Jeremiah Hays, of Ireland, married Jane Moore, of Scotland, and came to America and settled in Bourbon County, Kentucky, where they had Mary, Delila, Nancy, Joanna, Absalom, Jane, Thomas, Joseph, and Mahala. Mr. Hays, with his wife and two daughters, Jane and Mahala, started to Montgomery County, Mo., but when they reached St. Louis he died. His widow and children settled near Marthasville. Jane married Oliver McCleur, of Pennsylvania, who was a blacksmith, and settled in Warren County. Mahala married John Ward, of Kentucky, who was a hatter, and also settled in Warren County. Absalom and Joseph Hays came to Missouri with Dr. John Young, in 1816. Joseph married Kate Mahoney, and settled in Montgomery County. Absalom was the second Sheriff of Montgomery County, and after the organization of Warren, he was elected the first Sheriff of that County, which office he held alternately until 1845. He married Anna Skinner, of Montgomery County, by whom he had Jeremiah, Susan, John A., Jane, and Mary C. The year after Mr. Hays’ marriage he had to attend Court at Lewiston, and took his wife and little child with him to her father’s, who lived on Camp Branch, to remain while he was at court. But the session lasted longer than he expected, and his wife, impatient to be at home, persuaded her father to go with her. The journey was too long for one day, and they stopped over night at the house of Mr. John Wyatt. During the evening Mrs. Wyatt put on her spectacles, and after scrutinizing Mrs. Hays and her child very closely for some time, she turned to Mr. Skinner and said she was “monstrous” glad that was not his wife and child, for “of all things she did despise upon this earth was an old man with a young wife and child; for,” she added, ” it is the most abominable thing in the world.” Mr. Hays was lame from his birth, and sometime before his death he was thrown from a horse and received an injury from which he never entirely recovered. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Hays continued to live on the farm near Marthasville, until the late war, when she was broken up, and has since lived with her children. She now resides in Jonesburg, Montgomery County, with her daughter Jane, and still enjoys good health for a person so advanced in years.
