Roger Clap Memorial, landing site in 1630, Watertown, Massachusetts
Roger is my 8th great-grandfather, and I wrote about trying to locate his burial site in 2011, "Searching for Roger Clap's Burial Place , Found in Front of Me!"
Charles River, behind the memorial.
For the entire year, all my photos have been taken with the iPad ver.4. Once nice thing about it is the ability to enlarge photos, including the below engraved marker.
HERE LANDED ROGER CLAP
AND THE DORCHESTER MEN
JUNE 1630
Watertown
"We went up the Charles
River , until the river
grew narrow and shallow, and there we
landed our goods with much labor and toil,
the bank being steep; and night coming on,
we were informed that there were hard by
us three hundred Indians. One Englishman,
that could speak the
Indian language
(an old planter)
went to them and advised
them not to come
near us in the night; and
they harkened to their counsel, and came
not. In the morning,
some of the Indians
came and stood at a
distance off, looking
at us, but came not
near us. But when they
had been a while in
view, some of them
came and held out a
great bass towards
us; so we sent a man
with a biscuit, and
changed the cake for
the bass. We had not
been there many
days, (although by our
diligence we had got
up a kind of shelter
to save our goods
in,) but we had order to
come away from that
place which was about
now Dorchester , because there was a neck
of land fit to keep
our cattle on."
From
Roger Clap's Narrative
Erected by
The Historical Society of Watertown
1967