What the Claps Did Build

Some wood from yonder virgin trees, so care’fly hewn by hand

To build a tiny cabin here, in this their new homeland.

In thirteen years from Plymouth Rock, a new life now begun,

Copernicas he held was right, and would not reconcile

That earth was not the center, but it was the blazing sun,

‘twas heresy the church did cry, Galilei was undone.

A grist mill Israel Stoughton built then gave the Claps their flour,

The mightly river Neponset lent the mill its power.

Gun powder and some paper too, produced by Stoughton’s dam,

Designed in place by Israel, but built by Abraham.

The Mary and John, a sturdy ship, in 1630 brought

Roger Clap and Johanna Ford to this new land they sought.

They married there at twenty four and settled on the land,

At Dorchester they built their house, not far from Plymouth’s strand.

A board or two and then some nails, the house began to grow,

Chickatawbut, who greeted them, had died before the snow

And winter’s cold sought out the Claps, now sheltered from its storm,

In their small place built up with love, that kept them snug and warm.

Through all the intervening years, while Roger served the town

With diligence and fortitude until with great renown,

Appointed as commander of the fort at Castle Isle,

He left o’er schemes of Andros that he could not reconcile.

And then it fades, this antique house, and none quite know its fate,

Until it shows up once again at a much later date,

When one more time the fam’ly Clap, with Lemuel in the lead,

Rebuilt the tiny aging home, as Susanna decreed.

The mark of elegance soon showed as Roger’s simple plan

Began to grow and be transformed by this quite wealthy man.

Lemuel’s great-great grandfather, a cousin to the one

Who’d built the house in thirty three and left it to his son.

But she who sought the new-built house was not to be the one,

For death had crept into her life, her plans were now undone.

Rebecca was the second wife, in seventeen sixty eight,

The revolution then did call, she wondered at his fate.

It stands today much as it was two hundred years ago,

And all who visit there do pause and somehow seem to know,

That generations come and go and few things stand the test,

But those that do, that special few, are hallowed and are blest.