Family of
Duncan Gordon
 

Duncan Gordon

Duncan Gordon was a well known figure in the ranching and commercial interests of South Texas. He spent his life in several localities, but was best known in Matagorda County.

He was born in that county, along the Gulf Coast, August 25, 1853. His father, Jesse Sanford Gordon, was a native of Georgia, and on coming to Texas brought his slaves with him and settled at Wharton, acquiring land, and had a plantation well under way when the war broke out. He enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861 and served with the rank of captain until the end of the hostilities, having been wounded at the Battle of Shiloh. He resumed his business as a planter and a farmer, and died of yellow fever on one of his steamers plying from Vera Cruz to Matagorda shortly after the closing of the War Between The States. Captain Gordon married Sarah Duncan, a native of Alabama. She was a daughter of Capt. John Duncan, a large plantation owner of Matagorda County.

Duncan Gordon grew up in Matagorda, attended public schools there and Swanee University of Tennessee, and was associated with his father's ranching interests and continued active on the home place until 1881. During the following ten years he was in the mercantile business at Abilene, and remained in that section of the state until 1902. He then returned to Alvin, and after the death of his mother managed the family estate at Alvin, until his death at LaPorte, Harris County, on May 13, 1911. Mr. Gordon was a Democrat, member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Episcopal Church.

He married at Wharton, January 1, 1874, Miss Alice Arrington, daughter of Dr. Samuel and Mollie (Smith) Arrington, her father, a native of Livingston, Alabama, and her mother of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her grandfather, Capt. John Smith gave the plot of land for the University of Alabama. Doctor Arrington for many years was an honored physician at Livingston, Alabama, and owned a plantation and before the war many slaves. Mrs. Gordon had one son, William Gorgas, born July 22, 1879 and a daughter, Mrs. J. G. Allen of Wharton.

Texas Under Many Flags, Clarence W. Wharton, American Historical Society, 1930

Matagorda County Genealogical Society Publication, Oak Leaves, Vol. 9 #2, February 1990
 

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