(died 12 May 1995), archaeological collector. (George N. Gogo) Parents: George Ira Gogo (George I. Gogo) and his wife Louise Newman. George Ira Gogo (1872-1935), K.C., was a Cornwall lawyer, born at Farran’s Point in Osnabruck Township, also the law partner of J.G. Harkness from 1907 to 1916, and an unsuccessful Liberal candidate for Stormont in the Reciprocity Election of 1911. In WWII his son, George N. Gogo of the present article, was a conscientious objector but nevertheless served in the Royal Canadian Medical Corps in Europe. For a period of years not now easy to date, George N. Gogo lived in the Summerstown area of GC. He had enough money from family sources to enable him to survive without employment. He is remembered as having walked regularly into Cornwall with a knapsack to buy his groceries, refusing car rides if they were offered.

     At this time, and perhaps also other times, Gogo scoured the islands in Lake St. Francis and the adjacent mainland of southern GC in search of Indian artifacts, and with a keen eye for geology and natural history. From 1959 to 1961, keeping ahead of the bulldozers that were excavating gravel for the building of Highway 401, he gathered relics from the Salem Site (an Iroquois site) on the Front of Charlottenburgh Township before the site was rendered useless for archaeological purposes. In 1961 Gogo located potsherds which were the clue to the existence of the Grays Creek Site (again, Iroquois) on the 2nd Concession of Indian Lands, Charlottenburgh. In 1962 he was active in salvaging artifacts from the site before it was destroyed by construction work which was being done, again, for Highway 401. In 1963 and 1964, he explored and excavated the Sugarbush Site (an Iroquoian site) north of Summerstown. In 1970 he gave his collection of some 75,000 archaeological artifacts to the Archaeological Survey of Canada, National Museum of Man. While not a trained archaeologist, Gogo was a diligent, skilled, careful, conscientious and highly successful collector, who carefully recorded the circumstances in which he made his finds. James F. Pendergast has written with praise of Gogo’s expertise and of his generosity in making his findings available to professional archaeologists. Gogo also made botanical discoveries, which he reported to the Department of Agriculture. He discovered an orchid not previously known in Eastern Ontario, and investigated an unfamiliar variety of shagbark hickory. This remarkable man was in his lifetime and for long afterwards one of the least known of the GC high “achievers” of his time, being known, indeed, almost entirely through the commendations of James F. Pendergast. Gogo seems not to have married. He died at Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, Oakville, Ont., and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, Cornwall, Ont.

     George N. Gogo was the brother of the librarian Jean L. Gogo (b. Cornwall, Ont., 14 Nov. 1901; d. Oakville, Ont., 28 Nov. 1992), who edited Lights on the St. Lawrence: an Anthology (1958) and Ten Family Histories in the Stormont Dundas and Glengarry Historical Society Library (1973).

Newspaper death notices for him and his sister Jean (undated clipping) * private information * references to George N. Gogo in the following works of James F. Pendergast: (a) “The Crystal Rock Site,” Pennsylvania Archaeologist (1962), (b) “Nine Small Sites…,” Anthropologica , n. s., 6(1964), © Three Prehistoric Iroquois Components in Eastern Ontario: the Salem, Grays Creek, and Beckstead Sites (1966), (d) “The Sugarbush Site: a Possible Iroquoian Maplesugar Camp,” Ontario Archaeology No. 23 (1974), (e) “Ceramic Motif Mutations at Glenbrook,” in Proceedings of the 1979 Iroquois Pottery Conference (1980), and (f) “Emerging Saint Lawrence Iroquoian Settlement Patterns,” Man in the Northeast, No. 40 (1990) * Gogo is mentioned also, W. A. Kenyon, “Investigations at Lake St. Francis,” Ontario History 51(1959) 52-54 * George I. Gogo (lawyer) : Harkness: index; obituary Standard Freeholder 27 Nov. 1935 *Jean L. Gogo: Bibliography of Glengarry: index; dust jacket of Lights on the St. Lawrence (portrait)