Elder John Gorton & the Six Principle Baptist Church of East Greenwich, Rhode Island

John Gorton was elder of the Six Principle Church of East Greenwich from 1753 to his death in 1792, and his papers, now at Rhode Island Historical Society, document the life of the church and the many Rhode Islanders who used its services for baptism, marriage, and burial. His records include the names of luminaries like Nathaniel Greene and Catharine Littlefield, as well as sailors, farmers, tradesmen, Indians, slaves, and black and white soldiers in the Revolution. Gorton preached not only to the solid citizens of Kent County but also to people with a full range of human failings: men who abandoned their wives, pregnant brides, deserters, counterfeiters, and even an insane murderer. Footnotes provide hundreds of carefully researched “mini-biographies” of people mentioned. Introduction, index, illustrations.