Samuell Gorton: A Forgotten Founder of our Liberties; First Settler of Warwick, R. I. Lewis G. Janes

      PREFACE

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      It has been the misfortune of Rhode Island to have had its earlier history written and read under the bias of prejudices engendered by the controversies which led to its settlement. Justice has not yet been done to the prescience and statesmanship of the remarkable men who were the builders of the first Commonwealth in the world’s history dedicated to Soul Liberty.

      Among these men, none were possessed of a personality more striking and picturesque than the subject of this paper, Samuell Gorton. The cordial reception of this brief historical sketch by the distinguished audience which gave it a hearing before the Rhode Island Historical Society has induced me to consent to its publication. It has since been carefully revised, and a few doubtful points have been cleared up as well as the character of all available data will permit.

      I am indebted to Mr. William D. Ely and Mr. Charles Gorton, of Providence, and Mr. Adelos Gorton, of Philadelphia, for valuable aid and suggestion in perfecting this revision. It is hoped that the publication may stimulate further research in the interesting field of our Colonial history. A native of Rhode Island, the writer traces his ancestry by two distinct lines to the Mayflower, while the first of his family name in America was one of the earliest settlers of the New Haven Colony. He is therefore able to approach the subject without undue bias of ancestral prejudice, and with the sole desire of vindicating the truth of impartial history.

      L. G. J.

      Brooklyn, N. Y., May 25, 1896.

       SAMUELL GORTON:

      A FORGOTTEN FOUNDER OF OUR LIBERTIES

      FIRST SETTLER OF WARWICK, R. I.

      I WARWICK, NEW AND OLD

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      The town of Warwick, R. I., is not to-day of remarkable interest to the antiquary or seeker after the venerable relics of bygone days. It has “come out into the newness” of our nineteenth century life. Its streams respond to the music of the flying shuttle and the turning wheel with a dash and hurry almost human in their restlessness. Half a score of flourishing manufacturing villages lend their potent aid to make it the sixth town, in population, in the State having a larger number of inhabitants to the square mile than any other in the American Union.

      The old Colonial and Revolutionary dwellings were largely, doubtless, of a humble sort, and have given place to the more prosperous farm-houses and pretentious mansions of a generation that knows not the ways of the fathers. The busy Pawtuxet and its tributary streams, partly excused from the drudgery of mill-turning by the more potent substitutes of the later day, are pumped away to quench the thirst of the distant city whose contentions a quarter of a millenium ago drove Samuell Gorton^[1] and his colleagues to seek their homes in the Shawomet wilderness, there to become the founders of a State.

      Yet the Warwick of to-day, in its summer dress, well repays the visitor who may chance upon its hospitable soil. All along its beautiful shores arise pleasant homes and hostelries for the accommodation of the summer visitor; while inland, the rolling hills, prosperous with growing grass and coming harvests, are not without a quiet and restful beauty which pleases the eye, and solaces the mind and heart. In the little hamlet of Apponaug, close by Coweset Bay, the brave new Town Hall, one of the finest in New England, testifies to the enterprise as well as to the prosperity of the people. Its newness is in harmonious touch with the prevalent appearance of the country around it. There is nothing old, apparently, in old Warwick but the sub-soil and rocks, and here and there a venerable tree antedating European occupation, beneath the branches of which Pomham and Soccononocco, with their dusky braves, may have sat and smoked the pipe of peace with the men of Massachusetts, or taken counsel as to the best means of circumventing the united wiles of the head-sachem of the Narragansetts, Miantonomi, and his persistent allies, the pale-faced “Gortonoges.”

      Yet old Warwick has a history surpassed in interest by none other of the New England settlements. Its founder was a man of intellectual and moral force, worthy to rank with Roger Williams, William Bradford, and the other noble founders of our liberties. He was a man much misrepresented in his day and generation, and but little remembered and understood even in our own time, when history is being studied anew in the light of evolution and a true historical method, and reconstructed on the principles of enlightened scholarship and impartial justice. The later history of Warwick also has much of interest for the patriotic American. On its shores the first blow of our Revolutionary struggle was struck, in the capture and destruction of the British schooner Gaspee; while the heights

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