John Gordon

In April of 2009 I was visiting Rhode Island with my two girls. One day I drove them through Swan Point Cemetery. It is a truly beautiful, old cemetery that sits on 200 acres alongside the Seekonk River.

There are many notable people interred there. Everett Ambrose Burnside is one of them. He was many things (politician, industrialist, governor and senator) but will forever be known for his legacy of a facial hair style. Sideburns! The word a derivative of his surname. HP Lovecraft, a writer of horror, is also a long term resident of Swan Point. And there are many, many others sharing this space and resting eternally.

But the grave I wanted my girls to see was that of a man by the name of Amasa Sprague. He was from a wealthy Yankee family that owned mills, factories and many tenements where his workers lived.

On New Year’s Day in 1844 Amasa was murdered. Shot in the wrist and two blows to the head. A terrible, shocking thing. But I still wanted my children to see the beauty and grandness of his final resting place.

And then I drove them ten minutes away to St. Mary’s Church in the city of Pawtucket. The place my granddad worked, where my parents married and where many Irish immigrants felt at home. I led them into the graveyard behind the church and asked my girls to help me locate a headstone. It’s a small cemetery filled with stones etched with Irish names. But none with the name I wanted to find.

The Irish Social Club is just a block from the church and it’s owned by my cousin Francis. So we stopped by for a visit. I told him where we had been. Francis said he thought the fellow I was looking for was buried at the North Burial Ground in Providence. I said that I had read something about him being buried at St. Mary’s. It didn’t matter since I couldn’t find the grave anyway.

And that was my point. That was exactly the lesson I wanted my girls to learn that day.

John Gordon was an Irish, Roman Catholic immigrant.  At a time in Rhode Island when there was an anti-immigrant hysteria due to so many streaming in and upsetting the old guard. The old Yankee families. John and his two brothers were arrested for the murder of Amasa Sprague. His mother and dog were also arrested.

I will tell you this. There was no real evidence. It was a time of fierce anti immigrant attitude. Especially towards Irish and Roman Catholics. The Justice told the jurors “to give greater weight to Yankee witnesses than Irish witnesses.” Well, I guess they did. John was found guilty and hanged.

It would be the last execution in the state of Rhode Island.

When a Catholic is ready to pass on to the next life they will confess their sins before the journey. The sins that day were not John’s. The Rev. John Brady, a Catholic priest, shocked the elite observers by saying to Gordon before the hanging: “Have courage, John. You are going to appear before a just and merciful judge. You are going to join myriads of your countrymen, who, like you, were sacrificed to the shrine of bigotry and prejudice.”

John’s last words. “I forgive them. I forgive all my persecutors, because they did not know what they were doing. I hope all good Christians pray for me.”

Over one thousand of his countrymen from nearby Massachusetts and Connecticut followed the funeral procession through Providence.

I dragged my kids through two cemeteries back then to show them the unfairness and injustice that took place so long ago. To also show them the grandeur and importance of Amasa Sprague-even in death. To show them that John was in an unmarked grave-nowhere to be found. That he was as unimportant in death as he was in life. I needed to bring the lesson home to my children. John Gordon was one of us. And they killed him. Because he was Irish, because he was Catholic and because he was a poor immigrant. There was only contradictory, circumstantial evidence that snapped the Irishman’s  neck.

When I was driving my girls around Rhode Island that day there wasn’t a lot of buzz about John Gordon. I had read a few articles before 2006 and I was intrigued.

Since that time, however, there was a movement by a Newport politician to pardon John Gordon. In June of 2011, the governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee pardoned John Gordon- 166 years after his death. What he deserved in life but received almost two hundred years later. Chafee comes from an old Yankee family. Somehow seems fitting.

Did he die in vain? I don’t think so-although it hurts me to even type that. There’s many a man in that state that would probably thank him for his sacrifice on that horrific date in 1845. Maybe a black man, maybe a Hispanic man, maybe a poor destitute man and maybe even a mentally retarded man. John Gordon was one of us. All of us.

God bless you, John Gordon, and may you rest in eternal peace.

Sadly, there are still states in the United States where people are put to death. One recent case was in Georgia where there was a lot of talk of innocence. Scary stuff-especially when there are so many mistaken witness accounts and errors.  And also when we are again experiencing anti immigrant discrimination.

You can read more about John Gordon in detail. I tried to keep it as short as I could while trying to get to my point. Of course, I had to borrow sentences and phrases. And photos. I hope the penalty for that is not too stiff.

The following was on the website of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick–John Gordon was secretly buried in the St. Mary’s Cemetery by his fellow Irishmen, without a marker on his grave. Saturday, October 8^th the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick – Pawtucket Chapter will proudly honor Gordon with a monument in the St. Mary’s Cemetery. There will be Mass after coffee at the Irish Social Club and then a ceremony.

Finally-the man gets a marker for his grave.