’s Views of Philadelphia, but did not engrave it.
In 1828-1829, he made a series of comic etchings, entitled Life in Philadelphia, which were published by W. Simpson and S. Hart & Son, Philadelphia. After the manner of George Cruikshank, he projected in 1829 a series of oblong caricatures, entitled Sketches of Character, published by R. H. Hobson, Philadelphia. Only No. 1 appears to have been issued. This is a biting, almost savage attack upon the careless, shiftless militia of his time. It is entitled, “The Nation’s Bulwark-A Well Disciplined Militia, ” and shows a nondescript body of militiamen being drilled. For the same publisher in 1830 he etched four pages of a comic song, “Washing Day, ” the vignettes illustrating the verses.
There is also in existence a single lithographed caricature by Clay which bears the date 1831, and indicates that he was experimenting with the new process, having produced two lithographs the preceding year for the Memoirs of the Old Schuylkill Fishing Company. The caricature mentioned, which shows Henry Clay, who had been nominated by the national Republicans, in the guise of a simian, is entitled, “The Monkey System or every one for Himself. ” Joseph Hopkinson is introduced grinding out “Hail Columbia !” on a hand organ, in 1837 Clay went to New York where in 1839 he was drawing on stone for John Childs, lithographer. Later he went to Europe to study art, but his eyesight failed him and he abandoned his profession on his return to this country.
From 1854 to 1856 he was register of the court of Chancery and clerk of the orphans’ court of Delaware. He died in New York City in 1857 and was buried in Christ Church burial ground, Philadelphia.
