John Gordon (merchant)
The regional network of Scottish traders headed by Gordon in Charles Town, and the brothers John and James Graham in Savannah, served as a liaison between government officials[3] (many of them fellow Scots to whom they were connected politically) and the Indian tribes, primarily the Creeks.
[4] Gordon also underwrote the mercantile activities of George Galphin, at that time the wealthiest Indian trader in the Southeast, whose trading firm was predominant in the tribal towns of the Chattahoochee Valley and in Coweta.
[11] [12] Economic prospects for the colony of Georgia had improved considerably by 1759; consequently Gordon determined to expand his operations and opened an office in Savannah headed by Thomas Netherclift, the son-in-law of his deceased longtime partner, and channeled a sizeable part of the deerskin trade through that location.
There Gordon purchased a wharf lot, invested in local shipyards, and involved himself in regional activities beyond the profitable mercantile trade, including the establishment of several plantations,[13] among them one on Daufuskie Island in South Carolina.
[15] The Beaufort and Georgia trade had made Gordon rich—he sold his plantation, advertising his "very convenient dwelling house with kitchen, stable, stores and etc.
[18] In 1762, Gordon, his partner Grey Elliot of Sunbury, and John Mullyrne purchased a 1300-acre tract of land on Hutchinson Island opposite Savannah, which had sold previously for a few shillings per acre.
[23] During the Revolutionary War, the patriot Continental Association suspected the brig Beaufort of evading its trade embargo against Great Britain by smuggling South Carolina products to Georgia.
In the latter months of 1776, the Beaufort smuggled goods on a regular run to St. Augustine in British East Florida for Gordon's associate, the Loyalist merchant William Panton.
[31] Under these conditions and with the uncertainty of future sales, de la Puente was eventually compelled to transfer all the unsold Spanish property to an agent who would represent its owners.
Because the Spanish monarchy had proprietorship rights in the patronato real relationship of church and state,[37] those same prerogatives were claimed in the name of the English monarch, who had assumed sovereignty in Florida.
[38] Early attempts to colonize British East Florida were hindered, particularly in St. Augustine, the capital of the province, by speculators like Jesse Fish and John Gordon, who held such great tracts of land.
[39][40][41] Fish and Gordon claimed ownership of a huge section of 4,600,000 acres on both banks of the St. Johns River,[42] as far south as Ponce de Leon Inlet and westward as far as Alachua, and including a considerable portion of the Tampa Bay area.
Panton, Leslie and Company, later the most well-known of the Creek trading firms, took over the Spalding and Kelsall stores when the two merchants emigrated to the Bahamas following the American Revolution.
[56] Gordon served as president of the Charles Town St. Cecilia Society, an organization formed to support the performance of musical recitals, including the hiring of musicians.
Adam was educated at the private school of Dr. John Carr in Hertford,[64] worked for the Colonial Office in London and married Amelia Watts, dying without issue[64] in Manchester Square, Middlesex, April 1841.
[67] A codicil to the will, dated 4 December 1777, at Westminster, gave his two daughters by his first marriage, Elizabeth and Sarah, a tract of land in Prince William Parish in South Carolina, and one hundred pounds sterling to his sister-in-law Margaret Smith.
The legatees in trust, John Smith of Georgia and Thomas Forbes of Charles Town, were charged with selling the estate to pay his debts, and the rest to be divided between his children Mary, Adam, Caroline and Jane.
