Alexander Gordon (antiquary) - Life in South Carolina

Life in South Carolina

Gordon sailed for South Carolina in August 1741, as secretary to James Glen, F.S.A., the newly appointed governor of that province. There he eventually prospered. From the recorded copy of a deed still extant at Charleston it appears that one Hamerton, the registrar of the province, farmed out his office to Gordon, and by this deed appointed him his attorney to transact all the business and receive all the fees of the office. There is also among the recorded conveyances one of a large lot of land in Charleston to him, dated 28 March 1746; and in his will he devised to his son and daughter a lot of land in Ansonborough, South Carolina, and all the houses erected thereon. He still kept up a desultory correspondence with Sir John Clerk, to whom he confessed himself "vastly weary" of colonial life. To the Royal Society he sent an elaborate description of the natural history of South Carolina, which was not read until 25 May 1758. Nor was it printed in the Philosophical Transactions. On 22 August 1754 Gordon, "being sick and weak of body," made his will at Charleston. To his son, Alexander, an attorney of Charleston, he bequeathed his own portrait, painted by himself, together with other of his paintings. He also strictly enjoined him to publish his manuscript Essay towards illustrating the History of ... the Ancient Egyptians. The essay was never printed, and is preserved in the British Museum, having been purchased in March 1831. Gordon's wife is not mentioned in his will. He died before 23 July 1755, when the devisees under his will executed a conveyance of land in South Carolina. His daughter, Frances Charlotte Gordon, appears to have been married, on 30 May 1763 to John Troup, a Charleston attorney. None of his descendants are now known to survive in South Carolina. The traditions of the Penicuick family represent Gordon as a grave man, of formal habits, tall, lean, and usually taciturn. Beaupré Bell made a bust of him after an original given by Gordon to Sir Andrew Fountaine's niece.

The Itinerarium, the essential handbook of all Roman antiquaries of that day, was a favourite with Sir Walter Scott, who has immortalised it in The Antiquary as that prized folio which Jonathan Oldbuck undid from its brown paper wrapper in the Hawes fly or Queensferry diligence.