Notes for Samuell Gorton: Originally from London, England, Samuel was a clothier who first relocated to Plymouth, MA in 1637, then migrated to Rhode Island, where he was of Portsmouth in 1639 and then to Warwick in 1642. He was aged 82 in 1674 and was well known in early New England.
From GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH IN ENGLAND, documentation published by the Family TreeMaker, CD #181, P232 - 233, originally contributed by G. Andrews Moriarty, Jr. A.M., LL.B., of Newport, RI, and communicated by the Committee on English and Foreign Research. :
" Although the birthplace of the redoubtable Samuel Gorton of Warwick, RI, has always been known, (for in his letter to Nathaniel Morton, printed in Force's Tracts, vol 4, he states that he was born at Gorton, a chapelry within the parish of Manchester (Co. Lancaster, England), where the "fathers of my body have dwelt for many generations"), no effort has been made hitherto to establish his ancestry. The present article is an effort in that direction, but the result is not very satisfactory, owing to the late date for the beginning of the Manchester Registers, the fact that the Gortons had, apparently, been long settled in that vicinity, and the paucity of wills --- circumstances that combine to make the tracing of the pedigree a difficult matter.
In a letter to John Winthrop, Jr., dated 11 Aug. 1674, Samuel Gorton gives his age as "four score and two years," and there can, therefore, be little doubt that he was the Samuel Gorton, son of Thomas, who was baptized at Manchester 12 Feb. 1592/3, and that Gorton of Gorton, does not refer to him, but to a child of Thomas and Agnes (Grimshaw) Gorton (who were married at Manchester 14 Sept. 1612), whose baptism is not recorded. The Thomas Gorton who married Agnes Grimshaw was apparently a brother of Samuel Gorton of Rhode Island, and was baptized at Manchester 17 Nov. 1588. He seems to have accompanied his younger brother to New England, as he appears with him in Plymouth in 1637 and later in Portsmouth, RI, where, apparently, he died between 16 July and 21 Nov. 1649.
Samuel Gorton boasts that his family "was not unknown in the heraldry of England," and at a later time the Gortons of Gorton appear to have used as Gules, ten billets or, a chief indented of the last, and as a crest A goat’s head erased argent, ducally gorged or. Samuel Gorton also, on the title page of his book, describes himself as "Samuel Gorton gent." The facts appear to be that an ancient family, with some pretentions to gentility, was settled in and about Gorton and the neighboring parish of Atherton as early as 1332, but that by the latter half of the sixteenth century the race had multiplied and the members of the family settled at Gorton had sunk to the position of small tenant farmers. Samuel Gorton went early to London, to become a clothier, married Mary Maplett, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant (cf. REGISTER, vol. 70, pp 115-118), and appears to have raised himself considerably in the social scale. In through trade at Manchester, acquired considerable wealth, and once more styled themselves Gorton of Gorton; but financial disaster overtook them early in the nineteenth century, and they disappeared from that vicinity.
More About Samuell Gorton: Date born 2: 1592 Burial: Unknown, Warwick, RI behind a home off Warwick Neck Road.
More About Samuell Gorton and Mary Maplett: Marriage: May 20, 1628, England.
Children of Samuell Gorton and Mary Maplett are:
+Susanna Gorton, b. 1646, Warwick, Kent, RI, d. May 28, 1734, Prob. Warwick, RI.
Samuell Gorton (b. Bef. February 12, 1591/92, d. December 10, 1677)
Notes for Samuell Gorton: