After settling in the Salt Lake valley, Clayton married several more teenage women. He married Augusta Braddock, aged 17, on October 5, 1850. They had eight children together. He married Sarah Ann Walters when she was 18 years old on November 30, 1856, and they had eleven children together. Their youngest child was born after Clayton's death in 1879. He married Amasa Lyman's daughter, Maria Louisa Lyman, age 17, in 1866, and they had one child together. Maria taught Clayton's children until she left Clayton's household to join her father Amasa when he joined the Godbeites. They were separated when she filed for divorce with the state in 1871. In 1870, he married Anna Elizabeth Higgs, also when she was 17 years old, with whom he had four children. There were rumors that a non-Mormon had romanced Anna. She left home, selling many of her possessions while travelling south in 1873, but was shortly afterwards reconciled with Clayton. Clayton also married a widowed cousin of Ruth and Margaret at her request, Elizabeth Ainsworth, when she was 48. They did not have any children together. Migration to the west Late in February 1846, Clayton left Nauvoo after a flurry of work making and packing records in the office and new Nauvoo temple. He spent the winter of 1846–47 at Winter Quarters, Nebraska. The following year, he was a member of the vanguard company that crossed the plains to select a western site for Mormon colonization. He was a recording scribe for Brigham Young, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, during the journey. Several months later, Clayton returned to the mid-West to prepare his family for the overland trek. Travelling in the Heber C. Kimball Company, they arrived in Salt Lake City in September 1848. Clayton's pioneer journal is an important account of the expedition. "Come, Come, Ye Saints" and other hymns In April 1846, while camped near Locust Creek on the plains of Iowa, Clayton wrote the words to the popular Mormon hymn, now known as "Come, Come, Ye Saints", which is sung to the music of a traditional English song, "All is Well". The hymn was in response to good news from Nauvoo. One of his plural wives, Diantha, had given birth to a healthy baby boy, William Adriel Benoni Clayton. In his journal, he stated that he "composed a new song—'All is well.' I feel to thank