Standwick Winston “Wicks” Hays

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.
• Margaret A. Elizabeth Hays (1813-1863), Hansom “Hanse” Hays (1815-unknown), James W. “Dick” Hays (1819-1865), Henry M. “Kenneth” Hays (1823-1859), Joseph Warren Waldo Hays (1827-1910), and Sterling Tucker “Tuck” Hays (1828-1876) - more children with Catherine Counts, confirmed via Find a Grave.
• Samuel Maverick Hays (1835-1919), Marcus Lafayette Hayes (Veteran, 1841-1917), Standwick Winn “Bud” Hays Jr. (1832-1927), Nancy Ann Panella Hays Calvert (1837-1898), Larkin Glover Hays (1847-1895), Taylor Lomax Hays (1849-1912), and Boman Lorenzo O’Gilvie Hays (1855-1925) - sons and a daughter with second wife Elizabeth Mullins.
• Mary M. Hays Armstrong (1843-1931) and Martha “Dolly” Hays Culwell (1845-1908) - daughters.
• Grandchildren (confirmed via Find a Grave): Lydia Naomi Hays Neely (1872-1940), Martha Amanda Hayes Holt (1880-1947), and Nathan Lafayette Hays (1883-1960), via Taylor Lomax Hays; Nellie Josephine Hays Reid (1868-1953), Lucy Maverick Hayes Harkness (1879-1969), and Britt Randolph Hays (1887-1974), via Samuel Maverick Hays; Markus Standwick Hays (1875-1949), Samuel Marick Hayes (1880-1956), and Matilda Isbell Hayes Childers (1880-1959), via Larkin Glover Hays; Hattie L. Hays Casey (1880-1963), Oliver Dow Hays (1886-1954), and Walter Gray Hayes (1888-1960), via Boman Lorenzo O’Gilvie Hays.
• An entire first marriage, previously undocumented here. Before Elizabeth Mullins he married Catherine Counts Hays (1790-1834), and that marriage produced nine children: John Bayless Hays (1810-1893), Margaret A. Elizabeth Hays (1813-1863), Hansom “Hanse” Hays (1815-?), James W. “Dick” Hays (1819-1865), Henry M. “Kenneth” Hays (1823-1859), David C. Hayes (1825-1876), Joseph Warren Waldo Hays (1827-1910), Sterling Tucker “Tuck” Hays (1828-1876), and Standwick Winn “Bud” Hays Jr. (1832-1927). This entry previously recorded only the children by his second wife.
• Grandchildren via John Bayless Hays: Manda Hays Culwell (1846-1925); John Quincy Hays (1849-1931); Trilla Ann Hays Walker (1859-1896); Matilda Isabell Hays Huffstutler (1860-1920); Malinda E. Hays Holt (1862-1948); Cincinnati Ellen Hays Reid (1865-1891), who married into the Reid family; George W. Hays (1872-1931); and Rosa Hays Hawkins (1877-1958).
• Two Hays-Culwell women, now distinguished for good. Martha “Dolly” Hays Culwell (1845-1908) is his daughter by Elizabeth Mullins. Manda Hays Culwell (1846-1925) is his granddaughter, via John Bayless. Born a year apart, both married Culwells, and long suspected of being a duplicated record - they are aunt and niece, and both are real.
• Where the later generations are buried. His descendants continue at High Rock Cemetery (15 Hays burials) through John Bayless → John Quincy Hays (1849-1931) → Joseph Monroe Hays (1879-1948) and on, and the Hays-Culwell line continues at Oak Grove Baptist Cemetery, Hayden. Four documented generations across the two.
• The first-marriage line continues at County Line Baptist Church Cemetery. His son by Catherine Counts, Standwick Winn “Bud” Hays Jr. (1832-1927), married Mary Caroline “Mammy” Swindle Hays; their son John Hanson Hays (1867-1946) married Sarah Abigail Ann “Sally” Reid Hays - another Hays-Reid marriage - and their son was Sylvester Stephenson “Vester” Hays (b. 1892). Four generations from Standwick, in a cemetery this project had never examined.
• A third first-marriage branch, at Pleasant Grove Methodist Cemetery (Dallas). His son by Catherine Counts, Joseph Warren Waldo Hays (1827-1910), married Ellen Elizabeth Reneau Hays; their son Solomon J. Hays (1861-1946) is buried there among 23 Hays burials. Another Hays-Reid marriage sits alongside: John Dickerson Hays (1863-1935) married Alba Malissia A. Reid Hays (1870-1915), and their son Joseph Dennis Hays (1889-1969) married Louella Turner Hays.
• Great-grandchildren at Mount Tabor Cemetery, Blountsville. His granddaughter Trilla Ann Hays Walker (1859-1896) - daughter of John Bayless Hays - married James Wilson Walker (1855-1912); their son James Walker (1892-1953) is buried there. Four generations from Standwick, through the first marriage, in a fourth cemetery.
• His son Taylor Lomax Hays married two Armstrong sisters. Taylor (1849-1912), by second wife Elizabeth Mullings, married Nancy Ann Malinda Armstrong (1850-1890) on 17 January 1871 - a daughter of Jesse Armstrong and Betsy Holt - and after her death in 1890 married her older sister, Mary Malinda Armstrong. Their seven children: Lydia Naomi Hays (1872-1940), Mary A. Elizabeth Hayes (1874-1946), Margaret Ann Hays (1876-1936), Martha Amanda Hayes (1880-1947), Nathan Lafayette Hays (1883-1960), Alice Eugena Hayes (1885-1968) and Prudence Lenora Hayes (1888-1982) - four more than were previously recorded here.
• Elizabeth Mullings herself was a daughter of Samuel G. Mullings and Hannah Pendleton Isbell.

Where the family came from. His eldest son John Bayless Hays’s biography records that in 1820 the family moved from Newberry District, South Carolina to near Hayden - travelling, it notes, “along with other families, including TIDMORES.” It also states plainly that John Bayless was the “oldest child of 21 children born to Standwick Hays and his two wives,” independently confirming both the count and the two marriages recorded above. John Bayless served in the Creek Wars of 1836-38 and filed for an Indian Wars pension in 1892; his stone at Hays Cemetery reads “Pvt 4 Ala Vol’s, Indian Wars.”