William Lockhart Clayton (1880–1966) worked in the New York office of the American Cotton Company from 1896 to 1904, eventually becoming assistant general manager. Clayton left the American Cotton Company in 1904 to form Anderson, Clayton and Company, a successful, Oklahoma City-based cotton enterprise. In 1916 the firm moved its headquarters to Houston.
During World War I Clayton served on the Committee of Cotton Distribution of the War Industries Board. In 1940, after resigning from management of his cotton firm, he became deputy to the coordinator of inter-American affairs in Washington, D.C. He went on to work in a number of high-level positions with the Export-Import Bank, the Department of Commerce, and wartime agencies until 1944. For the next three years, Clayton was assistant and then undersecretary of state for economic affairs. This was the position in which capacity he became a key member of the European Recovery Program (the Marshall Plan).
Clayton instituted a fund from which he donated charitably to Johns Hopkins University, Tufts University, the University of Texas, and the Methodist Church. He died in 1966 and was buried in Houston.
The William Lockhart Clayton Papers, 1947, 1950, contain Photostats of a letter and a memorandum pertaining to Clayton's involvement with the Marshall Plan.
This collection is open for research use.
William Lockhart Clayton Papers, 1947, 1950, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
Basic processing and cataloging of this collection was supported with funds from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the Briscoe Center’s