32: Kate
Dealing with ghosts is always easier when I think of them as being people I never knew. However, not having ever known them doesn’t mean the experiences can’t be validated. Wes and I found this out in an unusual way while spending another weekend at the Crescent Hotel.
Sitting in a beautiful corner room surrounded by windows, we reminisced about the various times we’d visited the hotel. Some of our fondest memories were of attending the seminars. Just starting our vacation, we decided meditating would be beneficial in helping us to prepare our minds for a relaxing weekend. We each picked a chair and sat quietly as we tried to clear our minds. I hadn’t meditated in awhile and I found it hard to quiet my mind. I finally gave up and sat in silence, hoping Wes was having better luck.
After twenty minutes or so, he opened his eyes and shook his head a few times. He leaned over in his chair and, now resting his elbows on his knees with his chin in his hands, he stared straight ahead. Seeing his blank gaze, I asked if he was okay.
He wagged his head from side to side, then, sitting up straight, he told me he just had the strangest dream … or thing … happen to him.
I waited, expecting him to say something else, but he quietly stared straight ahead. Prodding him, I finally asked him to tell me what had happened.
His eyes had a faraway look as he told me that he had just seen a woman. Shaking his head again, he corrected himself and said, “Or part of a woman.” Then once again, he fell silent.
We’d meditated many times together and I’d never seen him react this way before. I didn’t know what he’d seen or thought he’d seen, but he was starting to worry me a little bit. I called out his name and again asked him if he was okay.
He nodded and told me he had seen a woman’s hands as she was bending over lacing up a white boot. He paused, then added that the boots were tall and had brass hooks. He shut his eyes as if he were trying to remember. He said, “She had on a white dress, too. I could see the bottom of it as she laced up her boot. She said, ‘My name’s Kate, or you can call me Katherine—but not Katie.’” He went on to say he got the feeling she wasn’t very happy about something.
This was a bit strange. Wes didn’t usually get impressions and I wasn’t picking up on anything other than the fact that we weren’t alone, which wasn’t an unusual feeling at the Crescent Hotel. I asked him if he was getting anything else.
He pointed and shook his finger as he asked me
the name of the man who was responsible for building the hotel.
Being a frequent visitor of the Crescent, I had tried to learn a lot of its history. I’d told Wes before that a man by the name of Powell Clayton was instrumental in bringing about the construction of the Crescent Hotel. I asked him if that was who he was talking about.
He nodded as he told me he thought the woman wearing the white boot was related to him in some way. He said he thought she might have been his daughter.
Knowing some of the local history, I knew Powell Clayton had served as governor in the state of Arkansas. I also knew he was married and had several children, but I didn’t know any of their names. Since he had been a prominent figure at the hotel, I thought we might be able to find more information at the front desk. I’d come to learn that much of the staff was well educated on the Crescent’s history.
After talking to the concierge, we purchased a brochure that outlined the history of the hotel. We hoped to learn more about Powell Clayton and his family, but the booklet only talked of him and his endeavors associated with the hotel. Not learning anything new, I vowed to research it when I had access to the Internet.
Once we got home, I typed the words “Powell Clayton Arkansas Governor” into my search engine. I was shocked to see how much had actually been written about this man. I soon learned that being the ninth governor of Arkansas was only one of the many things he had accomplished. Before becoming the governor of Arkansas, he served as a brigadier general during the civil war. After serving as governor, he served as a senator and as an ambassador to Mexico.
There was a lot of information written about Powell Clayton but thus far, I hadn’t found anything about whether or not he had a daughter by the name of Kate. I read and read and read. I learned more about Powell Clayton than I’d ever intended to learn. Then finally, I found mention of his family. I learned he had married a woman by the name of Adeline McGraw and they had two, or possibly even three, daughters and two sons—one of whom died in infancy. The names of the children were not mentioned.
Out of pure frustration, I typed in the names Kate and Katherine Clayton. Not even knowing if this person had ever existed, I halfheartedly scrolled through my choices of articles. Stumbling upon the archives of the New York Times, I skimmed through a newspaper clipping dated November 30, 1904. The piece said, “ … the engagement between her sister, Katherine Clayton and A.C. Grant Duff, Secretary of the British Legation in Mexico had been broken … ”
Mexico, I thought. Wasn’t that where Powell Clayton … I read the next line. “Miss Clayton is the daughter of General Powell Clayton, American Ambassador to Mexico.”
Katherine Clayton, the daughter of Powell Clayton, was real! Wes had been right! And there was only one way he could’ve known—she told him.
Finding out Katherine Clayton had existed sent me back to the New York Times archives many times. It was there I learned that while Powell Clayton served as an Ambassador to Mexico, his daughters, Charlotte and Katherine, also referred to as Kathleen, met their future husbands.
Charlotte married Baron Mencheur, a Belgian Minister at Washington. And even though there had been a broken engagement, Katherine did eventually marry Arthur Grant Duff, a newly assigned British Minister to Cuba, who, according to the papers was “much her senior.” Being from such a prominent family, Katherine’s broken engagement and eventual marriage to the much-older Arthur Grant Duff was quite a scandal.
Attesting to just how influential this family was, according to an article dated Oct. 25, 1908, when Powell Clayton’s daughter, Charlotte, now known as Baroness Moncheur, produced an heir, her husband received personal congratulations from President Roosevelt.
Even though I found the articles interesting, they didn’t hold the answers I was looking for. I hoped to find even more to validate Wes’s encounter with Katherine. Ideally, I would’ve liked to find an article that said something about how she didn’t like to be called Katie, or better yet an article that talked about her favorite pair of white boots with brass eyes. Since that hadn’t happened, I’d have to be satisfied with just knowing that Katherine Clayton did exist and that she at one time had ties to the Crescent Hotel. According to the hotel’s history, the Clayton family lived at the hotel in the Governor’s suite when Katherine was a child.