Roger Clap Landing Site

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  The Mary & John was one of the first of about a dozen shiploads of immigrants that arrived in Massachusetts Bay in the summer of 1630. Left by the captain "in a forlorn place" at Nantasket Point in June, the company sent a party of "ten men well armed" - including twenty-one year old Roger Clap, under the command of Captain Richard Southcot to find a place to settle.

  Years later, Clap wrote how the men "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." That evening they learned that "three hundred Indians" were camped nearby. "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. Afterwards, they supplied us with bass, exchanging a bass for a biscuit cake, and were very friendly unto us."

  These Englishmen and the others from the Mary and John soon settled Dorchester, but Watertown architect Charles Brigham depicted the friendly encounter on his design for Watertown's town seal. The Perkins School for the Blind is accross the street from the stone marker, which is located at the site that Clap referred to as the "steep bank.'