Edward Gorton
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 18 May 1698 - Rhode Island 1
Baptism:
Death: 1786
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Samuel Gorton (1672-1722) 2
Mother: Elizabeth Collins (1672-1724) 2
Spouses and Children
1. *Hannah Mathewson (Cir 1700 - )
Marriage: 9 Mar 1721 - Providence, Rhode Island
Status:
Children:
1. Freelove Gorton (1722-1803)
Notes
General:
Edward married Hannah Matteson. 3Marriage Notes (Hannah Mathewson)
Children:
GORTON, Freelove
GORTON, Sarah
GORTON, John b. 23 SEP 1726 Warwick, Kent, RI.
GORTON, Hannah
GORTON, Caleb
GORTON, Edward
GORTON, Ann
(http://newenglandgenealogy.pcplayground.com/)
Elizabeth Gorton
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 1 Dec 1715 - Warwick, Rhode Island
Baptism:
Death: 1 Nov 1800 - Portsmouth, Rhode Island 5
Burial: in Portsmouth, Rhode Island
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Samuel Gorton (1672-1722) 2
Mother: Elizabeth Collins (1672-1724) 2
Spouses and Children
1. *Benjamin Tallman (19 Jun 1710 - 26 Feb 1803) 6
Marriage: 24 Jan 1735 - Warwick, Rhode Island 5
Status:
Children:
1. Peleg Tallman (1736-Cir 1785) 7
2. Captain Thomas Tallman (1738-1809) 4
3. Patience Tallman (1740- )
4. Benjamin Tallman (1743- )
5. Elizabeth Tallman (1746- )
6. Hildah Tallman (1749- )
7. Samuel Tallman (1751- )
8. Anne Tallman (1753- )
9. Phebe Tallman (Between 1754/1758- )
10. Gorton Tallman (1759- )
Notes
Marriage Notes (Benjamin Tallman)
The marriage was made in Tiverton or Warwick, RI.
Freelove Gorton
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 9 May 1722 - Warwick, Rhode Island
Baptism:
Death: 31 Oct 1803 - Warwick, Rhode Island
Burial: in Jerauld lot, Warwick 8
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Edward Gorton (1698-1786)
Mother: Hannah Mathewson (Cir 1700- )
Spouses and Children
1. *Dr Dutee Jerauld (3 Mar 1723 - 13 Jul 1813)
Marriage: 26 Apr 1744 - (Rhode Island)
Status:
Children:
1. James Arnold Jerauld (1746-1827)
2. Captain Dutee Jerauld (1748-After 1801)
3. Freelove Jerald (1749-1823)
4. Dr Gorton Jerauld (1752-1822)
5. Hannah Jerauld (1753-1801)
6. Martha Jerauld (1756- )
7. Sarah Jerauld (1758-1797)
8. Ann Jerauld (1760- )
9. Susannah Jerauld (1762- )
10. Caleb Jerauld (1765-1832)
John Gorton
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: Cir 1650 - Rhode Island
Baptism:
Death: 3 Feb 1714 - Warwick, Rhode Island
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Samuel Gorton (1592-1677) 10
Mother: Mary Maplet (Est 1595- ) 4
Spouses and Children
1. *Margaret Weedon (Est 1650 - ) 9
Marriage: 28 Jun 1668 - Rhode Island
Status:
Children:
1. Samuel Gorton (1672-1722) 2
Margaret Gorton
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 12 May 1701 - Rhode Island 11
Baptism:
Death:
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Samuel Gorton (1672-1722) 2
Mother: Elizabeth Collins (1672-1724) 2
Notes
General:
Margaret married Samuel Whitman. 3
Matilda Gorton
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: Est 1780 - Hampden, Maine
Baptism:
Death:
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Nathaniel Myrick (7 Jul 1778 - )
Marriage: 29 Dec 1803 - Hampden, Maine 12
Status:
Samuel Gorton
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 1592 - Gorton, Lancashire, England
Baptism:
Death: 10 Dec 1677 - Warwick, Rhode Island
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Events
• Occupation, clothier, England in England
• Immigration, , Boston, Massachusetts in Boston, Massachusetts
... "with his wife, his son Samuel, and 1 or 2 other children. He took up residence in Plymouth, where in 1638 he led the opposition to the policies of Governor Prence, and was banished. In 1639 he was a freeman of Portsmouth, RI, where he became a member of the second or civil compact of government. The following year he was driven from the island and settled near Providence. In 1642 he was one of the purchasers and founders of Warwick, RI. Because of his liberal relligious beliefs he was tried for heresy the following year, and imprisoned " as a blasphemous enemy of the true religion."
Back again in Portsmouth he was chosen a Magistrate, and soon became one of the Assistants in the colony of which Roger Williams was Governor, Providence Plantations. In 1645 he was chosen Commissioner to lay the grievances of the colony before Parliament, and sailed for England, where he secured the satisfaction desired. On his return in 1648, although he had a letter of protection from the Earl of warwick, he was detained on landing in Boston and suspended from the government, the Boston officials having claimed jurisdiction over the colonies in what is now Rhode Island."
Spouses and Children
1. *Mary Maplet (Est 1595 - ) 4
Marriage: in England
Status:
Children:
1. John Gorton (Cir 1650-1714) 9
2. Samuel Gorton (1630-1724) 13
Notes
General:
Gorton, Samuel (c. 1592-1677), Puritan theologian and founder of Warwick, Rhode Island, was born in Gorton, England. Little is known of his background, but his father evidently had been a merchant and guild member in London. Instructed by competent tutors, Gorton became skilled in the classics and in English law but never attended university, engaging instead in the respectable middle-class trade of a clothier. He received his religious training in the English church but by the 1630s, under the influence of Puritan preachers, decided to leave London, where he had been in business, for New England. In 1636 he arrived in Boston with his wife, Mary Maplet, his eldest son, Samuel, and one or more other children. Gorton reached Boston at the height of the Antinomian controversy instigated by Anne Hutchinson, who offended the Puritan leaders by claiming that her words had come from God.Marriage Notes (Mary Maplet)
Though sympathetic to the plight and theology of the Hutchinsonians, Gorton remained apart from the immediate controversy and by 1638 moved within the Plymouth patent. There he ran afoul of the authorities and was tried on, among other charges, lay preaching that tended toward radical spiritism, the belief, which Puritans regarded as heresy, that the Holy Spirit dwelled within the true believer and dictated all of his actions. By 1639 Gorton relocated in the newly established settlement at Aquidneck where William Coddington, John Clarke, and others who had been forced from the Massachusetts Bay Colony after the Antinomian affair had joined the Hutchinsons. Soon enough, Gorton's penchant for controversy upset the delicate political alignment of this colony: he refused to acknowledge the authority of the local government in a trespassing complaint and for his seditious behavior was whipped and banished.
Matters went no better in Roger Williams's settlement of Providence, where, besides censuring the ministry, Gorton denied the efficacy of religious ordinances as means to attain salvation. Exasperating even the mild-mannered Williams, Gorton eventually moved on to what became Shawomet (later Warwick). By 1641 other settlers in the area became so annoyed at his obstreperous behavior that they decided to take the radical step of subjecting themselves to the Massachusetts Bay Colony's jurisdiction to rid themselves of this nuisance. By 1643 Gorton had been summoned to Boston on the complaint of Native Americans who charged that he occupied their lands illegally. When Governor John Winthrop's warning to Gorton drew the usual immoderate reply, the Bay magistrates moved against him. After a duplicitous attempt at negotiation, an expeditionary force led by Captain Edward Johnson captured Gorton and a small band of his supporters and brought them to Boston for trial as heretics and enemies to civil government. After hearing testimony and ordering Gorton to answer hermeneutical questions concerning his beliefs about the Holy Spirit, the court found the group guilty and sentenced them to hard labor. Within a few months, however, public pressure, influenced by the spread of toleration in England, forced the magistrates to overturn the sentences.
Gorton sailed for England to bring a formal, and eventually successful, complaint against Massachusetts for its harsh treatment of him. More important, he also became active in the burgeoning radical Puritan movement and published several important works that revealed his own theological bent. By the spring of 1646, for example, Gorton was preaching in Thomas Lamb's general baptist conventicle, in which one could hear Lamb or his fellow travelers, unordained "mechanick" preachers both male and female, emphasize Arminian theology, free grace, and universal salvation as well as the tenet of adult baptism that defined the baptist position. From contemporary accounts, Gorton was considered a valued participant in this and other radical Puritan activity in the 1640s.
Gorton could have returned to Rhode Island as early as 1646, after his favorable hearing before the parliamentary commission on foreign plantations. Instead, through the spring of 1648 he remained associated with the English radical underground, traveling as far afield as Lynn, in Norfolk, as an itinerant and publishing two lengthy works that define his radicalism. The first, Simplicities Defence against Seven-Headed Policy (1646), details his treatment at the hands of the New England authorities, criticizing them in particular for setting up a religious system as corrupt as that they sought to leave behind. The other, An Incorruptible Key to the CX. Psalme (1647), outlines Gorton's rejection of the civil magistrate's power to interfere in matters of conscience. The second work stands with Williams's own polemics in the New England radicals' espousal of total separation of civil and religious authority.
In 1648 Gorton returned to Warwick, Rhode Island, and settled into the process of colony building, holding many important civil offices in the new community. But he also continued to expound his own peculiar brand of radicalism to followers known as "Gortoneans" and reopened his dialogue with transatlantic Puritanism by publishing in London two more lengthy treatises, Saltmarsh Returned from the Dead (1655) and An Antidote against the Common Plague of the World (1657), both sharply anticlerical and antiauthoritarian works virtually unique in New England Puritan literature. Although attracted to the Quakerism that soon reached Rhode Island, he remained true to his own brand of radical Puritanism. Gorton died in Warwick, a well-respected citizen of what by then was a settled community in the colony of Rhode Island.
Through Gorton the ideology of such English radicals as John Saltmarsh, William Dell, and Thomas Lamb, among others, entered the religious discourse of Rhode Island and, eventually, all of New England. Gorton's case against the Massachusetts Bay Colony for paying little heed to English law in its suppression of religious opinions not consonant with its own found many sympathetic ears in England and cast doubt on the New England Puritans' claim to be the beacon for Protestantism. Gorton's significance thus resides not only in his religious mysticism but also in his threat to New England's self-image and the representation of that image in England. His writings and his personal example document a spectrum of radical Puritan beliefs on the American strand.
Bibliography
The only extant Gorton manuscript, a lengthy (125 pages in minuscule hand) treatise on the Lord's Prayer, is at the Rhode Island Historical Society. Most biographical studies of Gorton are dated, but the following are still useful: Adelos Gorton, The Life and Times of Samuel Gorton (1907); John M. Mackie, "Life of Samuel Gorton," in Library of American Biography, ed. Jared Sparks, 2d ser., vol. 5 (1864), pp. 317-41; and Charles Deane, "Notice of Samuel Gorton," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 4 (1850), pp. 201-20. The outlines of his career are conveniently summarized in Kenneth W. Porter, "Samuel Gorton: New England Firebrand," New England Quarterly 7 (1934): 405-44, but the most detailed modern treatment is Philip F. Gura, "Samuel Gorton," in his A Glimpse of Sion's Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620-1660 (1984), pp. 276-303, which places Gorton in a transatlantic Puritan context.
Philip F. Gura
Citation:
Philip F. Gura. "Gorton, Samuel";
http://www.anb.org/articles/01/01-00335.html;
American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
Copyright © 2000 American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889 & edited Stanley L. Klos, 1999 Estoric.com.
Samuel Gorton
The "cantankerous", "contumacious" and "obnoxious" Samuel Gorton has been subject to misrepresentation by the historians of four centuries. He is most commonly described as "bewitching and bemadding" not only Providence but the whole of southern New England. Edward Winslow's contemporaneous Hypocrisie Unmasked is the usual starting point for those seeking an introduction to Samuel Gorton, appearing as it does to consist of testimony from several sources, including John Winthrop, of Gorton's "mutinous ...seditious ...uncivil ....riotous" and "licentious" behaviour. But Hypocrisie Unmasked was composed at the specific request of the government of Massachusetts with the expressed purpose of discrediting Gorton before the English government. Gorton's own testimony in Simplicities Defence and elsewhere tells a different story, which whilst not was never contradicted in his lifetime, or since, has not been thoroughly researched in its own right. Far from being the "dangerous" and "crazed thinker" of tradition Samuel Gorton was in fact a "strenuous beneficent force", whose importance to the independence of the colony of Rhode Island, and his courage in securing it, was matched only by Roger Williams.
Samuel was born and raised in the village of Gorton, south-east Lancashire. His baptism is recorded in the registers of the parish church in Manchester, 12 February 1593. His parents were Thomas and Ann Gorton and contrary to several reports Thomas was not a London merchant but a Gorton husbandman (a small-scale tennant farmer ), recorded only in the Manchester area. However, like many of his peers and contemporaries in the region, Thomas was clearly prosperous in other fields as this was a man able to provide for the apprenticeship premiums of at least two of his four sons, Samuel and Edward (a carpenter), and the informal education, probably by private tutor, of at least one - Samuel. His later career would demonstrate his knowledge of rhetoric, logic and English common law. Such provision was beyond the abilities of a simple husbandman. (At least one of his daughters married into the local yeomanry.) Samuel was most likely apprenticed to a Manchester clothier (cloth merchant) at around the age of nineteen and as such contracts often resulted from existing commercial relationships it would not be unusual if Thomas was opperating as a carrier of goods by pack train for a merchant (or merchants), albeit with a low profile for tax purposes.
Like many English people Samuel did migrate to London, probably on completing his apprenticeship, being first recorded there with his marriage to Mary Maplett, daughter of John Maplett, a prosperous haberdasher. By this time Samuel had established himself in the clothing trade. The couple were married at the church of St Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street, 20 May 1628. Mary was remarkable not least in the posession of both reading and writing skills, unusual for a woman of the age. (She would bear Samuel nine surviving children, most of those births being under the most difficult frontier conditions.) In 1637 Samuel, his brother (Thomas junior) and their families joined the "Great Migration" of English Puritans (1630-1642), although he may have originally intended to sail in the same party as William Dyer and his wife Mary (the Quaker martyr) c.1634. William Dyer had lived and worked in the cloth trade in the same part of London.
Having arrived in Boston at the height of the Ann Hutchinson affair (the "Antinomian Crisis") the Gortons rejected that oppressive society and moved on to Plymouth where it is reported that Samuel "began drawing away part of the congregation to a separate meeting"; but there is no evidence of this. His household obediently attended the compulsory Sabbath church services whilst Samuel was also holding his own twice-daily meetings. Religious instruction in the home was expected of the godly householder but Samuel attracted outsiders, including those not granted a voice in the formal church - women and young people. It is also commonly reported that his religious opinions were "obnoxious" to the people of Plymouth. Recent research suggests he was in fact close to the original beliefs of the Pilgrim Fathers, but that by 1638 Plymouth Colony was moving away from the principles shared by the Mayflower Pilgrims and religiously closer to their less tolerant and economically dominant Massachusetts neighbours, who had recently expelled Ann Hutchinson and her supporters. Regular attenders at the Gorton religious gatherings were a maid in the household of the serving minister John Reynor, and the wife of the previous incumbent, Ralph Smith, who was also the Gortons' landlord. Mary Smith told Samuel "how glad she was that she could come into a family where her spirit was refreshed in the ordinances of God as in former days". Mary and her first husband, Richard Masterson, had been members of John Robinson's congregation in Dutch exile, from which the Pilgrim Fathers had emerged, suggesting Gorton's beliefs were not so outrageous to others as has been claimed. As the Hutchinson crisis began in similar private meetings (conventicles) in Boston, the Plymouth authorities grew suspicious.
Probably at the instigation of those authorities Ralph Smith, to whom Smith was beholding for allowing him to retain his large house when replaced in the ministry, now attempted to withdraw the Gorton lease. When Samuel resorted to mutually agreed arbitration private papers were confiscated by Governor Thomas Prence. Then, a maid in the Gorton household was threatened with deportation for "smiling in congregation" and Samuel appeared on her behalf, only to find himself defending his lease. He challenged the court for abusing procedure and appealed to the people to "stand for your liberty". For this he was accused of "sedition" and "mutiny", fined £20 and banished. But the deputies of the court protested against both the sentence and the conduct of the magistrates, particularly in their refusal to allow them the vote on the question of Gorton's guilt. Nine refused to attend the next sitting of the court and seven were fined 3 shillings as many as three times for continuing their protest. The Gortons were turned out of their home at the height of the worst blizzard so far experienced by the New England settlers. John Winthrop recorded at the time: "Five men and youths perished between Mattapan and Dorchester, and a man and a woman between Boston and Roxbury". The women and children were taken in by friends but Samuel, Thomas and John Wickes were forced out into the wilderness, through knee-deep snow with several rivers to cross.
They eventually made their way to Aquidneck Island (Newport) where Anne Hutchinson and her supporters had settled. Here they found that William Coddington was abusing his power as Governor and "Judge" of the community to establish his own "feudal fiefdom". After new elections in which the franchise was broadened Coddington was deposed and a new government formed under William Hutchinson, husband of Anne, and Samuel Gorton. They changed the name of their town from Pocasett to Portsmouth and continued what has been described as the first "experiment in civil democracy" in America. But Coddington had taken the town records and land-title with him in removing south to found the town of Newport, which meant the "Gorton government" could not legally apportion land to newcomers. Coddington eventually returned to power and set about removing those who had opposed him. Having committed no offence Samuel Gorton was tricked into court by a repeat of the Plymouth tactic of prosecuting one of his employees. The "snare" was successful and when he accused the court of manipulating witnesses, and the law itself, a brawl broke out in the court room when Gorton was ordered to be seized and taken away. Samuel Gorton took no part but William Coddington did. Anticipating popular support for Gorton Coddington had stationed armed men nearby and Gorton and his supporters were arrested. He was again banished but this time after a public whipping. After receiving his "stripes", still half naked and bleeding from the lash, he dragged his chains behind him to pursue Governor Coddington as he rode away, promising to repay him in kind. After the death of William Hutchinson Coddington harried Ann from the island, threatening to return her to Massachusetts for further punishment. She and her extended family removed to Long Island, where they were massacred by Indians in 1643. Opposition to his rule continued and Coddington returned to England in 1651. Dishonestly claiming to have discovered and purchased the island himself, he fradulently acquired a patent for Aquidneck in his sole name. He was in fact only one of twelve original joint purchasers.
Samuel Gorton was attracting followers who appreciated both his own less extreme religious opinions and radical political views. In terms of religion, he denied the necessity of a professional ministry - insisting that each man and woman was his or her own priest- and rejected literal interpretations of Old Testament stories in favour of interpretation for the age, and greater emphasis on the actual teachings of Christ - The Word. Gorton preached that Christ was already risen, was here and now, and heaven was attainable on earth. His controversial political beliefs were that, all men being equal under Christ, the courts of men were not fit places to question religious opinions. Church and state should be kept apart: "any erection of authority of the State within the Church, or the Church within the State, is superfluous and as a branch to be cut off". Like Roger Williams, he was a champion of "Soul Liberty". Several of his supporters were banished from Aquidneck with him for sharing these beliefs and this growing party next settled in Providence with Williams. Here it soon became apparent that a faction among the original proprietors, led by William Arnold, were exploiting newcomers in the Pawtuxet area by selling them land then denying room to expand and rights to common grazing. This faction also controlled the town government. newly erected buildings were torn down and straying cattle impounded "until satisfaction were made". In some instances, Gorton claimed, ropes restraining the cattle had been deliberately cut. There is evidence that "Gorton's followers" at this time "outnumbered those of Roger Williams" and that he became spokesman for the majority of settlers, many of whom were not represented on the town council. The exploited began to resist the exploiters and when cattle belonging to Francis Weston were seized a melee ensued and injuries suffered by both sides. With their position of privilage and power under threat the Arnolds appealed to be taken under Massachusetts jurisdiction. In a letter to the Boston government they accused Gorton and his associates of all kinds of "uncivil" and "riotous" conduct; but while claiming to represent the majority themselves they were tellingly obliged to add "or very nearly". As many of the Providence settlers were already expelled from Massachusetts for their religious beliefs, subjection to Massachusetts authority would have meant they would again be banished from their own lands, convenient for the Arnold coterie and for Massachusetts, who had designs on Narragansett Bay. Roger Williams returned to London to lobby for a patent for what would eventually become Rhode Island, an independent colony in its own right.
Hearing that Massachusetts was now making threats against his life because of his religious teachings and political popularity, Gorton and a party of twelve families removed to Shawomet, thirty miles beyond the Massachusetts border, where "both the Massachusetts and Plymouth confessed us to be outside of the confines of their Patents". But Shawomet was in the region where the Arnolds, Indian traders on behalf of Massachusetts and now "official representatives of the Bay", had their strongest links with local Narragansett tribes. The Gorton party had purchased their lands from the chief sachem, Miantonomo, who had also aided Roger Williams and the Hutchinson party - all outlawed by Massachusetts. Miantonomo was called to Boston where he was humiliated before the court. Within weeks of selling the land to Gorton he was dead, murdered by his Mohegan rival, Uncas, with the direct complicity of Massachusetts and Connecticut in what has been termed "a clear case of judicial murder". When two minor sachems, Pumham of Shawomet and Socononocco of Pawtuxet, trading partners of the Arnolds, also requested to be taken under Massachusetts jurisdiction they were accepted as "praying Indians" even though "Massachusetts had hitherto shown no interest in Christianising the Indians". Under the Arnolds' orchestration and Boston's sanction they proceeded to mount a campaign of harassment and intimidation against newly founded Shawomet. Houses were broken into and ransacked while the occupiers were working in the fields, stones were thrown at women and children when the men were absent and other acts of robbery were common. The settlers' precious cattle were a prime target. They had not been settled long enough to establish a cycle of crops and English traders were forbidden to trade with them. And all the while Massachusetts was demanding they travel the sixty-plus miles to Boston to defend their ownership of Shawomet in a court that had no jurisdiction over the territory, the same court that had humiliated Miantonomo in telling him he had no right to sell his own land to heretics.
Before leaving Providence Gorton had written a lengthy and highly critical letter to Massachusetts, attacking their government and intolerant religious practices, and refusing to obey summonses to the Boston court. Until Roger Williams returned with the patent, Gorton told them, the only colonial government recognised in Shawomet was that agreed amongst its own inhabitants. The following year, after months of suffering at Shawomet, having recently learned of the fate of their friends the Hutchinsons on Long Island, and on the day another cow returned with arrows piercing its sides, a second letter was sent to Boston. Containing the often quoted lines "If you present a gun, make haste to give first fire: for we are come to put fire on the earth, and it is our desire to have it speedily kindled", this letter provided the image of Samuel Gorton as the "dangerous firebrand" he is often represented to be. But, although containing another attack on Massachusetts's integrity, the letter was an understandable response to the frustration, deprivation and stark terror being endured in Shawomet, and was in fact written by Randal Holden. It is often cited in mitigation of Massachusetts's actions in sending a band of forty musketeers "and many Indians" to sieze the "dangerous incendiary" Samuel Gorton dead or alive. However, Massachusetts had not received the letter when despatching its forces.
Panic broke out when the Massachusetts troops attacked and two women died from exposure as a result of fleeing into the woods when unable to reach the boats intended to take the women and children to safety in Providence. The men occupied a blockhouse and barricaded themselves in, from where they non-violently resisted attempts to burn them out. On the final morning of the seige alone over four hundred rounds were fired at the blockhouse by the soldiers, "according to the emptying of their bandoliers". During the entire siege the Gorton party fired only two shots in return, "at random and in the night, to keep them from working their trenches near unto us"; Gorton's preferredweapon was hunour, calling out to the ofiicer commanding - Captain George Cooke - that the wheels were coming off his chariot of war. After failing to dislodge the defenders Cooke tricked his way into the house. Having agreed, in the interest of avoiding bloodshed, to Gorton's suggestion that he and his party would go to Boston, but as free men, Cooke ordered the Gortonists to be seized. Nicholas Power and Richard Waterman escaped in the confusion, John Greene having already slipped away in the night in search of his wife Alice, one of the two women later found dead. The rest of the Gortonists, their homes ransacked and cattle taken as reparation, were dragged to Boston in chains.
They were placed on trial, the charge being blasphemy, although Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop admitted in his famous Journal that the fertile lands and natural harbours of the Narragansett territory were "like to be of use to us". The prisoners were offered the chance to gain their freedom by denouncing Samuel Gorton's teachings, as contained in the two letters. All the prisoners stood by the opinions expressed there. After a trial in which Gorton confounded the charges of blasphemy they were nonetheless pronounced guilty by a nine to three majority of the magistrates, voting in favour of death by hanging. As in Plymouth, the colony deputies - representatives of all the towns in Massachusetts - refused to ratify the sentence. Winthrop grew concerned at growing levels of support for the prisoners in Boston, even some of the soldiers sent to arrest them were now sympathetic. In the absence of a unanimous verdict the final decision rested with him and he chose to sentence the prisoners to hard labour in chains at "the pleasure of the court" - indefinitely. Gorton and six others were dispersed to as many towns across Massachusetts. The clergy continued to preach against the Gortonists and some even urged the people to whom they were impressed to starve them to death. Francis Weston died in Dorchester as a result of the hard treatment he recieved. Elsewhere across the colony, however, the prisoners attracted sympathy. They were, after all, otherwise ordinary settlers whose land had been seized illegally, and they were by no means the first to criticise the Boston government. Winthrop began to hear disturbing reports of broader support for the prisoners, particularly in Salem, where Randal Holden was held, and closer to Boston in Roxbury and Charlestown, where Richard Carder and Samuel Gorton were serving their sentences. Although forbidden to speak to anyone not authorised by the General Court their case was nonetheless being circulated and well received.
The terms of their confinement had stated that any breach of the order forbidding them to speak would be punished by death, but the government now found itself powerless to proceed in the face of popular opinion. The prisoners were released and regrouped in Boston where, to the further embarrasment of the church and civil authorities, they were welcomed "joyfully" by many of the people. A warrant was issued ordering them to leave the town by noon and banishing them from Massachusetts. The party made their way to Aquidneck, where Coddington's government found they were similarly powerless to enforce the existing orders banishing them from the island. Samuel Gorton was even reinstated as magistrate in Portsmouth. Massachusetts stepped up its attempts to absorb the Narragansett region and those who would eventually become Rhode Islanders continued to resist. In one clash Gorton arrested the duplicitous Captain Cooke, who was then serving with the Massachusetts force harassing the Providence area. Although Williams had by now obtained the patent from the English Parliament Massachusetts and Plymouth were refusing to honour it, and it became clear that a further mission to London was required to have the patent ratified, and to have Shawomet - not established when Williams departed and so not named in the patent - formally included. Gorton, John Greene and Randal Holden departed for London, probably in the late summer of 1645. Forbidden to enter Boston on "pain of death" they were forced to travel to the Dutch territories in New York to gain a passage for Amsterdam, and from there to London.
In August 1646 Randal Holden returned to Rhode Island with ratification of the Williams patent, and a letter of safe conduct through Boston. The Shawomet people changed the name of their town to Warwick in honour of the Earl of Warwick, Parliamentary "Governor for Foreign plantations", who confirmed the validity of the patent. But Edward Winslow arrived in England to oppose it on behalf of Massachusetts and Plymouth, to challenge and discredit Samuel Gorton, and request that he be prevented from returning to New England. His Hypocrisie Unmasked had been composed at the request and with the assistance of John Winthrop from 'evidence' supplied by Coddington, the Arnolds, Winslow and Winthrop himself. As Plymouth was now claiming the Narragansett region for herself the testimony it contained was provided by all of those who stood to gain from Gorton's removal from New England. In all, Gorton appeared three times before the Warwick Commission for Foreign Plantations, defending attacks on both his and his settlement's integrity; on each occasion he was successful. He also appeared before another committee and was satisfactorily examined on his fitness to preach. Despite the efforts of Winslow, and the delaying tactics employed by Massachusetts's agents in having him arrested on board the ship that was to take him home, on the eve of departure (and on a false charge of unpaid debts), Samuel Gorton finally returned to Rhode Island in May 1648.
It is commonly reported even today that Samuel Gorton would accept no government or magistracy. Yet he served as a magistrate in Portsmouth and as a member of the General Court of the new colony of Providence Plantations and Rhode Island that in 1652 forced William Coddington to publicly confess his fraudulent actions in claiming Aquidneck for himself. The occasion must have given Gorton great personal satisfaction in witnessing his former persecutor's humiliation. He went on to serve the colony as President in 1651 and as a magistrate until he retired from public office, aged seventy-eight, in 1670. In 1657 he was the author of the first protest against slavery in America. His religion was first and foremost humane, and tolerant towards the opinions of others. As with the early Quakers to whom he offered unconditional sanctuary, he may have disagreed with them but they were welcomed as equals and neighbours. Indeed, more than any other figure in New England his enlightened approach resembles what we recognise today as modern Christianity.
The story of Samuel Gorton is central to the history of Rhode Island, and the story of Rhode Island central to the history of New England. In this case, history was not written by the victors; it was written by those who had the only printing press, who were also the founders of New England's first seat of learning at Harvard. Over the centuries the stories of those men and women - Roger Williams, Ann Hutchinson, Samuel Gorton, Mary Dyer - who opposed the excesses of the Puritan founders were ignored and then forgotten. Both Williams and Hutchinson have been subject to fitting historical revision and rescued from the margins they had been consigned to. The same cannot be said of Samuel Gorton, study of whose career in pursuit of the right to free speech and freedom of religion reveals nothing more sinister than the "middling sort" of Englishman evolving into the proto-American.
Based on the recently completed thesis, ' "A strenuous beneficent force": The Case for Revision of the Career of Samuel Gorton, Rhode Island Radical', submitted by G. J. Gadman in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Manchester Metropolitan University for the degree of Master of Philosophy (History), awarded February, 2004.
Edited Appletons Encyclopedia, Copyright © 2001 VirtualologyTM
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonial Rhode Island. 1975. Sydney V. James (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons)
pp 28-32
Among the Portsmouth settlers [circa 1638] there appeared Samuel Gorton, who had been expelled from Plymouth for stirring up a commotion with his doctrines. Massachusetts had to catch him before it could get a turn to prosecute him. He had been born in the same level of London society as Williams, the realm of substantial storekeepers; upon emigration he settled in the Pilgrim town, where he began drawing away part of the congregation into a separate meeting. When driven out, he joined the Antinomians, where he brewed up more controversy. It has always been hard to pin down his beliefs, mainly because his published writings attacked his enemies without declaring more than a few of his own ideas, but also because his followers regarded his teachings as esoteric knowledge not to be disclosed freely to the non-initiate.
Gorton called himself simply and grandiloquently "professor of the mysteries of Christ," but he was regarded as a Familist, a forgotten term that once chilled the blood of ordinary Puritans, because it meant someone who believed in mystical communion with the Holy Spirit in such measure as to transform the entire life of the believer, even so much as to make possible a life without sin. Strictly speaking the label did not apply; Gorton was not among the followers of the Dutch mystic, Henrik Niclaes, who called themselves the Family of Love, a movement that spread to England, where it was driven underground after 1578. However, if Familist meant only a broad agreement with the distinctive beliefs of Niclaes, then Gorton roughly deserved the label.
Yet he followed nobody: he created his own sect, and it barely survived his death, so greatly did it depend on his personality. Little of that personality can be discerned across the centuries, although there are clear signs that the man was warm-hearted, hot-tempered, energetic, irrepressibly cocksure and jaunty, pugnacious, endowed with a scathing humor and political horse sense, capable of attracting passionate disciples, and yet a person manifesting the greatest tenderness toward his friends and neighbors and given to spending hours in meditation and religious ecstasy. Loathed and detested by many in his day, he inspires a different feeling in modern times: virtually everyone who tries to learn about him finds out little but nevertheless becomes fond of him.
Gorton was an ultra-Puritan so far from the center as to oppose most of what passed for Puritanism. He was against all formality or ceremony in worship, against the sacraments, against territorial parishes, compulsory attendance at church, taxes to support religion, and against a college-educated clergy. He believed ministers were appointed by God and preached only under the immediate impulsion of the Holy Spirit. They might profit from knowing the Bible in the original languages, to get closer to the meaning of the texts, but should disdain all theological systems. Any human interpretation of Holy Writ was bound to be limited by circumstances of the times or the mind of the interpreter, while the spirit of God speaking in the Word remains ever the same and "is a thing too sublime to be congealed into ink, too secret to be printed upon paper, too precious to be piled up in libraries, and of too prince-like a spirit to enter into contract with, or be subservient unto any school of humane learning." God's ministers accepted no pay and were responsible to no organized church.
Indeed, any human contrivance or authority in religion was wrong. The pious should get together as they pleased to pray and await outpourings of the Spirit. All might voice the messages of the Spirit, men and women alike (Gorton was emphatic on equality of the sexes), though the divinely selected ministers were those most frequently favored. If religion was rightly under God's direction, a holy order would prevail and the spiritual needs of everyone would be satisfied from the infinite divine source. Though Gorton believed in predestination, he opposed Massachusetts Puritans by insisting that the ministry was for all mankind and that God's unity and covenant were with the whole human race, resulting in "the law of God written in man's heart in the act of creation," which made the path of virtue both knowable and mandatory for all.
It may have followed—Gorton's words sometimes led that way—that secular government was evil and unnecessary. The Massachusetts Puritans took him to believe that, and he baited them saucily by tracing the authority of their government, in terms that could apply to all governments, to human will, which he said meant Satan in the final analysis. He also insisted, however, that civil government in New England could derive its authority only from England and that the common law was the birthright of every Englishman. In practice, then, he stopped well short of advocating the Christian anarchy that he often seemed to favor.
No one can say just how many of these ideas he spread in Portsmouth. He probably encouraged the Antinomian tendency toward religion based on direct communion with the Holy Spirit, which was taking the form of "prophesying" by anyone who felt called upon to speak. He also quarreled with the people in Newport who were opposed to this kind of thing, as well as with Coddington, who could have been antagonized either by Gorton's attacks on human authority, his defense of the common law against attempts to substitute scriptural law, or merely his personality. At any rate, the quarrels became violent, and Gorton was finally whipped and banished from Portsmouth. Followed by several new disciples, he headed for Providence. There again he got into disputes and made converts. Williams regarded him with deep misgivings. The episode came to a climax over enforcement of laws, suggesting once more that Gorton's views on civil government led to trouble. The Gortonists ultimately sought the sensible solution of founding their own community.
After failing to get peace by moving to Pawtuxet, just beyond the southwest edge of town, Gorton and his friends in 1643 bought a huge tract from the Narragansett sachems, the Mishawomet or Shawomet Purchase, running twenty miles west from the bay south of Providence. They no sooner began building houses and clearing fields around Warwick Cove than their recent quarrels with the Pawtuxet neighbors returned in a new form. Some of these enemies arranged to put themselves under the government of Massachusetts, obtained commissions as peace officers and tried to hail the Gortonians into court. The the local Indians in the villages led by Pomham and Socononoco protested the Shawomet Purchase and in turn sought Boston's protection to get a hearing for their grievances. When these moves drew nothing but scornful replies from the Gortonians, Massachusetts sent a force of forty men to capture the alleged offenders and carry them off to trials for contempt of authority, resisting arrest, and uttering blasphemy.
Several were released or given light punishment or bound to servitude, but Gorton and six others, narrowly escaping death sentences, were put in irons and distributed around Massachusetts to perform hard labor. They proved more dangerous than tractable, scouting the doctrines they heard in sermons and the government that forced them to listen. The Boston authorities, seeing nothing ahead but a plague of Familist heresies, banished the Gortonists in the spring of 1644, forbidding them to return to Pawtuxet or Shawomet, which Massachusetts then claimed. So the returning men took their families to Aquidneck. Although Roger Williams soon brought an English patent embracing his town, plus Portsmouth, Newport, and the Gortonists' territory in a single new colonial jurisdiction, Massachusetts produced a rival patent and, along with Plymouth, sent armed forces against the Narragansetts. Gorton and two of his disciples hurried off to London to secure from the mother country explicit assurances of protection, with which one of them, Randall Holden, returned in 1646. (Gorton stayed a few years more to fight the anticipated complaints from Boston and to associate happily with like-minded Englishmen.) With the encouragement Holden brought, the Gortonians finally began the permanent occupation of their lands around Warwick Cove.
The little town there grew slowly, requiring two or three decades to reach fifty families. The house lots at the head of the Cove made a town center. Newcomers who did not acquire a stake in the Shawomet Purchase lived on the west side on the edge of a large tract, the Four Mile Common, set aside to absorb such people. Warwick Neck to the east of the Cove was for the purchasers and their successors. There they created common fields and pastures, taking advantage of the many geographical features that facilitated fencing out predators and closing in livestock, and set about providing themselves with the necessities of life.
Nearby remained the villages of Pomham and Socononoco. Though the Gortonists tried to live at peace with these neighbors, and Gorton himself inspired awe among them as he roamed through the woods communing with the divinity, a rash of incidents forestalled harmony. Livestock got into the Indians' crops, Indians killed stray cattle, Englishmen cheated Indians in trade. Occasionally there were fights, and once Englishmen even robbed a native grave. Between Pomham's people on Warwick Neck and the Narragansett village to the west of Four Mile Common, the Gortonians felt hemmed in.
With the founding of Warwick, the original Rhode Island towns had been launched. The outcasts had founded communities, but they were beset by many troubles. Religious disputes continued, though the main ones had been resolved by withdrawal to new locations. It remained to be seen whether the heretics around the bay would ruin themselves in disorder, as their enemies predicted, or would achieve the peace their inhabitants wanted.
pp 36-7
Once the Gortonians were in a town by themselves, the result was an elaborate irony. They ceased to stir up contention, which was remarkable in itself. They also had what functioned as a town church, although on principle they resolutely organized no congregation, exerted no ecclesiastical discipline, and rejected any sort of partnership between religion and the secular community. Gorton taught them that he was the mere instrument whereby the Holy Spirit spoke to them and that any number of others might play the same role, yet his personality proved in the end the sole source of unity. After he died there were no successors and the flock drifted toward the Baptists or Quakers. A few forlorn Gortonists could be found for another century, but they lived on the memory of the leader and could not say what he had preached except that it bespoke such a luminous understanding of God as to pass beyond human comprehension. In 1771, the last Gortonite, John Angell of Providence, showed a visitor three books by the long-gone master and said they were "written in heaven, and no man could read and understand them unless he was in heaven." This man venerated Gorton as constantly full of tears and so holy that it could be said that "indeed he lived in heaven." When memory of his power faded, his sect vanished.
Small wonder that ordinary Puritans in Massachusetts regarded Rhode Island as a cesspool of vile heresies and irreligion. Within a short time all the towns had adopted religious liberty as the only practical policy, leaving zealots to wrangle over doctrines and ceremonies, with all contenders far beyond the limits of respectability as reckoned in the neighboring colonies. People proposed ideas that denied the significance of good conduct for God's elect, denied predestination, denied the possibility of organizing a church, and denied the authority of ministers and magistrates. Nobody defended infant baptism, the use of religion to benefit human society, the value of a university education for ministers, or the wisdom of confining political rights to the godly. Some even denounced war as unchristian, and so many thought it sinful to take oaths to serve in public office or give testimony in court that the colony from the outset never required them—this in an age when conscientious refusal to take oaths by Quakers elsewhere was enough to create a political furor. Worse, a substantial number of Rhode Islanders believed in immediate revelation from God. Almost as bad, a great number neglected religion completely, and the whole lot was probably sliding into ignorance and illiteracy.
p 393
The writings of Samuel Gorton are long, obscure, and hard to find His version of his dealings with Massachusetts is Simplicities Defence Against Seven Headed Policy Or Innocency Vindicated, (London, 1646, republished in 1835, and edited by William R Staples in vol II of Rhode Island Historical Society Collections) The polemical pieces, Saltmarsh Returned from the Dead, (London, 1655) and An Antidote Against the Common Plague of the World (London, 1657), the latter described as an answer to the former, tell what Gorton opposed. To learn more of his beliefs one must consult the incomplete and untitled manuscript at the Rhode Island Historical Society, which poses as an exposition of the Lord's Prayer The other side of the Gorton case is presented in Edward Winslow, Hypocrisie Unmasked, (London, 1646) and New Englands Salamander, (London, 1647)
p 407
The best modern treatments of Samuel Gorton are both short: Kenneth W. Porter, "Samuel Gorton, New England Firebrand," New England Quarterly, vol. VII (1934), pp. 405-444; and Robert E. Wall, Jr., Massachusetts Bay The Crucial Decade, 1640-1650 (New Haven, 1972), chapter iv.
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Children
Maher Gorton b: in Plymouth Colony
John Gorton b: Warwick, RI
Benjamin Gorton
Sarah Gorton
Ann Gorton
Susanna Gorton
Samuel Gorton b: 1630 in England
Mary Gorton b: AFT 1630
Elizabeth Gorton b: 1646 14
Samuel Gorton
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 1630 - Gorton, Lancashire, England
Baptism:
Death: 6 Sep 1724 - Warwick, Rhode Island
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Samuel Gorton (1592-1677) 10
Mother: Mary Maplet (Est 1595- ) 4
Notes
General:
SAMUEL2 GORTON (Samuel1), eldest son, was born at Gorton, Lancaster County, England, in 1630. He came with his father to New England in 1636, was with him through all his troublesome experiences, and lived with him at Warwick on the homestead assigned to the first settlers of town. His father deeded to him all interests in the property and also his library and all papers and writings, by reason of the great assistance he had been to him in the support of the family when, as he said, his children were young and he was necessarily absent from wife, family and home. He, like his father, early obtained the friendship and good-will of the Indian tribes about them and became proficient in speaking and writing their language, and his earliest public service appears to have been as Court Interpreter between the English and Indians. He was Captain of the military company of the town. In 1678 a member of the court at Newport engaged in the trial of Indians for depredations committed during the King Philip's War. During the eight years 1676-1683 he was a member of the Upper House of the Assembly, an Assistant Judge. Later he filled the office for two terms, was elected for another term and declined to serve. He married, December 11th, 1684, Susanna Burton, daughter of William and Hannah (Wickes) Burton, born 1665. Samuel died September 6, 1724, and Susanna married (2) Richard Harris. She died June 25, 1737. In his will, made December 21, 1721, he calls himself in his ninety-second year; bequeaths to his wife Susanna all housings and lands for life, and at her decease to sons Samuel and Hezekiah and daughter Susannah Stafford. The house he had erected on the farm that he received from his father had been sold by him to Samuel Greene, who married his niece Mary, daughter of his brother Benjamin.
And although now in less trying times than formerly, he discharged well the obligations of citizenship, well attended to public and private duties, and lived and died, honored and respected by all who loved what was right and good. There had not been and there was not at this time any independent church in Warwick, nor was there any there for many years to come. During the earlier times the people there were not only too few, but were too frequently scattered to organize any religious society; and not until after the year 1700 were its settlers of sufficient number to gather from them a society of any one church on belief. Although Samuel, Sr. has been so over charged with trying to establish a church or religion, we do not find in his recorded words or acts, that he attempted to propogate a new church or religion. His tenets, he said he drew from his mother the church of England, and he, it appears did not deem them inconsistent with membership in any denomination that was Christian. It was "refreshment in the ordinances of God," a personal piety that he recommended and proclaimed; and it was coercion of his freedom that he condemned. The Rev. Cotton Mather, said he, could not find that the people of Warwick, the followers of Gorton were agreed upon any other principal so much as that they would not disturb one another in their worship or opinion. The name Gortonoges was not given to them by their religious opponets nor given to them to distinguish their religion. The name was given to them by the Indians and on account of the Indian's belief that they were a strong people, to distinguish them from other Whites, whom they called Wattaconoges. 15
Samuel Gorton
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 22 Jul 1672 - Warwick, Rhode Island 1
Baptism:
Death: 5 Jun 1722 - Warwick, Rhode Island 16
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Events
• Occupation, Deputy, Warwick, Rhode Island in Warwick, Rhode Island
• Occupation, Town Clerk, Warwick, Rhode Island in Warwick, Rhode Island
Parents
Father: John Gorton (Cir 1650-1714) 9
Mother: Margaret Weedon (Est 1650- ) 9
Spouses and Children
1. *Elizabeth Collins (1 Nov 1672 - 9 Sep 1724) 2
Marriage: 9 May 1695 - Warwick, Rhode Island
Status:
Children:
1. Elizabeth Gorton (1715-1800) 4
2. Ann Gorton (1696- )
3. Edward Gorton (1698-1786)
4. Margaret Gorton (1701- )
5. Samuel Gorton (1706- )
6. William Gorton (1708- )
7. Sarah Gorton (1710- )
Notes
Marriage Notes (Elizabeth Collins)
From the book, "The Life and Times of Samuel Gordon", by Adelos Gorton
Page 168 - 169:
"27. SAMUEL3 GORTON (John2 Samuel1), born July 22, 1672, at Warwick, married, May 9, 1695, Elizabeth Collins, born November 1, 1672, daughter of Captain Elizur and Sarah (Wright) Collins. During the years 1714 to 1718 he was Deputy to the Rhode Island Legislature. He died June 5, 1722. His will bequeathed to wife Elizabeth use of household and all movables; to his son Edward the old place, so called, which honored father John formerly dwelt on and lot at Horses Neck; to son Samuel the homestead farm; to son William lot at Soweset; and to daughters Ann, Margaret, Sarah, Elizabeth, money, etc. The Warwick records of deaths give, under date September 9, 1724, "Elizabeth, wife of Samuel of John and Elizabeth." Doubtless should be "of John2 and Margaret;" Samuel of John and Elizabeth was yet a lad.
Samuel Gorton
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 2 Jan 1706 - Rhode Island 11
Baptism:
Death:
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Samuel Gorton (1672-1722) 2
Mother: Elizabeth Collins (1672-1724) 2
Notes
General:
Samuel married Mary Rice. 3
Sarah Gorton
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 1710 - Rhode Island 11
Baptism:
Death:
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Samuel Gorton (1672-1722) 2
Mother: Elizabeth Collins (1672-1724) 2
Notes
General:
Sarah married Thankful Collins. 3
William Gorton
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 1708 - Rhode Island 11
Baptism:
Death:
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Samuel Gorton (1672-1722) 2
Mother: Elizabeth Collins (1672-1724) 2
Notes
General:
William married Mercy Matteson. A child was William, 20 May 1732-24 Apr 1807. 17
Anthony Gosnold
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: Cir 1575 - Grundisburgh, Suffolk, England
Baptism:
Death: 6 Jan 1609 - Jamestown, Virginia
Burial:
Cause of Death: drowned
Parents
Father: Anthony Gosnold (Cir 1540-1610)
Mother: Dorothy Bacon (Cir 1540- )
Anthony Gosnold
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: Cir 1540 - Otley, Suffolk
Baptism:
Death: 1610
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Dorothy Bacon (Cir 1540 - )
Marriage:
Status:
Children:
1. Captain Bartholomew Gosnold (1572-1607)
2. Anthony Gosnold (Cir 1575-1609)
Notes
General:
Father: ROBERT Gosnold b: 1512 in Otley, Suffolk
Mother: Mary Vesey b: 1516 in Hadleigh, Suffolk
Captain Bartholomew Gosnold
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 1572 - Grundisburgh, Suffolk, England
Baptism:
Death: 22 Aug 1607 - Jamestown, Virginia
Burial:
Cause of Death: scurvy and dysentery
Parents
Father: Anthony Gosnold (Cir 1540-1610)
Mother: Dorothy Bacon (Cir 1540- )
Spouses and Children
Dr Jeremiah Goss
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 3 Sep 1769 - Billerica, Massachusetts 18
Baptism:
Death:
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Mary Atkins Hatch (Est 1776 - 10 Aug 1808)
Marriage: 1 May 1798 - Malden, Massachusetts 19
Status:
Notes
General:
parents James Goss of "Lanchester" and Mary Stickey of Billerica, married 14 May 1761
1798 of Provincetown
Judith Goss
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 24 Jan 1745 - Boston, Massachusetts
Baptism:
Death: 26 May 1768 - Woolwich, Maine
Burial: in Nequasset cemetery, Woolwich
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Rev Josiah Winship (28 May 1738 - 29 Sep 1824) 20
Marriage: 9 Jul 1766 - Boston, Massachusetts
Status:
Children:
1. Mary Winship (1767-1825) 21
Eva M Gotten
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 24 Nov 1872 - Quebec, Canada
Baptism:
Death: 27 Nov 1898 - steamer Portland, off Cape Cod
Burial: in Portland, Maine
Cause of Death: drowned
Notes
Medical:
age 26-0-3
single
Eva M Gotten
stitcher
b Quebec, rec Portland
d/o David Gotten & Mary West, b Scotland & England 22
Ann Francis Goud
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: Est 1745 - (France)
Baptism:
Death: 8 Jan 1823 - Dresden, Maine
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Spouses and Children
1. *Samuel Goodwin (10 Feb 1740 - 3 Jul 1789)
Marriage: 1762 - Pownalborough, Maine
Status:
Children:
1. Lydia Goodwin (1763-1841) 23
2. Ann Goodwin (1765- )
3. Samuel Twycross Goodwin (1766-1848) 23
4. George Goodwin (1768-1843) 23
5. Charles Goodwin (Cir 1770-Bef 1790)
6. John Goodwin (Cir 1773- ) 23
7. Sarah Goodwin (1776-1810) 23
8. Randolph Goodwin (Cir 1779- ) 23
9. Edward Goodwin (1781-1862) 23
10. Benjamin Goodwin (1784-1859)
Catherinr Goud
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth: 19 Mar 1765 - Pownalborough, Maine
Baptism:
Death:
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: James Goud (1738-1824)
Mother: Margaret Bonhotel (Est 1740- )
Sources
1. Richard Tallman, "The Tallman Family" (Rootsweb ricktallman), Samuel Gorton/ Elizabeth Collins family.
2. William M Emery, Honorable Peleg Tallman, 1764-1841: his ancestry and descendants (unknown. privately printed. 1935), p 197. .... Joan Sickles, "Ancestors of Esther Phoebe Betts," Oct 2002.
3. Richard Tallman, "The Tallman Family" (Rootsweb ricktallman), Elizabeth Gorton.
4. William M Emery, Honorable Peleg Tallman, 1764-1841: his ancestry and descendants (unknown. privately printed. 1935), p 196. .... Joan Sickles, "Ancestors of Esther Phoebe Betts," Oct 2002.
5. Richard Tallman, "The Tallman Family" (Rootsweb ricktallman), Benjamin Tallman/Elizabeth Gorton family.
6. William M Emery, Honorable Peleg Tallman, 1764-1841: his ancestry and descendants (unknown. privately printed. 1935), p 195-196. .... Joan Sickles, "Ancestors of Esther Phoebe Betts," Oct 2002. .... Richard Tallman, "The Tallman Family" (Rootsweb ricktallman).
7. William M Emery, Honorable Peleg Tallman, 1764-1841: his ancestry and descendants (unknown. privately printed. 1935), p 197. .... William M Emery, Honorable Peleg Tallman, 1764-1841: his ancestry and descendants (unknown. privately printed. 1935).
8. The Rhode Island Historical Cemeteries Transcription Project (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rigenweb/cemetery/index.html).
9. Joan Sickles, "Ancestors of Esther Phoebe Betts," Oct 2002.
10. William M Emery, Honorable Peleg Tallman, 1764-1841: his ancestry and descendants (unknown. privately printed. 1935), p 196-197. .... Joan Sickles, "Ancestors of Esther Phoebe Betts," Oct 2002.
11. Richard Tallman, "The Tallman Family" (Rootsweb ricktallman), Samuel Gorton/ Elizabeth Collins.
12. Arthur Gibbs Sylvester and Richard E. Spiiney, editors and transcribers, Vital Records of Hampden, Maine prior to 1892 (2007. Rockland, Me: Picton Press for Maine Genealogical Soc., Special Publication No. 51), 5.
13. Joan Sickles, "Ancestors of Esther Phoebe Betts," Oct 2002. .... Rootsweb.com, butchrose. well documented.
14. Rootsweb.com, butchrose. well documented.
15. Rootsweb.com, butchrose, quoting Adelos Gorton.
16. Adelos Gorton, The Life and Times of Samuel Gorton: the founders and the founding of the Republic... (Philadelphia, unknown publisher. 1907), p 168-169.
17. Richard Tallman, "The Tallman Family" (Rootsweb ricktallman), Elizabeth Gorton. .... Rootsweb.com, butchrose.
18. Vital Records of Billerica, Massachusetts, to the end of the year 1849 (http://ma-vitalrecords.org/MA/Middlesex/Billerica/).
19. Deloraine P. Corey, compiler, Birth, Marriages and Deaths in the Town of Malden, Massachusetts, 1649-1850 (1903. Cambridge, MA: University Press for City of Malden), 1:245.
20. Worral Dumont Prescott, Captain Samuel Reed and Mary Winship Reed (1953).
21. Joan Sickles, "Ancestors of Esther Phoebe Betts," Oct 2002. .... Rootsweb.com, psnapods (Debbie Evans Peterson).
22. Massachusetts Vital Records, 1841-1910 (Massachusetts Archives. [online at AmericanAncestors.org (NEHGS) and FamilySearch.org]), Eastham.
23. Samuel Goodwin Family Genealogy (http://goodwins.wordpress.com/).