Gordon, William F.

Born: 1787-01-13 Spotsylvania County, Virginia

Died: 1858-08-28 Albemarle County, Virginia

Flourished: Virginia

Born on Germanna plantation near Fredericksburg, Virginia, William Gordon attended country schools and Spring Hill Academy. He studied law and earned admittance to the bar in 1808, and commenced practice at Orange Court House. Gordon married in 1809 to Mary Robinson Rootes. After Mary's death in 1811, Gordon married Elizabeth Lindsay in 1813. The following year, Gordon moved to Charlottesville and continued to practice law, being named commonwealth attorney in 1812. He served in the War of 1812 and obtained the rank of major general in the Virginia Militia. Gordon served in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1818-1829 and was a member of the State constitutional convention in 1829 and 1830. He won election, as a Jacksonian, to fill a vacancy in the U.S. House of Representatives 1830. He won reelection to the two following Congresses and served until 1835, after a unsuccessful reelection campaign in 1834. Gordon turned to agricultural pursuits and was a delegate to the Southern Convention at Nashville, Tennessee in 1850.

Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1961 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1961), 960; Armistead C. Gordon, William Fitzhugh Gordon, a Virginian of the Old School: His Life, Times, and Contemporaries (1787-1858) (New York and Washington: Neale, 1909), 56.