Description:

Revolutionary War

Revolutionary War Muster Roll at Dorchester, Massachusetts for Captain Lemuel Clap’s Company, 1780

 

An American Revolutionary War Manuscript Document, representing a War Payroll for "Captain Lemuel Clap’s Company in Major Nath. Heaths detachment of Guard in the State of Massachusetts Bay at Dorchester Heights". 15.5" x 12.5" on laid paper. Dated "Dorchester June 9, 1780". Expected folds, slight staining, some paper thinning to bottom margin and minor edge chipping. Verso with math calculations to one quadrant.

 

A very rare, important historic Revolutionary War military payroll, with forty one soldiers listed. This Muster Roll for “Capt. Lemuel Clap's Company detached to Major Nathaniel Heath’s guard” (which patrolled South Boston and Dorchester Heights). It is well organized to show the names of soldiers, rank, time of enlistment, and pay owed. Some great names including Lemuel Clap (Captain), Aaron Bird (1st Lieutenant), and Nathaniel Clap, amongst many others. The Massachusetts Committee of Safety, on June 15, 1775, had ordered the Dorchester Neck hills be "secured (and) the Council of War take and pursue such steps …" The British had burned barns and homes on Dorchester Neck beginning on February 14, 1776, but failed to occupy the land. Beginning March 4, 1776, American troops, likely including Clap's company, began building forts from Dorchester Heights to Dorchester Neck and Nook's Hill. Cannons from Ft. Ticonderoga were moved on sleds to Roxbury where straw was tied to their wheels to deaden the sound of night passage. General Washington placed artillery on the Dorchester hills. The British attempted counter offensive measures that failed due to inclement weather. Finally, with the added armaments won at Ticonderoga, the British evacuated the Boston Harbor on March 17, 1776 taking 11,000 loyalists and soldiers in 120 ships to Canada. Clap's company stayed in the Dorchester area, finishing the forts and other emplacements for the remainder of the War, including the enlistment dates set forth in this document. Lemuel Clapp, a Dorchester Patriot who invited George Washington's troops to encamp on his estate during the Siege of Boston, was, like the site's first English owner, Roger Clap, a man of pronounced Puritan tenets. One of those tenets was self-sufficiency, and from the time that Roger Clap erected his house, in winter of 1633, to the enlargements to the Clapp House in 1767 and 1768 by Lemuel Clapp, the family ran a working farm. In the those earlier years the residents used Dorchester Neck as a cow pasture

 

The Captain Lemuel Clap House (1767) is a historic house located at 199 Boston Street, Dorchester, Massachusetts. It is now owned by the Dorchester Historical Society, which opens the house for tours two afternoons per month. It is one of two Clapp Houses owned by the society that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It appears that a house has occupied this site since about 1633, and possibly today's house was its enlargement.This very item sold at Early american Auction in 2016 for $3750!

 

A lovely extremely scarce example which would look stunning framed.

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