Gorton's Seafood, with operations in Gloucester, Massachusetts traces its roots to a fishery called John Pew and Sons, John Pew, picked up fishing after serving as a Colonial soldier in the Frnch and Indian War. While most people moved West after the war, Pew turned eastward and arrived in Gloucester, Masscahusetts, in 1755. The father-and-son fishery business emerged as an official commercial company, John Pew & Sons, in 1849.

When nearby Rockport's chief industry, the Annisquam Cotton Mill, burned down, Slade Gorton, the mill's superintendent, was out of a job. At his wife's urging, he began a fishing business in 1874 known as Slade Gorton & Company, and began to pack and sell salt codfish and mackerel in small kegs. This company was the first to package salt-dried fish in barrels. In 1899, the company patented the "Original Gorton Fish Cake". In 1905, the Slade Gorton Company adopted the fisherman at the helm of a schooner (the "Man at the Wheel") as the company trademark. Today, he is known as the Gorton's Fisherman.

In 1906, Slade Gorton & Company, John Pew & Sons, and two other Gloucester fisheries merged into the Gorton-Pew Fisheries. They made Gorton's codfish cakes a household name in New England.

The company went into the fish-freezing business in the early 1930s. In 1949, Gorton-Pew made headlines when it drove the first refrigerator trailer truck shipment of frozen fish from Gloucester to San Francisco--a trip that took eight days. In 1953, the company was the first to introduce a frozen ready-to-cook fish stick, which won the Parents Magazine Seal of Approval.

In 1957, Gorton-Pew Fisheries name was changed to Gorton's of Gloucester; in 1965, it became The Gorton Corporation, and it is now known as Gorton's. In 1968, Gorton's merged with General Mills, Inc., as a wholly owned subsidiary.