Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry explores America’s colonial history, focusing on Captain John Gorham and his Native American Rangers. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.

John Gorham, a whaling captain and merchant from Yarmouth, Massachusetts, established Gorham’s Rangers, a distinguished and effective ranger unit in colonial North America recruited during the summer of 1744 at the outset of King George’s War, pursuant to Governor William Shirley’s directive to reinforce the British garrison stationed at Fort Anne in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.

Gorham’s Rangers were tasked with supporting British authority in Nova Scotia, a region then primarily inhabited by French Acadian and Mi’kmaq populations. The unit was under the command of British colonial officers and initially comprised of 60 men, all Native Americans who possessed significant expertise in scouting, as well as recognized proficiency in both waterborne operations and frontier guerrilla warfare.

They carried out amphibious raids on Acadian and Mi’kmaq settlements located along coasts or rivers, using large, modified whaleboats. Gorham reported they “behav’d with Courage & Faithfulness against our Enemies.”

Below is a newsclip from 1744 mentioning Capt. Gorham and his Indian Rangers.

This article reports:

Last Monday Capt. Smithurst in the brigantine Boston paquet boat, one of the Boston Guard de Costos, arrived here from Annapolis Royal [then-capital of Nova Scotia], from which place she sailed 17 days ago, as convoy to a transport vessel carrying Capt. Gorham and his company of Indian Rangers, raised here for the succor of that garrison. Upon the arrival of these soldiers, they found the garrison had been many days besieged by a party of regular troops [French] detached from Louisbourg.

Sources indicate that Gorham’s company included six Abenaki members. Among them was “Captain Sam,” purported to be Jerome Atequando, a Pequawket (Abenaki) sachem serving as the group’s main guide, translator, and negotiator.

The company also included individuals identified as Wampanoag and Nauset Indians from Cape Cod, primarily originating from communities such as Mashpee, Herring Pond, Yarmouth, Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard, and other southeastern New England Indian settlements.

Several individuals had been members of the Indian ranger companies that participated in Dummer’s War two decades earlier, a regional conflict in which the colonies of Massachusetts and New Hampshire fought the Abenaki.

By the early 1760s, the Rangers’ ranks had shifted to recent Scottish and Irish immigrants. Despite this change in composition, the unit continued to utilize the tactics introduced by its original Native American members.

John Gorham was the first of three prominent American rangers – himself, his younger brother Joseph Gorham, and Robert Rogers – to earn commissions in the British Army. For readers exploring family lineage and wondering what does once removed mean in genealogy, Gorham’s extensive family connections across generations offer a fascinating glimpse into how colonial ties and ancestry intertwine through time.

Brian D. Carroll in “‘Savages’ in the Service of Empire: Native American Soldiers in Gorham’s Rangers, 1744–1762,” published in the New England Quarterly 85 no.3 (2012), notes that the Gorham family had a long history as rangers which began under Colonel Benjamin Church, a carpenter, military officer, and ranger during America’s colonial era, especially during King Philip’s War. He was a principal aide to Governor Josiah Winslow of Plymouth Colony. You can read more on Col. Church and view his memorial marker here.

Carroll states:

The Gorham family was active in colonial New England’s military affairs. John and Joseph’s great-grandfather, John Gorham I, had been a commander for Plymouth Colony during King Philip’s War.

Their grandfather, John Gorham II, led English and Wampanoag troops during King William’s War; he commanded first a company and then, later, a battalion, and he was Benjamin Church’s second-in-command during campaigns against the Abenaki.

John and Joseph’s father, Shubael Gorham, was a veteran provincial officer of Queen Anne’s War. Numerous uncles and cousins served as officers throughout the colonial era, some recruiting and commanding Indian soldiers. With the exception of the Churches, no other family was more responsible for the development of New England’s Native American soldiery and the American ranger tradition than were the Gorhams and their kin. Other related family members included cousins Richard Silvanus, William Bourne, and Melatiah Bourne.

The Gorham family and their kin who fought in the rangers descend from Mayflower passengers John Howland and Elizaberh Tilley.

Rev. Dr. Paul Sturtevant Howe, a descendant of the Gorham family, conducted research on their lineage and identified a Yarmouth branch that established themselves in Cape May, New Jersey.

For years he studied Plymouth history and its laws. While sleuthing, Rev. Howe came across a big find: Colonel John Gorham’s “Wast Book.”

An article entitled, “Lost Colony of Mayflower Descendants: How an Entire Community of ‘First Americans’ Grew Up in a Village in Southern New Jersey, and for Two Centuries Their Illustrious Ancestry Was Unknown to Them,” written by Lawrence H. Eldredge and published in the Springfield Republican in 1926, offers some great information.

This article reports:

In 1745 the French fortress at Louisburg, on Cape Breton Island, was overthrown by a force of 3600 men under Colonel William Pepperell and a fleet of 100 New England vessels and a British squadron under Commodore Warren. Colonel John Gorham was on this expedition and while at Louisburg he wrote out the history of his family in the now famous “Wast[e] Book” [a “waist book” was carried in the pocket of one’s waist, or waistcoat]. The “Wast Book” has been published in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record and in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register.

Canadian archives house Gorham’s account book as well as other materials relating to the ranger unit. I have compiled a list of sources readers can view at America-Archives. The purpose of this series is to assist readers in tracing their ancestors who served in Gorham’s Rangers, as well as to examine the historical context surrounding their involvement.

GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives feature thousands of articles dating back to 1744, and FamilySearch has military records, which I will explore in future posts.

Stay tuned…

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Note on the header image: map showing John Gorham’s Point, Halifax, Nova Scotia, by M. Harris, 1750. Credit: Nova Scotia Archives; Wikimedia Commons.

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