The confirmed founding patriarch of the Hays/Hayes family, one of Rockland/Hayden‘s six original settling families. Born about 1782 in or near Newberry County, South Carolina; migrated to Alabama around 1820. Served as Justice of the Peace for Blount County starting in 1829, and acquired land in four separate federal grants across nearly fifty years, signed by four different presidents: Andrew Jackson (1835), Martin Van Buren (1838), James Buchanan (1858), and Ulysses S. Grant (1875). Died 1878.
In 1834, per a family Bible entry, Hays beat his first wife, Catherine Counts, to death with firewood in the barn; their seven-year-old son David witnessed his mother’s death. He remarried later that same year, to Elizabeth Mullins. Across both marriages he had 21 children.
Appears in: Hays Cemetery.
Notable descendants:
- John Bayless Hays (1810-1893, Veteran) - eldest son, with first wife Catherine Counts.
- David C. Hays (1825-1876) - witnessed his mother’s death at age seven.
- Samuel Maverick Hays (1835-1919), Marcus Lafayette Hayes (Veteran, 1841-1917), and Taylor Lomax Hays (1849-1912) - sons with second wife Elizabeth Mullins.
- Mary M. Hays Armstrong (1843-1931) and Martha “Dolly” Hays Culwell (1845-1908) - daughters.