Dorchester Illustration 2727 Richard Clapp House
Today we have a photo of Richard Clapp’s house, which was located on Columbia Road approximately where the Russell School is now across from the Blake House.
The following is from, “The Clapp Memorial. Record of the Clapp Family in America,” Ebenezer Clapp, compiler. (Boston: David Clapp & Son, 1876).
“Richard, son of Lemuel and Rebecca (Dexter) Clapp, and brother of the preceding (William), was born in Dorchester, July 24, 1780, and died Dec. 16, 1861, aged 81 years. He was a tanner by trade, and his yard was only a few rods south of his brother William’s [on Boston Street]. At one time in early life he was engaged pretty extensively in brick-making, the business being carried on upon lands of his own in South Boston. Bricks there made were used in 1812, in the construction of the house he afterwards occupied, now standing on Pond Street [now mostly merged into Columbia Road], near the Five Corners [Edward Everett Square]. A few feet east from this house is the site of the one in which Rev. Richard Mather lived, and in which his son President Increase Mather was born.” Increase Mather was the sixth president of Harvard College.