Strachan/Tate Family

Samuel was a clothier in London prior to immigrating in 1636-7. He remained in Boston two months before finding the Puritan climate not to his liking and removing to Plymouth. He ran into religiousdifferences there, too, and was thrown out of town. Samuel bought land on Aquidneack Island (later Rhode Island) in 1638. Political trouble ended in imprisonment and eventually he was banished fromAquidneack. In 1640 the familly arrived in Providence, and then to Pawtuxet (later known as Cranston). The Mass. government was trying to expand influaence to the area, so the Gortons moved again, about 10 miles south of Providence, to the Shawomet tract. A group of settlers purchased some land from Miantonomo, chief of the Narragansetts. Governor Winthrop of Mass. aagain became involved and denied the validity of the sale. After much squabbling, the Mass. government allowed Miantonomo to be excecuted. The Bay Colony then sent a raiding party of 40 armed soldiers plus a horde of shrieking Indians against the dozen Shawomet settlers and their familllies. Two wives died, but Mary in the final days of pregnancy survived. The men were captured and taken to Boston for trial, but eventualllyjust banished from Mass. and cased. The Narranagsett Indians decided to side with Gorton and his company, and drew up a document putting themselves under the protection of the king of England. In the spring of 1644 Samuel Gorton sailed for England, to get support against the harrassment of the Bay colony. In 1646 and 1647, the Committee on foreign Plantations, led by Sir Robert Rich, theEarl of Warwick, ordered the Mass. Bay Colony to say out of Narrangansett Bay. Samuel returned with a royal charter for Rhode Island. He was President of the Providence Plantations in 1651 and founder of the town of Warwick. In the forefront of political reforms, he fought valiantlly for the separation of church and state, played an important role in the movaement to ban slavery, and stood forthe rights of Indians, paying them for his lands when many other colonists merely appropriated their real estate. A lay minister, he was the author of numerou historiacal and religious volumns.