William Clapham

Colonel William Clapham (1722 – 28 May 1763) was an American military officer who served in Father Le Loutre's War and the French and Indian War. Clapham was considered a competent commander in engagements with French troops and Native American warriors, but towards the end of his military career he was unpopular with the soldiers under his command. Following his retirement from military service, Clapham and his family were killed by Lenape warriors on his farm in 1763.

Early career and family

Nothing is known of William Clapham's early life. He was commissioned into the Massachusetts Militia at the rank of captain in Boston on 1 November 1747, and may have been born in Massachusetts.

He was married to Mary Clapham. He had one son, William Clapham, Jr., who served as a lieutenant in the Third Battalion, Pennsylvania Regiment of Foot after it was formed in late March, 1756, and who was killed by two Panis slaves in June 1762. Clapham also had a daughter Mary.

Defamation case, 1747

Court records for Suffolk County, Massachusetts, show that on 30 June 1747, Clapham filed charges against William MacLanahan for defamation, claiming that MacLanahan "did on ye fifteenth of June instant at Boston aforesd in ye hearing of Sundry persons willingly & malisciouly utter these false & scandalous Words, concerning ye Complainant, He (meaning the Complainant) is Lyar & a Cheat & has cheated his men (meaning the Soldiers under his Command) of their Provisions; He has used them cruelly & beat one them in such a manner as caused his Death."

The outcome of the case is not recorded.

Service in Nova Scotia, 1748–1754

In 1748, Clapham was sent as a company commander to defend Annapolis Royal as part of a wave of New England reinforcements destined for Nova Scotia, where he served with Jedidiah Preble and Benjamin Goldthwait. who took twenty prisoners and carried them off to Louisbourg. After Governor Edward Cornwallis complained to the governor of Ile Royale, the prisoners were released.

After the 1749 raid on Dartmouth, Clapham raised a company of 70 men, known as "Clapham's Rangers," to fight the Mi'kmaq. Clapham fought in the Battle at Chignecto on 3 September 1750. Although fighting continued across the Chignecto Isthmus during 1751, by summer Cornwallis had disbanded all ranger companies except Gorham's Rangers, a primarily Native American unit formed in 1744.

During the 1751 raid on Dartmouth ) on 13 May 1751, Miꞌkmaq warriors and Acadian militia under the command of Acadian Joseph Broussard, raided Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, destroying the town, killing twenty British colonists and wounding four soldiers. Clapham and 60 soldiers from the 45th Regiment of Foot were stationed on Blockhouse Hill. He and the company are reported to have remained within the blockhouse firing from the loopholes during the whole raid. A court-martial was called on 14 May, the day after the raid, to inquire into the conduct of the commanding officers who allowed the town to be destroyed. In June, Clapham's sergeant was acquitted.

Prosecution for homicide, 1751

In 1751, Clapham was prosecuted in Halifax for killing a drunk prisoner of war by gagging him too tightly. The case was unique in that Clapham was not brought before a court martial, but was instead tried in a civilian court. The outcome of the case is not recorded.

Divorce, 1754

Following his service in Nova Scotia, Clapham returned to Boston to face divorce proceedings. Records for the Massachusetts House of Representatives for 17 October 1754, show a "special act" in the case of Mary Clapham v. William Clapham, sponsored in part by James Otis Sr., dissolving their marriage contract, after William Clapham stood convicted of "leaving the said Mary, cohabiting and committing Adultery with Another Woman in Nova Scotia."

Promotion to colonel, 1756

Clapham then moved to Pennsylvania to assist Benjamin Franklin in constructing a series of forts along the frontier. In late 1755, Governor Robert Hunter Morris ordered the construction of forts garrisoned with Pennsylvania militiamen, and plans were made to begin building Fort Hunter, Fort Halifax, and Fort Augusta. Following the Penn's Creek massacre, Great Cove massacre and Gnadenhütten massacre, Franklin had been charged with the rapid construction of three small forts in northeastern Pennsylvania (Fort Allen, Fort Franklin, and Fort Lebanon) but he felt that the responsibility for building forts should be given to someone with more military training, and offered a commission to Clapham, who accepted. Franklin writes in his autobiography:

"I had hardly finished this business and got my fort well stored with provisions, when I received a letter from the Governor...and my three intended forts being now completed, and the inhabitants contented to remain on their farms under that protection, I resolved to return; the more willingly as a New England Officer, Col. Clapham, experienced in Indian War, being on a visit to our establishment, consented to accept the Command. I gave him a commission, and, parading the garrison, had it read before them, and introduced him to them as an officer who, from his skill in military affairs, was much more fit to command them than myself."

Clapham was commissioned into the Pennsylvania Provincial Forces at the rank of colonel in February 1756, and given command over the Augusta Regiment as well as defenses in Northampton County. Fort Hunter was initially a stockaded gristmill in the Great Valley, owned by Samuel Hunter who lived on Fishing Creek. The mill was fortified with a simple stockade in January, 1756, and garrisoned with volunteer militia recruited by Thomas McKee, an Indian trader who operated a trading post nearby. He was appointed captain of "McKee's Volunteers," but provisions, clothing and ammunition were in short supply, and the post was vulnerable to attack.

On 8 March 1756, Franklin wrote to August Gottlieb Spangenberg that:

"We are apt to think, that the Guarrison in the Forts, after being a little more used to the Woods, and acquainted with the cunning Contrivances of the Savages, will be more diligent and successful, in ranging of the Woods; especially if Col. Clapham, who is reckond a very vigilant Gentleman, should soon come up again."

On 7 April 1756, Morris ordered Clapham to march his regiment to Hunter's Mill to begin construction. On 11 May 1756, McKee handed over command of the fort to Clapham. The community of Fort Hunter, Pennsylvania was established nearby after 1787.

Dispute with Governor Morris

Clapham's temperament was revealed in May, 1756, when he and several officers stayed with Governor Robert Morris at Harris's Ferry, operated by John Harris Sr. and the future site of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Captain Joseph Shippen later wrote to his father that Governor Morris had made some remarks which offended Clapham, so that Clapham refused to speak to the governor for several days afterward, and eventually saddled his horse with intent to ride away and abandon his troops. Captain Shippen and other officers persuaded Clapham not to leave, and were able to mediate a reconciliation between the two men. Historian William Albert Hunter comments on this event that: "The Colonel [Clapham] was an obvious target for criticism; a New Englander, self-important in manner, somewhat arbitrary in action, sometimes intemperate in speech, he easily found adversaries who preferred to regard him as a person of limited accomplishments who had risen above his proper station." The Lenape village of Shamokin had been abandoned a few weeks earlier.

Fort Halifax was a stockade fort square, with four bastions and surrounding earthworks about 10 feet high. Once finished, it was garrisoned by Pennsylvania Colonial Militia and served as the chief supply post between the area settlements and Shamokin where Fort Augusta would be built later that summer.

Fort Augusta

Construction

Plan of Fort Augusta on the east bank of the Susquehanna River as it was laid out on June 25, 1756 at the former location of Shamokin.

In June, 1756, Major James Burd finally received sufficient funding and supplies to begin building Fort Augusta at the former site of the Native American village of Shamokin. The plan of the fort had been previously drawn up by Governor Morris, who wrote to Clapham on 12 June recommending "a square with one ravelin to protect the curtain where the gate is, with a ditch, covered way, and glacis." On 14 August, Clapham wrote to Governor Morris: "We have the walls of the fort now above-half finished and our other works in such situation that we can make a very good defense against any body of French and Indians that shall seat themselves before us without cannon." Buildings included a bakery, smoke house, beef cistern, pork cistern, and a powder magazine with an underground powder keg. The wall facing the river was composed of upright logs, and the rear wall was made up of lengthwise logs. Beyond the main wall was a dry moat that was half as deep as the wall was high. Triangular bastions on each corner permitted a crossfire covering the entire extent of the wall. A well was located in the westernmost bastion. In front of the main gate, a small bridge over the moat could be raised in the event of an attack. Blockhouses connected by a stockade formed a covered way to the river.

Clapham was concerned that the fort would be vulnerable to French assault from the west, if the French were to deploy artillery. On 7 September 1756, he wrote to Franklin requesting permission to hire another carpenter for additional fortification of the fort's walls: "If the Government designs to strengthen this Post by doubling the Fort with another Case of Logs and filling up the intermediate Space with Earth in order to render it Cannon Proof which I think ought to be done."

In late October, Clapham described the final stages of the fort's construction: "In eight or ten days more the ditch will be carried quite around the parapet, the barrier gates finished and erected, and the pickets of the glacis completed." and had twelve cannons and two swivel guns. It served as base for the Third Battalion, Pennsylvania Regiment of Foot, known as the Augusta Regiment, which was originally formed to build and garrison Fort Augusta. and instructed the commander, Captain Hambright, "to Kill, Scalp, and capture as many as you can." The raiding party found the village empty, but returned later and destroyed it.

Pay for troops and officers at Fort Augusta was delayed repeatedly, to the point where Clapham was forced to loan most of his salary to men and officers under his command to prevent them from deserting or leaving at the end of their enlistment. Shipments of provisions were frequently late, so that the fort's food supply sometimes dwindled to only one or two days' rations. and moved to Pittsburgh in July 1760. in which he recorded 104 houses and a total population of 332 people, composed of 95 officers, soldiers and their families, and 238 civilians.

Trading post

Soon afterwards, Clapham entered into an economic venture with Indian trader George Croghan to develop a trading post and a settlement, later referred to as Oswegly Old Town. In 1762, he applied for the right to settle on land 18 miles southeast of Fort Pitt, which he had purchased from George Croghan, and his application was approved by Colonel Bouquet and General Robert Monckton. and subsequently operated a trading post and extensive plantation where Sewickley Creek enters into the Youghiogheny River (between present-day Sutersville, Pennsylvania and West Newton, Pennsylvania). He and Croghan planned to sell corn, hay, and cattle at Fort Pitt.

Death and burial, 1763

Clapham's Trading Post was the site of the first attack in Pennsylvania of Pontiac's Rebellion. On 28 May 1763, Keekyuscung, his son Wolf, and two other Indians allegedly murdered and scalped Clapham, his wife and child at Clapham's farm on Sewickley Creek. This was reportedly done in retaliation for the destruction of a Lenape community at Great Island (Lock Haven, Pennsylvania), ordered by Clapham in November, 1756.

An article in The Pennsylvania Gazette on 31 May stated:

"There is most melancholy news here, the Indians have broke out in divers Places and have murdered Colonel Chapman (sic) and his Family; and two of our Men at the Saw-Mill just by the Ford, and scalps taken off each Man."

On 2 May 1764, Colonel Henry Bouquet drew up a series of demands on Native American tribes with whom he was negotiating for peace as part of the 1764 Treaty of Fort Niagara, including "that they deliver up the murderers of Clapham...to be put to death for their Crimes." Both Keekyuscung and his son Wolf had been killed at the Battle of Bushy Run on 6 August 1763.

William Clapham is buried in the cemetery at Trinity Cathedral in Pittsburgh.

In popular culture

There is a reference to "Captain Clapham" in an early version of the song Yankee Doodle, printed in an undated broadside titled “The Recruiting Officer, Together with Yanky Doodle,” probably published between 1748 and before Clapham completed his service in Canada in 1754:

Here's Father and I, for Canady, Likewise another Brother, And Seven more we leave on shore, For to take Care of Mother. Tho' I am young I do belong, To valiant Captain Clapham, I'll run my Chance and fight the French, And that’s the Way we’ll nab 'em.