Stockley D. Hays

Stockley Donelson Hays (December 1788 – September 8, 1831) was a 19th-century American lawyer, military officer, and nephew of U.S. president Andrew Jackson. He was involved in historically significant events from an early day, accompanying Aaron Burr down the Mississippi during the Burr conspiracy when he was a teenager, aiding Jackson in a famous tavern brawl in 1813, and serving in Jackson's army during the Creek War. Hays served as a quartermaster of the U.S. Army in the southwestern theater of the War of 1812, and then as a judge advocate of the Southern Division of the U.S. Army at the pay level of a major from 1816 to 1821. Stockley D. Hays and several siblings married Butlers who had become wards of Andrew Jackson on their father's death; the Hays and Butler families remained close to Jackson through his military and political campaigns. In the 1820s, the Hays family and their Butler connections were among the founding settlers of Jackson, Tennessee, which was established shortly after the land was ceded under a Jackson-negotiated treaty with the Chickasaw people.

In 1831, following the ratification of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, President Jackson sought to appoint Hays to the high office of U.S. surveyor general south of Tennessee, which triggered a political conflict involving U.S. Representative Davy Crockett and U.S. Senator George Poindexter. Crockett, a fellow early settler of west Tennessee, described Hays as an ill-equipped alcoholic, but as a compromise between Poindexter and Jackson, Hays was appointed to be register for the land office at Clinton, Mississippi. Hays died of bilious fever shortly after being granted the post and never carried out any of the duties of the office.