Charles T. Hayden

Hayden was born on April 4, 1825, in the village of Haydens in Windsor, Hartford County, Connecticut, the son of Joseph and Mary Hanks Hayden. He was a descendant of English settlers who arrived in 1630 and settled in the Connecticut River valley. Hayden's father died when he was six, leaving himself and his sister Anna to help his mother run the family farm. He completed his education at 16 and worked as a clerk for several years before leaving home in 1843. His departure was motivated in part by a lung ailment.

From Connecticut, Hayden went to New York City, where he studied law, before beginning a series of teaching jobs in Kentucky, Indiana, and Missouri. While in Kentucky, Hayden was influenced by Henry Clay's vision of opening the West to settlement by the development of roads and canals. By 1847, he was working as a teamster hauling freight on the Santa Fe Trail.

On October 4, 1876, at the age of 51, Hayden married Arkansas-born schoolteacher Sallie Calvert Davis in Nevada City, California. The couple would have four children, Carl Trumbull, Sallie Davis, Anna Spenser, and Mary "Mapes" Calvert. Anna died when two-and-a-half years old while the three other children reached maturity.