9

1 | The Gortons and Slades

I

tthe winte wAs R of 1637. Rubber-legged and shivering, Samuell

and Mary Gorton and their young son, Samuell Jr., disembarked in

America 140 years before the Declaration of Independence. Samuell

had long since declared his own. Within months he was pushing the

feudal Massachusetts establishment to grant independence to the Rhode

Island colony. They called him cantankerous, even “crazed.” Some said

there was the glint of a messiah in his blue-gray eyes. In defending free-

dom of conscience, Gorton was unquestionably obstreperous; a genuine

legend in his own time, whipped and banished but undaunted. Samuell’s

progeny were prolific, patriotic and bright, but he set the bar, especially as

a fisher of men. “He was a real rebel,” his great-great-great-great-great-

great-great-grandson says with an approving smile.^1

Slade Gorton’s American roots run 10

generations deep, starting with Samuell,

who was born into a pious, prosperous

family in the village of Gorton in the par-

ish of Manchester in Lancashire County,

England, in 1593. Of Saxon stock, the Gor-

tons were first recorded there “well before

the Norman Conquest of 1066 A.d.” Tu-

tored in Greek and Hebrew, Samuell likely

memorized the Bible. The name of his

fourth child, Mahershalalhashbaz, is from

the Book of Isaiah.

Samuell grew tall and lean, a dominant

attribute in the Gorton gene pool. Appar-

ently apprenticed to a cloth merchant as

a teenager, he established himself as a

clothier in London and in 1628 married

Mary Maplett, the daughter of a well-to-do haberdasher. Sixteen years his

junior, she too was well educated, unusual for a girl in that era. Mary was

Samuell Gorton, an icono-

clastic reformer, arrived

in America in 1637. Gorton

family album