David Clapp (David, Jonathan, Nathaniel, Nicholas), 1759-1846
No. 7477 David Clapp
from The Clapp Memorial. Record of the Clapp Family in America … Ebenezer Clapp, compiler. (Boston: David Clapp & Son, 1876)
David Clapp, oldest son of David and Ruth (Humphreys) Clapp, was born in Dorchester, Nov. 30, 1759, and died there May 15, 1846, in his 87th year. He married, Dec. 9, 1794, Susannah Humphreys, daughter of Henry Humphreys, of Dorchester (who in 1752 married Abigail Clapp, daughter of Ebenezer and Hannah Clapp). Mrs. Susannah Clapp died Jan 27, 1800, and David married second, July 28, 1801, Azubah, daughter of Deacon Jonathan Capen, of Stoughton, born there March 20, 1766. She was a woman of much energy of character, and was ever ready to give assistance when needed among friends and neighbors. She brought with her from her first home the then common household utensils of the hand-loom and spinning-wheel, and for many years after marriage made use of them in supplying cloth for family use. She died in Dorchester, of a cancer, Aug. 10, 1835, aged 69 years.
[footnote: The mother of Mrs. Clapp, who died in Stoughton in 1817, aged 96 years, continued the use of her loom till very late in life. During her 90th year the number of yards of various kinds of cloth woven by her was carefully marked down by one of her daughters and was found to have been thirteen hundred.]
From statements made verbally by himself, David seems to have been engaged, with his father, in the exciting occurrences connected with the throwing up of the fortifications on Dorchester Heights, in March, 1776, which drew into the public service most of the male inhabitants of the town. The pay-roll for services thus performed now in the State House, Boston, includes his father’s name from the 14th to the 26th of March, between which dates, as is well known the British army evacuated Boston. As already mentioned, he took the place of his father as a soldier in the Dorchester company in 1777. This company was on duty as guard to Gen. Burgoyne’s army, then prisoners of war in Cambridge, and he continued there for five months. His diary of that period relates the following incidents:
“A prisoner, one of the British grenadiers, was seen at night by one of our sentinels to be getting pickets that were placed around the fort, and as his orders were to secure them, he ordered the prisoner to desist. After speaking several times without effect, the sentry told him if he persisted in doing so he would fire. The only answer given was a profane daring of the sentry to fire. He fired, and killed the prisoner on the spot. Some of the other prisoners were so enraged at this, that they threatened to kill the sentry; and as he was noted by a stiffness in one of his knees, and could be easily recognized, the officers thought it best not to put him on the main guard again. I think there was another prisoner who lost his life at Cambridge by disobeying orders.”
“One of the company which I belonged to would frequently, after his duties of the day were done, set out at night to visit his family, and return so as to be on hand between daylight and sunrise the next morning to answer to his name—being obliged to walk in going and coming, more than 16 miles.”
A few months after his return home, he was himself drafted, and was one of nine privates, who with a sergeant and corporal were sent to Noddle’s Island (East Boston) to guard the fort there. He stayed there from August to December, 1778, having, as he said in his diary, “as easy a time as a soldier could wish to have.” East Boston was then barren and almost uninhabited. “At the time that I was at the Island,” says his diary, “there were only two dwelling houses and two families, the inhabitants I think no more than twelve.” [footnote: By the census of Boston taken in the summer of 1875, the population of Ward 1(East Boston) is put down as 29,347, and that of South Boston (the ancient Dorchester Neck), as 53,982.] During the next three years he was on duty at different times, as mentioned in the following extract from some of his papers.
“At several times in the years 1779, ’80 and ’81 I enlisted as a soldier and served under Captain Champney and Captain Clapp twenty-two months at Dorchester Heights. As we were inhabitants of the town of Dorchester we went to our own dwelling places and did business at home, except when we were on duty. We were allowed good provisions and the duty was easy, excepting several times, a sergeant, corporal and nine privates were taken from our company to do duty on board a guard ship in Boston harbor. One night when I was there the prisoners being so many as to be about thirty to one of the guard, they having their passions raised by having their number increased the day previous., they vented their rage against the guard by threatening to throw us all overboard, but as we did not render evil for evil their passions were cool the next morning.”
During the last years of his life he received a pension from the government.
David Clapp learned the shoemaker’s trade, but the practice of it proving injurious to his health he abandoned it and followed the business of tanning, being employed in the establishment of his brother-in-law Deacon James Humphreys from early manhood till about 70 years old. He settled his father’s estate in 1787, and inherited one-third of the nine acres of land already alluded to on the north-east side of Jones’s Hill. David’s portion was the westerly three acres, and on this lot at the foot of the hill, now on Stoughton Street, he erected a house in 1794, previous to his first marriage. This house was a few rods distant from that of his father, which was on the lot that fell to Samuel, and was burnt in 1804. David’s house is still standing, and his estate remains in the hands of his descendants. Notwithstanding that the early part of his life was passed during the exciting and tumultuous times of the Revolution, so different from those of any of his ancestors, the remainder of it was more retired and quiet than was either of theirs. No vicious indulgence was contracted in camp to the injury of his future morals or health. He retained all the strictness of religious belief and practice peculiar to the puritans, was never absent from his seat in his Sunday place of worship, and was conscientiously temperate and almost abstemious in his habits of food and drink.
Children of David and Azubah (Capen) Clapp, of Dorchester:
Susannah Humphreys, b. May 16, 1802; d. in Milton, Jan. 1, 1833. [etc]
Theophilus Capen, b. Dec. 1, 1803; m. Oct. 16, 1834, Jane, dau. of Stephen and Rachel (Capen) Blake, of Stoughton, who was b. Dec. 31, 1811, and d. July 12, 1853. He learned the trade of tanning, and for many years was employed in the yard of Deacon James Humphreys, in Dorchester. He afterwards purchased a small farm in Stoughton, being part of the landed estate of his grandfather, Jonathan Capen, and lived there till the death of his wife, when he sold out and went to Needham, where he has since boarded with his cousin Mrs. Sarah (Clapp) Davenport. [there is a list of his children]
David, b. in Dorchester Feb. 6, 1806; m. April 9, 1835, Mary Elizabeth, b. Aug. 25, 1808, dau. of Atherton Tucker, of Milton. After serving an apprenticeship at the printing business with Mr. John Cotton in Boston, he continued in Mr. C.’s office, at the corner of Washington and Franklin Streets. Early in 1831 a brief partnership in carrying on the same establishment was entered into with Henry S. Hull, taking the name of Clapp & Hull, after which Mr. Cotton and Mr. Clapp were partners, under the firm of D. Clapp, Jr. & Co., till 1834, when the junior partner bought out the office, and continued the business on the old corner till 1861. Franklin Street was then widened at its head, the corner building taken down, and the printing office, after remaining in that place for the period of thirty-nine years, was removed to No. 564 Washington Street, where it has since been devoted to the business of general book and job printing and publishing. In 1864 his oldest son, John Cotton Clapp, was taken into partnership with him, under the firm of David Clapp & Son. While he was an apprentice with John Cotton in 1823, the publication of the Medical Intelligencer, a weekly periodical then edited by Dr. J.V.C. Smith, was commenced in the office, and in 1828 was united with another periodical and afterwards continued as the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. It became the sole property of Mr. Clapp in 1834, and was issued from his press without the omission of one weekly number till December, 1874, when it was purchased by a company of medical men of Boston, and its place of publication removed. The work had reached its 91st volume, and Mr. Clapp had been connected with its publication for about fifty years. The Boston Directory was printed in the same office from 1829 to 1846; much book and pamphlet work has been done in it, and the N.E. Hist. and Genealogical Register has been issued by the firm for the last ten years. Mr. C. has never been in public life, and his chief attention has been given to the business of his office, with scarcely a day’s intermission by sickness, and with few absences from home for any purpose. In 1846 he was chosen one of the wardens of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in South Boston, and has been annually re-elected to that office to the present time. Since his marriage in 1835, his residence, excepting a period of three or four years in Dorchester, has been in South Boston—which place, during his abode there, has grown from 6,000 people to more than 53,000. On the death of his father, in 1846, the estate was so settled with the other heirs that the homestead and hill-land adjoining became the property of himself and his sister Azubah, who still retain them. As one of the Committee of Publication of this work, and also one of its publishers, the labor of transcribing and completing its material has in some measure devolved on him. [children are listed]
Azubah Capen, b. Nov. 1808. She lived with and took care of her aged father until his death in 1846; since which time she has lived with her brother David in South Boston.