I recently stumbled across an interesting fact about Moses Clapp. In addition to being a tireless advocate for the rights of women, black people, and American Indians, he also supported deaf people. In A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Community in America, author John Van Cleve explains that “Minnesota Senator Moses E. Clapp proposed as well that the federal government create a ‘bureau for the deaf and dumb’ in the United States Department of Labor.

Harvey Spaulding Clapp Harvey Spaulding Clapp was born in Moretown, Vermont, in 1817 to Rufus Clapp and Wealthy Parkhurst Spaulding. He traveled extensively throughout the Great Lakes as a marble salesman and kept a diary, which, although it consists almost entirely of mundane business transactions, shows him to have possessed an extraordinary intellect. The diary, written in the summer of 1847, follows Harvey from his home in Moretown, Vermont, through New York, Northern Ohio, Michigan, and as far as Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

portrait of Senator Moses Clapp Moses Edwin Vail Clapp was born on May 21st, 1851 in Delphi, Indiana, son of Harvey Spaulding Clapp and Jane Abigail Clapp (nee Vandercook). He went to law school at the University of Wisconsin. At age 23, Moses married Harriet “Hattie” Allen of Indiana. Moses and Hattie Clapp had four children: Catrina Clapp, born in 1880. Harvey Spaulding Clapp II, born November 19th, 1881 in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Ella Grace Clapp, born in 1889. Hattie Alice Clapp.

According to Oliver Roberts’ History of the Military Company of the Massachusetts, Charles M. Clapp entered the rubber business and eventually formed C. M. Clapp & Co., which operated AEtna Rubber Mills and was also affiliated with the Good Year Rubber Company. The company worked with the Boston Fire Department to repair fire hoses, and may also have manufactured shoes for Boston police forces. Charles was born in Watertown, New York on July 5th, 1834, and died on April 30th 1897.