“ CLAYTON, JOHN MIDDLETON (1796–1856) , American politician, was born in Dagsborough, Sussex county, Delaware, on the 24th of July 1796. He came of an old Quaker family long prominent in the political history of Delaware. He graduated at Yale in 1815, and in 1819 began to practise law at Dover, Delaware, where for a time he was associated with his cousin, Thomas Clayton (1778–1854) , subsequently a United States senator and chief-justice of the state. He soon gained a large practice. ”