In 1894 Clayton NY was shocked to a horrific scene when a ship couldn’t outlast a storm on the mighty Lake Ontario and all hands on deck lost their lives.
October 11th 1894 is a day that will live on for many in the small village of Clayton. Clayton is a town in Jefferson County, New York, United States. The population was 5,153 at the 2010 census. The town is named after John M. Clayton, a federal political leader from Delaware. The town contains a village also named Clayton. Both are northwest of Watertown.
On this particular day Lake Ontario was getting a brutal storm and was described as angry, hostile, and forbidding with gale force winds blowing from the northwest and just kept getting more and more powerful. Somewhere out there was a three masted vessel traveling from Detroit to Cape Vincent carrying 22,00 bushels of grain. That boat was named The Hartford. The Hartford was built at the Linn & Craig Shipyard in Gibraltar, Michigan, and launched in September, 1873.
