Colonel William Clapham and Family Murdered by Indians, May 28, 1763

Colonel William Clapham was an English officer who rendered conspicuous service on the frontiers of Pennsylvania and who, like many others, paid the price with his scalp in the uneven warfare waged by the Indians and their French allies.

William Clapham was born in England July 5, 1722, and after graduating from college, entered the army as an ensign. He was sent to America during the French and Indian War. He subsequently resigned his commission and took up his residence in Philadelphia, where he was living at the time of Braddock’s defeat.

This disaster to the English arms caused Captain Clapham to again offer his services, this time to the Province of Pennsylvania. He was commissioned a captain and sent by Governor Morris into Bucks County to recruit troops and to muster into the Provincial service the company recruited by Captain Insley, who were ordered to join the regular troops then posted at Reading and Easton.

While Captain Clapham was on this tour of duty he journeyed to Fort Allen to make a visit with some friends. The Assembly at this 371moment was pressing Colonel Benjamin Franklin to return to his seat in that body. The three forts being completed, and the inhabitants willing to remain on their plantations with soldiers in these garrisons, Colonel Franklin placed Captain Clapham in full command and departed.

This was only a temporary command, but Governor Morris, March 29, 1756, commissioned him lieutenant-colonel, and assigned him to the Third Battalion. He also ordered the Colonel to assemble his troops as soon as possible at Hunter’s Mill, preparatory to marching to Shamokin (now Sunbury), where he was to build a substantial fort.

Colonel Clapham recruited 400 men for that purpose. He assembled his force at Fort Hunter, where he began training them. Before they marched from this encampment Governor Morris paid them an official visit, the incidents of which are quite entertaining and very interesting.

Colonel Clapham marched his command to Armstrongs, built Fort Halifax, stationed a garrison there, and finally proceeded up the river to Shamokin, where he arrived July 1, and immediately set about building Fort Augusta. This formidable fortress was finished in October.

From the very beginning of this frontier service Colonel Clapham experienced no end of trouble with his officers. He seems to have been overbearing and a hard taskmaster. He bore many insults, as he termed them, from the Assembly. These frequent disputes and misunderstandings with his officers wore out his patience and he resigned in November, 1756, being succeeded by Major James Burd of Lancaster.

Notwithstanding the confusion and ill-feeling which prevailed among the officers and men during the building of Fort Augusta, it seems that a secret directing power had prevented everything from falling into chaos and much good was accomplished. Had it not been for this unseen power, the fort would have been captured by the French and Indians and the whole North and West Branch Valleys would have been overrun and held by the enemy at this most critical period in the history of the Province.

He was a most conspicuous figure on the early frontiers. Even Colonel Clapham’s enemies, or those who thought he was not an acceptable officer, must have been moved to deep and sincere sympathy when they learned the sad fate which so soon afterward befell him and his family on the western frontier of Pennsylvania.

He did not long remain out of the service when his resignation as commander of the garrison at Fort Augusta was accepted. In 1763 he was an active officer in the expedition of Colonel Henry Bouquet on the western frontier of the Province.

He was in command of a formidable scouting party when he was murdered on Sewickley Creek, near where the town of West Newton now stands.

372This tragedy occurred on the afternoon of May 28, 1763, and was committed by The Wolf, Kektuscung and two other Indians, one of whom was called Butler.

Colonel Clapham had taken his family to this frontier, and was very near his own home when these Indians shot him from ambush, rushed into his house, killed and scalped his wife and three children and a woman. The two women were treated with brutal indecency. They left evidences of the fact that they were paying an old score with Colonel Clapham, and the scene was horrible to behold.

At the time of the murder of the Claphams, three men who were working at some distance from the Clapham house escaped through the woods and carried the terrible news to the garrison in Fort Pitt.

Two soldiers, who were in Colonel Clapham’s detail, and stationed at a sawmill near the fort, were killed and scalped by these same Indians.

It seems that there were others slain in this massacre for Colonel Burd entered in his journal, June 5, 1763, that “John Harris gave me an account of Colonel Clapham and twelve men being killed near Pittsburgh, and two Royal Americans being killed at the saw mill.”

Colonel Bouquet in a letter to General Amherst, dated Fort Pitt, May 31, 1763, says: “We have most melancholy reports here * * * the Indians have broke out in several places, and murdered Colonel Clapham and his family.”

Judge Jasper Yeates made a visit to Braddock’s battlefield in August, 1776, and then to the site of Fort Pitt. He remarked about seeing the grave of Colonel Clapham.

It is probable that the family became extinct after the Indians perpetrated their dastardly crime, and the ashes of the famous commander and builder of Fort Augusta have long since mingled with the soil.