The Search for Samuel Gorton

As I write this, Nadia and I are driving away from the site of Samuel Gorton's homestead. Nadia is driving, which is why I can write.  Marriage is a great institution, and I have a wonderful wife. 

As you know, Sameul Gorton was the first colonial governor of Rhode Island.  What you may not know, is that Rhode Island is not an island at all.  I was shocked to neither cross a bridge nor take a ferry to enter the state.  My explanation is that Samuel found some financial or political benefit to calling it an island, regardless of its true geographic state, so he named it an island.  I'm sure this makes sense to you as well, knowing his 12th generation descendant George Kenneth. 

We spent the night in Providence, which was kind enough to have a festival the night we were there.  Water Fire, named for the torches floating on the river that runs through down town, featuring live music and outdoor drinking. 

Here we are on one of the bridges over the Providence River.

The next morning, we looked for a place to start our ancestral search.  Nadia found several internet references to Samuel Gorton Avenue in Warwick.  We Google searched, found the address of a house for sale on Samuel Gorton Ave, and used it as our jumping off point. 

Slightly out of focus, but we were focused on finding Samuel Gorton Ave, starting at the house for sale at 322.

Our GPS told us to go south on 95 and take the airport exit.

In addition to being the first governor of Rhode Island, Samuel was the founder of Warwick.  Warwick was, I'm sure, a more thriving place back then.  Currently, it seems hard hit by the recession, and not a place I would cross the street to settle, let alone the Atlantic.  Look past the plate glass and you see empty concrete floors in strip mall shops.  Becker's Family Restaurant, which we just passed, is showing no signs of the family, nor is it serving food.  "For Lease" competes with "Stop" for the most commonly seen sign. 

Driving east, we rounded a bend on Warwick Neck Road and found Samuel Gorton Ave.  We stopped at the intersection of Samuel Gorton Ave and Warwick Neck Road and took some photos around the sign post. American made cars buzzed past us on Warwick Neck Road as we posed.  Lots of Chevy pick ups, some giving up a honk for Nadia.

The best thing to happen to Warwick since 1632.

Feeling at that point that the sign was perhaps the only connection I might find to my ancestor, I tried to shimmy up the pole.  Back when I did this sort of thing more regularly, like the late seventies, sign poles were round and fairly smooth.  And of course, I had considerably less body mass to haul up the pole.  Now they are a "U" shaped piece of steel that in this case was pretty roughed up from the weather.  My fingers smart as I type this from the damage I did to my hands.  It took me four tries, but I made it to the top.

Getting close to Samuel Gorton.

  

We saw a home made sign across Warwick Neck from Samuel Gorton Ave advertising clam chowder at Seven Seas Restaurant.  The sign pointed down Samuel Gorton Ave.

Did Samuel Gorton eat clam chowder at Seven Seas?

Our search had given us an appetite.  We drove about a quarter mile, and it was not becoming obvious where we might find our promised chowder. We slowed as we saw an older, heavy set guy with short white hair working on his Harley from the comfort of a lawn chair for directions.  Turns out we were just a block away. 

Curious about the lasting impact of our family on the area, I asked the gentleman if he knew who Samuel Gorton was.  He stuttered and stammered and said "Ummm... no.  I should know that.  I think he is one of the original guys."  As if to compensate for his lack of first hand knowledge on the legacy of Samuel Gorton, he pointed out that he went to Samuel Gorton junior high.  So we postponed our seafood lunch went to Samuel Gorton junior high as well. 

It was an old building - although not as old as Samuel - just a few blocks away, built of red brick and showing lots of deferred maintenance.  At first glance I thought it might be the Samuel Gorton Correctional Center. 

Weeds grew up from the tennis courts.  The grass was closely cropped and yellowing in parts with patches of dirt showing through.  We ventured out of the car and in to the yard, and managed to find a tombstone like monument erected by the class of 2008, assuring us that this was indeed the home of the "Gorton Raiders."

We almost came back with a head scarf and an eye patch.

Back to our quest for clam chowder.  Resuming our quest for the Seven Seas, we came upon what would be the Rhode Island equivalent of a taco stand. We were greeted through a small cut out in the bottom of a wire mesh window by our fifty something red headed hostess.  Her arm showed a fading tattoo as she laid it on the counter to scribble our order.  The menu hung beneath a sign that admonished patrons "please don't steal the condiments, as it raises prices for all of us."  With or without condiments, the menu looked good.  Scallops.  Shrimp.  Clams.  We ordered our clam chowder (Nadia red, me white) and asked if we could get the shrimp grilled.  "Oh no, its all deep fried here," the woman informed us, echoing the manner in which one might inform a child of the obvious.  We steered clear of the deep fried crustaceans, but our hostess proved an able ambassador for her cuisine, pushing on us something called "clam cakes." 

On a lark, I asked the woman for the white pages.

I had it in my mind that our ancestral home would probably be home to a disproportionate number of Gortons, even at this late date, and it would show up in the white pages.  But there were only about twenty (including a "Kenneth"), as opposed to about three times as many "Gordons" on the preceding page.  Maybe someone can check the ratio in a non-Warwick city.

After this bit of demographic research, our food was ready.  The sign at the pick-up window told us to be careful with the chowder, as it was served at temperatures in excess of 140 degrees.  Given the specificity the temperature, I wanted to ask who had done the research.  But we were here on a historical mission, and a more pressing question was whether this dangerous molten chowder was authentic to Samuel's time.  So I asked her if she knew who Samuel Gorton might be.  Starting with the caveat that her husband would kill her for not knowing her history, she spat something about WWII and pointed down the street to a small memorial on the corner.

The chowder was indeed hot, which covered up the taste or lack thereof, and the clam cakes were more cake than clam.  If you tore the huge plum size ball of batter apart, you might be rewarded with a tiny pea size bite of clam.  Or you could just shove the whole thing in your mouth, like sushi, as seemed to be customary in this part of Rhode Island.

We ate quickly and sparsely, returned the white pages to our hostess and proceeded on to the corner WWII memorial, ostensibly dedicated to the man who governed Rhode Island in 1632.  Turns out the corner memorial was for Gerald Klein, best known for being the owner and operator of Jerry's Market, who passed away in 1997.  No word on the fate of the market, or how this memorial turned up on Samuel Gorton Avenue. 

Our final goal was Samuel Gorton's gravesite, which wikipedia placed on Samuel Gorton Avenue near Warwick Neck Road - the corner where we had done our photo session.  "In back of a private home" the entry said.  Lacking any more information, we again began asking folks.  We started on a side street which intersected Samuel Gorton Ave and paralleled Warwick Neck.  And again, nobody really knew anything about Samuel.  We asked an older gentleman in his seventies vacuuming out the family mini-van about where the gravesite might be.  Had no clue.  A few doors down, a younger guy, younger than me, was running a weedeater over a bare patch of ground, making me wonder if he was the same guy who did landscaping for the school, or if denuding patches of earth was some sort of Rhode Island tradition. I asked him next.  He knew the name of the street, but little else. 

Apparently, there are few pilgrims to Samuel's grave.

Another internet source had the gravesite on Warwick Neck Road, rather than Samuel Gorton Avenue.  So we drove slowly along Warwick Neck, irritating the growing line of locals behind us.  After a quarter mile, we pulled in to the Lil Warwick Neck General Store.  The woman peddling clam cakes there had no idea of where the gravesite might be, nor did the store have the throat lozenges sought by my rapidly tiring wife, perhaps to remedy the scalding from the clam chowder.  Frustrated, poorly fed, tired we pulled out of the thoroughly useless Lil Warwick Neck General Store, and decided to give up on Samuel's grave.  I pointed my now-scabbing finger northward to Maine.

Probably available for cheap.

As we approached Samuel Gorton Ave for the last time, I noticed a flag waving in a yard behind some foliage just off the road, and asked Nadia to stop.  I waded through a thick hedge fence.  Resting under even thicker hedges was a marker that said "Near this boulder stood the home of Samuel Gorton, founder of Warwick, 1642."  Rising over the hedge and boulder memorial was a flagpole, flying a very tattered and faded American flag.

Note the etchings in the stone. 

All this was in the side yard of a two story yellow house of indeterminate age that had nearly as much charm as a trailer park, with childrens' toys and parts of appliances strewn about.  A dumpster resided in the driveway.

The hedges seemed about two months past their last trimming, and the flag was long past a respectful burning.  We send out flags daily from our Congressional office.  I figured my contribution to family history would be a flag for the memorial once I got back to DC.  Figuring the owner would be happy with a new flag, I knocked on the door and looked in a window.  I could make out a few pieces of furniture, but it seemed uninhabited.

  

I wandered through the back yard and out into the street, and found my young weed whacking friend.  I first let him know about the historical treasure not fifty feet from his home (he was only marginally impressed) and asked him if he might hoist the flag, were I to send him one.  He demurred, saying that he had no idea to whom the flag pole belonged.  He said the family who lived there mostly kept to themselves (in much the same way neighbors describe recently discovered serial killers to reporters on the Ten O'Clock News) but had been recently foreclosed on.




So the good news is that you can probably get a hell of a deal on the family estate right now.  And frankly, it seems like it was once a pretty appealing site.  It is at the northern tip of Warwick Cove. While today the front step of the homestead opens to a street heavily trafficked by folks who drive trucks with silver silhouetted women on the mud flaps, the southern cove seems more genteel, and offers a nice view.

Certainly some 370 years ago, when one’s only risk of a high speed encounter with a large object was with a frolicking moose, it would have been prime real estate.

For anyone that wants to save 45 minutes of driving around Warwick, the address is 191 Warwick Neck Road.  I'm going to contact the Member of Congress for the area to see what we can do about the flag.