“Lost Village of Roberts Meadow” by John Irving Clapp (Off the Common Books, 100 pages, $18)

Local historians are among my heroes. I enjoy reading “big” history books that deal with national or international trends and that demonstrate what my graduate-school professors used to call “sweep.” I really admire works that aim at illuminating the past in smaller areas, however.

Local historians spend a lot of time looking through old property deeds; birth, marriage, and death records; and newspaper clippings. Their work isn’t glamorous, but it is important.

Our area’s most recent contribution along these lines comes from John Clapp. Clapp and his wife Dee Boyle-Clapp lived for many years in Shelburne Falls and operated a frame shop there before building a home in Florence on land that had been in the Clapp family for generations.

That land was once part of a village called Roberts Meadow. As Clapp reveals in “Lost Village of Roberts Meadow: Northampton’s Forgotten Settlement,” he was unaware growing up of the rich history of the area in which his family lived.

Roberts Meadow was named after early Northampton settler Robert Lyman, who loved to hunt in the area that would eventually bear his name. Eventually, his hunting grounds became a bustling small community that featured a tannery, a smithy, a sawmill, a school, and two taverns.

One of those taverns did brisk business collecting tolls for the road between Boston and Albany.

In the late 1800s, the village began to disappear. In an effort that previewed the Quabbin Reservoir, albeit on a smaller scale, buildings were razed to make way for the Hoxie Reservoir and Dam. For years, the reservoir supplied water for the city of Northampton.

John Clapp has hiked through what remains of Roberts Meadow, exploring cellar holes and fields. He has combed local records for facts and graphics. His lavishly illustrated book discusses the families and institutions that occupied the village. It describes businesses that thrived and businesses that failed.

It gives readers a glimpse of old homes and old tragedies — particularly the tragedies of one family, the Marbles. This ill-fated clan lost members to fire, farm implements, factory accidents, and a particularly nasty bull.

Best of all, from time to time, “Lost Village of Roberts Meadow” gives readers a hint of what it must have been like to walk down the main street of the village and stop in for a drink at the Edwards Tavern.

Clapp has done work that should inspire other local historians and that would have made his ancestors in Roberts Meadow proud.

Tinky Weisblat is the author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook” and “Pulling Taffy.” Visit her
website, www.TinkyCooks.com.