This Official Site of The TNGenWeb and USGenWeb Projects is
Giles County, Tennessee
Gordon Biographies
GEORGE WASHINGTON GORDON, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee, was born in Pulaski, Giles County, Tennessee on 5 Oct 1836, received a collegiate training and was graduated from the Western Military Institute in Nashville, Davidson, Tennessee in 1859. He practiced civil engineering until the beginning of the Civil War, then enlisted in the military service of the Confederacy where he was drillmaster of the Eleventh Regiment, Tennessee Infantry, then, successively, a captain, lieutenant colonel, colonel, and brigadier general, serving until the close of the war. He studied law, was admitted to the bar and practiced in Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee until 1883. He was appointed one of the railroad commissioners of Tennessee, and received an appointment in the Department of the Interior in 1885 as special Indian agent in Arizona and Nevada, serving until 1889 when he returned to Memphis, where he resumed the practice of law. He was superintendent of the Memphis city schools from 1889 to 1907, and elected as a Democrat to the Sixtieth, Sixty-first, and Sixty-second Congresses, serving from 4 Mar 1907 until his death in Memphis on August 9, 1911. He was interred in in Elmwood Cemetery. (Primary Source: Biographical Dictionary of the American Congress, 1774-1971, Washington, D. C., Government Printing Office, 1971)
GENERAL GEORGE W. GORDON. George Washington Gordon was born in Giles County, Tennessee, on October 5, 1836. After receiving an excellent preparatory education he entered the Western Military Institute, at whose head was Bushrod Johnson, and was graduated in 1859. When the war between the states began, he offered his services to Tennessee and was assigned as drill master to the Eleventh Tennessee Infantry, which was in a camp of instruction at Camp Cheatham in Robertson County. After several weeks of assiduous drilling this regiment was sent to East Tennessee. Here Gordon was elected captain of Company I, in which capacity he served from August 1, 1861, to May 27, 1862, when he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel, and, in August 1864, he was appointed brigadier general and was serving as such when he was captured at the battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864. After his capture he was held as a prisoner of war, principally at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, until his release on July 24, 1865. He took part in the battles of Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Kenesaw Mountain and most of the battles between Sherman and Johnston, between Sherman and Hood, and in Hood's campaign in the fall of 1864. After the war he practiced law at Memphis. In 1883 he became one of the state railroad commissioners. In 1885, he was appointed to a position in the Department of the Interior at Washington. In 1889, he returned to Memphis and, in 1892, was chosen superintendent of schools of that city. In 1906 he was elected representative in Congress from the Tenth District of Tennessee and was re-elected in 1908 and 1910. He died at Memphis on August 9, 1911. (Tennessee, The Volunteer State, 1769-1923, Vol. 2, John Trotwood Moore and Austin P. Foster, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., Chicago, 1923, pp. 131-32)
George W. GORDON has not been located on the 1850 Giles Census (the only George is age 2 in household of John S. Gordon). According to Cardin's History of Pisgah (Part III), "William DANIEL (son of Esquire Killman DANIEL) married a sister of General George GORDON, a noted lawyer of Memphis." No DANIELS are on the 1860 Giles Census.
Return to
Index to Biographies
Histories and Biographies
Giles Co, TNGenWeb
Copyright 2000, 2001 TNGenNet, Inc. and submitter(s).
