Roger Clap's Landing Site

On this spot in June 1630, Roger Clap and his men became the first Europeans to set foot in what is now Watertown, Massachusetts. Clap (1609-1691) was a devout English Puritan who was inspired by a minister to move to New England. Soon after his arrival, he traveled up the Charles River and traded with Pequossette people for fish–an event that would be recorded in his memoir with the pious Calvinist phrase, “God caused the Indians to help us with very cheap rates for fish,” and eventually commemorated on Watertown’s seal.

Roger Clap was born in April of 1609 in Salcombe, Devonshire, into a large, middle-class, devoutly Puritan family. He moved away from home at a young age and lived with other families in the area who shared his religious beliefs. While staying in the city of Exon, he learned that “many godly Persons” in the community had traveled to New England. John Wareham, a respected minister who was about to embark, offered to take Clap with him. After some difficulty in getting his father’s permission, Clap set out in March 1630.

Clap arrived on May 30, 1630. As he describes in his memoir, “When we came to Nantasket, Capt. Squeb… would not bring us into the Charles River… but put us ashore and our goods… and left us to shift for ourselves.” A passing boat gave them a ride to Charlestown, and from there, for reasons Clap did not explain in his memoir, about ten of the Englishmen continued their travels up the Charles River. They reached a spot known to the Massachusett people as Pigsgusset and today as Watertown. When they set up camp for the night, they were “informed that there were hard by us Three Hundred Indians: One English man that could speak the Indian language… advised them not to come near us in the night.. (This may have been less friendly advice and more of a threat, since Clap briefly speaks of himself and a “brave Soilder” standing guard over the group.) In the morning, the Pequossette people approached and traded fish for English biscuits. 

The Englishmen left Watertown after a few days and sailed back to Dorchester, where Clap would live for the remainder of his life. His early years there were not easy. His memoir speaks briefly of the “great Straits for want of Provision” that the colony suffered, as well as the Pequot Wars, but devotes far more attention to the religious disunity of the time. He lists several preachers who “led away not only Silly Women laden with their Lusts, but many Men also,” and describes with satisfaction the punishments they all suffered, including one Anthony Dicks, whom he claims was captured and roasted alive by Native people. Clap also experienced personal distress in this period, wondering “Whether the Work of Grace were ever savingly wrought in my Heart or no?” Eventually, he convinced himself that he was indeed among the elect, but such doubts were not uncommon among his peers.

Despite the first troubled years, life in Massachusetts moved on. In 1633, Clap married seventeen-year-old Johanna Ford, and they had sixteen children. Of these, six (Samuel, Elizabeth, Preserved, Hopestill, Wait, and Desire) married and had children of their own. Clap became a soldier in the fort at Castle Island in Boston Harbor, and when in 1665 the fort’s captain was killed in a storm, Clap was appointed to replace him. Clap’s youngest child, Supply, served as an officer under his father until his death at twenty-three due to “the Accidental Firing a Gun.” In 1686 the Dominion of New England was established, placing New England under a royal governor and restricting its independence. Clap resigned as captain after being required to do unspecified things “grievous to his pious Soul.” He lived to the age of eighty-two and was known for his piety, frequent church attendance, and his love of imparting “verbal Counsels, Warnings and Exhortations” to his children and the soldiers who served under him.

In his old age, Clap wrote a book containing his life story, religious writing, and advice for future generations. It was published in 1731 by James Blake Jr., along with an afterword that provided details Clap had forgotten to mention–including the names of his wife and children. The document gained popularity in 1844 when it was reprinted by the Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society. Clap’s landing in modern-day Watertown (which was founded only a few months later by Sir Richard Saltonstall) is now on Watertown’s town seal.

Clap, Roger, and James Blake. Memoirs of Capt. Roger Clap, Relating some of God’s Remarkable Providences to Him, in bringing him into New-England; and some of the Straits and Afflictions, the Good People met with here in their Beginnings, and Instructing, Counselling, Directing, and Commanding his Children and Childrens Children, and Household, to serve the Lord in their Generations to the latest Posterity. Boston: D. Clapp, Jr., 1844.

Hambrick-Stowe, Charles E. “Reformed Spirituality: Dimensions of Puritan Devotional Practice.” Journal of Presbyterian history. 58, no. 1 (1980): 17–33.

Colket, Meredith B. “Family Records Printed During the Colonial Period.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 57, no. 1 (1963): 61–67.

Palmer, Aaron J. "Dominion of New England." In Dictionary of American History, 3rd ed., edited by Stanley I. Kutler, 77-78. Vol. 3. New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003. 

Hubbard, William, 1677. “A map of New-England, being the first that ever was here cut, and done by the best pattern that could be had, which being in some places defective, it made the other less exact: Yet doth it sufficiently show the situation of the country & conveniently well the distances of places.” (1677). Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/gm71002303/.