John Gaston Gulley was born in North Carolina on April 21, 1793. A resident of Johnston County, North Carolina he was a farmer, justice of the peace, and postmaster for present-day Clayton. In 1855 the United States passed a law stating that all veterans of the American Revolution or their widows and dependents were eligible to receive 160 acres of land, called bounty land, if they had served for at least 14 days during the course of the war. In 1857 Gulley was arrested for forgery and charged with defrauding the U.S. Pension Office of about $15,000 because he had submitted fraudulent bounty land applications. It appears that although the bounty land applications he submitted were false, the pension applications he had submitted previous to the new law were not brought into question or found to be fraudulent. Gulley was found guilty of the crime, and sentenced to two and a half years in jail. He died in Johnston County on March 20, 1880.