Jesse Clay (1792–1871), a native of Virginia, operated dairy farms on over 850 acres in Land Lots 206 and 207, in the southwest corner of the Kirkwood neighborhood. The Clay farmstead was located near present-day Clay Street. In addition to farming, Jesse Clay, his sons and his brother Green Clay also speculated in land development throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Aside from Gilliam Park, which was once a part of their property, the only vestige of the Clay family in Kirkwood today is the small, late nineteenth-century family cemetery located on the west side of Clifton Street NE, between Wade Street and Hosea L. Williams Drive.