ARMISTEAD CHURCHILL GORDON,
Born near old Bentivoglio, in Albemarle county, Virginia, on December
20, 1855, is now a resident of Staunton, a member of the law firm
of White & Gordon. He is a son of George L. Gordon, who was born
in Albemarle county, and was killed at Malvern Hill, on July 2d, 1862,
aged thirty-two years, and a grandson of Gen. Wm. F. Gordon of Albemarle,
who was at one time a member of Congress from the Albemarle
district, and was the author and originator of the United States
Sub-Treasury Department. This Gen. Wm. F. Gordon was a grandson
of Col. James Gordon of Lancaster, a Scotch-Irishman of County Down,
Ireland, who was the founder of the family in this country, and who
married a daughter of Col. Nathaniel Harrison, a prominent member
in colonial days of the James-River Harrison family, so frequently
mentioned in these annals of Eminent Virginians. The mother of
Armistead Churchill Gordon was Mary Long Daniel, of Halifax, North
Carolina, daughter of Judge Joseph J. Daniel, of the Supreme Court of
North Carolina. She died in February, 1876. His wife, whom he married
at Staunton, Virginia, on October 17, 1883, and who was born in
Staunton, November 5th, 1860, is Maria Breckinridge, daughter of
Nathaniel Pendleton Catlett, and Betty Breckinridge, his wife, of
Staunton.
Mr. Gordon was educated at the private school of Major Horace W.
Jones in Charlottesville, and at the University of Virginia. He took
the summer law course at the University of Virginia, and came to
the Bar in 1879. After having taught school in Charlottesville for five
years he settled in Staunton, where he has been practicing continuously
since 1879; in partnership with Meade F. White since 1882. From
July 1, 1884, to July 1, 1886, he was Mayor of Staunton. During
1888 he was President of the Staunton Chamber of Commerce. Mr.
Gordon is a member of the I. O. O. F., himself and wife are members of
Trinity Episcopal church, Staunton. He is the author of a number of
short stories, sketches and poems, published from time to time in
The
Century Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's Magazine, and
other periodicals, and in 1888 published from the press of Charles
Scribner's Sons, New York, in conjunction with Thomas Nelson Page, a
volume of dialect poems entitled "
Befo' de War."
