John Gore (1717-1796)

His family had lived at Roxbury, Massachusetts, since 1635. He settled at Boston where he was a coach and carpet painter as well as a merchant. He was a Loyalist and in 1776 he left Boston for Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he died. In 1744, he married Frances Pinkney and they had 15-children, nine of whom who lived to adulthood and married. Six of his children were painted in the 1750s by John Singleton Copley in what are thought to have been among Copley's earliest works. The Gores were the parents of Christopher, the Governor of Massachusetts who built Gore Place at Waltham, and the great-grandparents of the painter & artist John C. Gore, of California.