William Clayton Bordley, Jr. (1800-1883)

The son of Wm. Clayton Bordley Sr. ( -1803) who inherited "Claytons Chesterfield" 550 acres on No. side of Corsica River, Queen Annes County (later "Spencer’s Landing") and other tracts through his grandmother Mary Clayton of Wm. The Federal Gazette (Balto) announced "Wm. C. Bordley of Chesterfield, Q.A. Co. and Margaret Keener (of John, of Melcher) of Baltimore, Married 11 July 1798 (at old St. Pauls, Baltimore). Their first son John Melcher Keener Bordley a midshipman or Ensign U.S.N. while serving in the Tripolitanean Wars on the USS Java fought a duel with a fellow officer in 1818 and was killed and buried in Sicily. Their second son Wm. C. Boardley, Jr. (sic) had entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. in 1814 in the class of 1819. When his brother was killed his widowed mother asked him to resign and return home which he reluctantly did. His mother who had lost her husband and Chesterfield in the depression of 1803 returned to Baltimore and opened a fashionable boarding house at Charles and Pleasant Sts. (site of Professional Bldg.) Her friend Elizabeth ("Betsy") Patterson Bonaparte lived there in her old age. (See Colonial Families, Mary B. Emory, 1900, p. 191)

Wm. C. Bordley Jr. married at Otterbein’s Church 1828 Mary Heritage of Thomas and had 8 children, two of whom died in U.S. Navy; James Malcolm in 1855 age 25, "up the Yazoo" and Thomas Higginbotham who was in China Squadron and in Japan 1859 and in first attack on Charleston, S.C. on U.S. Monitor Nahant under Admiral DuPont, served on ironclads as 1st Asst. Engineer and died in Bahia (San Salvador) Brazil aged 28 from Yellow Fever 10 Dec 1865 serving on U.S.S. Kansas blockading a Confederate fleet. He was buried in the English Cemetary in Bahia.

After Mary’s death Wm. C. Bordley, Jr. married her sister Amelia Heritage and had 8 more children, their last daughter dying in 1958 (a span of 158 years in 2 generations). He lived in Waverly in a Victorian brick house (since razed) on Old York Road and Montpelier St. a block above St. John’s Episcopal Church, Huntington where he was a vestryman, as was his son Harry and both are buried there. He worked in the City Tax Office and walked both ways for exercise. He was in a Whist Club (a photo of which exists) for many years and named a son for another member, Francis Fulton, publisher of the Baltimore American. He corresponded with his daughter Elizabeth Penn in French. His recipe for Bordley Punch descended to his Gt. Grandson, The Very Rev. Stephen Gushee who annually serves it to his congregation at a party at his home after Christmas Eve midnight service.

A miniature of his father Wm. C. Bordley, Sr. on ivory, two ivory fans Tommy brought from China, and a longbow and tea caddy from Japan1859, WCB Jr’s double barrell shotgun, his grandmother Bordley’s "Sheffield" cake basket c. 1765 and "Sheffield" sugar bowl c. 1790 are owned by Bryden Bordley Hyde his Gt. Grandson on both sides.