Henry Clay Cassady/Casseday

Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls Database:
     Cassady, Henry C. - PVT - Co B - 20 IL US INF
      Join, 13Jun1861-Joliet; Age, 27
     Discharged for disability Dec2, 1861 at Birds Point MO

Headstone Reading,

Will County Illinois USGenWeb Necrologist Reports (© 2002 The ILGenWeb Project All Rights Reserved):
     April 13, 1906 - H. C. Casseday of Joliet, 74.

 Published Obituaries:
       Joliet Evening Herald-Friday, April 13, 1906-Front Page

     This morning at Silver Cross hospital passed away one of the best know and most unique characters Joliet ever possessed, Henry Clay Casseday.
   “Clay,” as he was known, had lived in Joliet more than fifty years and was known to nearly every man, woman and child in the city as one of the jolliest of old men.  He was a living refutation of the statement that a bachelor cannot be happy, for seventy-four years old, and unmarried, he was always good natured.
   The Cassedays were, in the early days of Joliet, one of the most wealthy and influential families in the city.  The father of Clay owned the whole of the northwest quarter of section 10, Joliet township, the hundreds of acres where now stand the steel mills, its surrounding factories, and hundreds of homes and stores.
  The old Casseday mansion stands at the northeast corner of Jackson and Collins streets.  It is a large stone mansion with an observatory surmounting it, which it used to be Clay's delight to mount and thence to view the changes in the landscape time had made in the old Casseday subdivision.       
    Clay Casseday was born in June, 1831, while his parents, natives of Kentucky, were on a visit in Virginia.  They moved to Illinois soon afterward and Clay was a life-long resident of Illinois.  It is said that more government land patents were issued to his father than to any other one man in Will county.
   The Cassedays were a large family, but Clay was the only direct survivor bearing the family name in late years.  His only known living relatives are Joseph G. English, of Danville, Ill., a brother-in-law; Mrs. Jos. Cannon, Jr, of Danville,Ill., a niece, and Miss Myra Durham, of BordenInd, another niece.  There are more relatives in California, but their names are not known.
    Clay lived at the Hotel Munroe, and was one of the features of the place.  It is said that it was always to him that a traveler in search of information instinctively went, and their instincts were correct, for Clay knew the town from one end to the other, and his memory of old times was remarkable.
    Only a few days ago he related incidents to an acquaintance which had befallen him when he was six years old, and he was full of anecdotes and reminiscences of things which he had seen in Virginia in his early youth.
   Clay always enjoyed good health for a man of his age, except when aged digestive faculties failed to respond to the demands made on them by the appetite of a boy, and Clay suffered.    

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