A history of Clayton,
since 1869

In 1701, English surveyor John Lawson, who was traveling down the Neuse River from Charleston, South Carolina, first visited the Clayton area, on his way to the Piedmont and eastern North Carolina. Four years later, the region was incorporated into Craven County, which then stretched west of New Bern to the Pacific Ocean. In the early eighteenth century, the area had been largely inhabited by the Tuscarora tribe, who in 1711 were defeated by European settlers and their Native American allies and forced to leave the area, then part of the Province of Carolina.

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