Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Knapp, Francis

KNAPP, Francis, scholar, b. in England in 1672; d. after 1715. His father, George, a captain in the British navy, commanded a ninety-gun ship on the American coast in the early part of the 18th century. The son came to the United States to take possession of some lands that he had inherited from his grandfather in Watertown, Mass., where he passed his life in scholarly pursuits. He was a musical composer, and the author of "A Poetical Epistle to Mr. B.," reprinted in J. Nichols's "Select Collection of Poems" (Boston, 1780), and of a poetical "Address to Mr. Alexander Pope, on his Windsor Forest," dated 17 June, 1715, which appears in the first and subsequent editions of Pope's works. Samuel L. Knapp, in his "American Biography," claims that this address was an American production; but a note by William Roscoe, in his edition to Pope, says it was written in Killala, Ireland.