Jay and Hay
JD + Kate Industries’ Substack index gave me major FOMO.*
I needed an index, too.**
“It occurred to me that what I really, really needed was an index.”
(Coincidentally read this line in Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher the day I finished my index!)
Please comment below to assure me that my index is groundbreaking and not an irresponsible use of my time.
25 Williams
2 overlaps with JD and Kate’s index (“Al Haig” and “birthdays”)
just 1 way to spell “Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar” (in contrast to the 3 ways I spelled it before preparing the index)
472 clickable people + topics! 😳
The index is in alphabetical order, leading me to discover that both John Hay and John Jay are listed! Obviously, this required immediate attention.
Maybe a post comparing all the Hays and Jays:
We could also add other rhymes, like Henry Clay but let’s not.***
No wait. That’s too much.
🕯️
In gratitude to JD + Kate Industries’ role in me wasting spending a day pulling together an index and now another day on this post as a direct result of the index, I’ve decided to sprinkle appropriately-themed candle recommendations throughout. I encourage you to fully read this post, then go to their website to carefully read each product description (that sounds like a waste of time, but trust me it’s not), order a shipment of candles, come back to this post when your candles arrive, and re-read it by candlelight.
🕯️
I already said we’re not to include Hayes in this post. But if we did, I’d encourage you to buy the Rutherford B. Hayes-Scented Candle. 🔥🔥🔥
We’re sticking with John Hay and John Jay
They share the name John! (Fascinating!) Additionally, both:
Had legendary bosses:
Jay: George Washington
Hay: Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt
Served as Secretary of State
Jay: [acting]; under Washington
Hay: under William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt
Were ambassadors
Jay: [acting] to Spain
Hay: to the United Kingdom
🕯️Recommended candles:
George Washington-Scented Candle
Alexander Hamilton-Scented Candle
(Jay was buds with both)
Theodore Roosevelt-Scented Candle
(Hay served under both)
The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President, by Edward F. O’Keefe
🕯️Recommended candle:
Remember the Maine-Scented Candle because Secretary of State John Hay called the Spanish American War a “splendid little war.”
Both were involved with treaties:
Jay with the Treaty of Paris (ending the Revolutionary War) and “Jay’s Treaty” which opened up trade with Great Britain and made the Jeffersonians all cranky.
Hay with treaties that made it possible to build the Panama Canal.
🕯️Recommended candles:
Boston Tea Party-Scented Candle (because they don’t have a Treaty of Paris candle; this one instead marks the beginning of the war and that seems close enough)
A Salute to Canals (because Hay made the Panama Canal possible)
They didn’t overlap at all in terms of their lifespan:
Jay lived from 1745 – 1829.
Hay was born nine years after Jay died, living from 1838 – 1904.
They were both active in wars:
Hay was a major in the Civil War.
Jay did loads of stuff during the Revolutionary War, including but not limited to serving on the Committee on Conspiracies and as “the first national-level American counterintelligence chief” (according to the CIA’s website). He was apparently the inspiration for James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy, which is a book I just learned about reading a letter from one of Martin Van Buren’s sons recently.
The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington, by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch
John Jay once maybe said he wished Gouverneur Morris “had lost something else” instead of his leg during a post-coital escape from a jealous husband. Apparently, losing the leg didn’t slow him down at all ifyouknowwhatimean. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s funny. Jay working with someone with a wooden leg and a spicy/forbidden love life made me wonder if Hay worked with Daniel Sickles… another man with a wooden leg and a spicy/forbidden love life… but more known for the drama following his wife’s spicy/forbidden love life. (Sickles murdered the guy his wife was sleeping with, son of Francis Scott Key… even though he himself was not faithful! WTF.)
(Fun fact: a quick search for “Hay Sickles” yields a bunch of hay scythes and sickles. Not quite what I was looking for.)
I think maybe John Hay and Daniel Sickles knew each other. Hay was really close with Lincoln. Lincoln knew Sickles. I think perhaps they worked together, but (TBH) I’m not 100% sure about the accuracy of my source so I’m just filing this away as a definite maybe.
🕯️💀 Recommended candle:
Haunted Candle… word on the street is that Philip Barton Key haunts Lafayette Square, still trying to find Daniel Sickles. Also, some say Sickles’ thumping can be heard as he tries to escape Key’s ghost. Want to know what is near the ghosts…? The Hay-Adams Hotel — named partially for John Hay, who used to live there! (Henry Adams and John Hay were besties and built their houses next door to each other.)
I tried to make a map showing where everyone served abroad during the Revolutionary War (including John Jay), but it was tricky so I gave up.
In any case, Jay and his wife Sarah Livingston Jay went to Spain. And they brought her brother, H. Brockholst Livingston, who was kind of a pain-in-the-butt.
Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation, by Cokie Roberts
Hey, Adams!
You may notice in the mess above that John Adams was in Europe at the same time as Jay.
Were they friends?
Apparently, they didn’t really agree when they were in Congress but they did with treaties. They both experienced some frustration in Europe. At some point while waiting for the treaty to be signed (nearly a year between the preliminary agreement and the official signing), they became friends.
So that means:
Jay: friends with John Adams
Hay: besties with Henry Adams, John Adams’ great-grandson
They were both writers
Jay co-authored the Federalist Papers.
Hay wrote poetry. When The Great Chicago Fire broke out, his editor at the New York Tribune sent him to write about it.
🕯️Recommended candle
Misc. doodles
Here are two random doodles of John Hay that I was too lazy to crop.
Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald
President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier, by C.W. Goodyear
Etc.
John Hay was married to Clara Stone, which made me curious… because I have ancestors who were Stones. Finding random relatives is my new favorite hobby, so I poked around a little.
Clara Stone Hay (1849-1914) married John Hay in Cuyahoga, Ohio. Her dad was Amasa Stone, Jr. (1818-1883). His dad was Amasa Stone, Sr. (1779-1875). And his dad was Daniel Stone, Sr. (1752-1792). And his dad is Jonathan Stone (1725-1806). And his dad is Jonathan Stone (1702-1725). (OMG where was I going with this?!) And his dad was Jonathan Stone (1677-1754). And his parents were Simon Stone, Jr. (1630-1708) and Mary Whipple (1634-1720) which is (I recently discovered) how I’m connected to prolific celebrity photographer George Rockwood. In any case, Simon, Jr.’s dad is Simon Stone, Sr. (1585-1665). And his dad is David Stone (1540-1625) and his parents were Simon Stone (1507-1557) and Agnes Stone (1513-1578) … WHO I ROLL UP TO!!! (As do Presidents Adams, I might add…. meaning that Henry Adams was very distantly related to his best friend’s wife Clara Stone Hay.)
There’s a lot of extraneous info here that is irrelevant to this conversation. [shrugs]
I meant to go the other way. Hay and his wife (and my distant relative) had four children, including Helen Hay Whitney who was married to Payne Whitney … son of William C. Whitney, doodled below.
If you’re wondering whether I have a ridiculously complicated blog post about someone John Hay Whitney (son of Payne and Helen) slept with — yes I do!
One of John Jay Whitney’s siblings was Joan Whitney Payson. Keep scrolling to see what candle recommendation that sparks!
1920: The Year of the Six Presidents, by David Pietrusza
🕯️Recommended candles
Cuyahoga River Fire-Scented Candle (I’m sure you remember that I mentioned that John and Clara Hay got married in Cuyahoga!)
Sports-Scented Candle because John Hay’s granddaughter Joan Payson was the first woman to own a Major League Baseball team (the Mets) without inheriting it. ⚾️
*Which is weird, ‘cause I’m generally a JOMO kinda gal.
**I assumed this would be an easy switch I just flip on and voila! It was not. I had to painstakingly create it. JD + Kate have 43 items in their index. I have more than 450. It was a tremendous pain in the ass to prepare this. But worth it!
***He’s showing up a lot in the book I’m reading now and I’m getting kind of sick of him.
