• Nathaniel Gorham, son of John, was unlike any of the family -- he was eccentric in his habits, and in his manners, and strenuously opposed any innovations of the customs of the fathers. He drove his team with a long pole, because the first settlers did so; and for the same reason, he would never have a tip-up-cart. In dress, he not only adhered to the fashions of his ancestors; but, in some particulars was an oddity. He wore his shirt with the open part behind, and fastened at the back of the neck with a loop and a nail. He lived on a very simple diet. Salt meat broth, bread and milk, hasty pudding, and samp, were his favorite dishes morning, noon, night. He had a natural aversion to spirituous liquors, and never drank any during his life. If his sons had inherited that antipathy, they would have been better men.
During the Revolution he manufactured salt at Sandy Neck by boiling sea-water, a slow and toilsome process; but not irksome to him, because the first settlers, who he venerated, had been engaged in the same business. For several successive days during the winter of 1780-1, he drove a four ox sled, loaded with wood, on the ice across the harbor, from Sandy Neck to Calves Pasture Point. Since that date the harbor has been frozen, so that persons crossed on the ice, but at no time since sufficiently to bear a team.
Notwithstanding his oddities, he was industrious, honest, and prudent, an obliging neighbor, and a good citizen.3216, p 442

• His estate was settled February, 1801.3098, p 97