However, in 1868, his elder brother James Henry (1845–1868) died by suicide, and two years later, George drowned on a voyage to Australia, unmarried and thus without heirs.

The occasion was captured by the painter Alfred Edward Emslie; the painting is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, having been donated by Aberdeen's daughter Marjorie in 1953.

[8] The ranch is today part of the municipality of Coldstream, and various placenames in the area commemorate him and his family, such as Aberdeen Lake and Haddo Creek.

[16] They had five children: Aberdeen lived the later stages of his life at the House of Cromar in Tarland, Aberdeenshire, which he had built and where he died in 1934.

[19] Jokes Cracked by Lord Aberdeen, a memoir collection of John Hamilton-Gordon's dinner party repartee, was first published in 1929.

[20] From 1883 until 1896, he was also an owner of and investor in the Rocking Chair Ranche located in Collingsworth County, Texas, together with his father-in-law, Lord Tweedmouth, and his brother-in-law, Edward Marjoribanks.