William Fitzhugh Gordon Jr.

William Fitzhugh Gordon Jr. (Photograph on file in the office of the Clerk of the House of Delegates)

William Fitzhugh Gordon Jr. (1823-1904) served as clerk of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1859 to 1865. During the 1860's, William and his wife Nammie lived at Enderly. Gordon was temporary secretary of the convention that met in Richmond in 1861 to debate Virginia's secession from the Union. As a special emissary of the convention, he delivered a copy of the Ordinance of Secession to Confederate Jefferson Davis in Montgomery, Alabama. From 1861 to 1862, Gordon was a private in the 19th Virginia Infantry.

Bio Information

Born at “Edgeworth”, Albemarle County, Va., November 26, 1823. Died in Staunton, Va., July 26, 1904. Buried in Louisa, Va.

William F. Gordon Jr. was the son of William Fitzhugh Gordon and his second wife, Elizabeth (Lindsay) Gordon. He received his Bachelor of Law degree at the University of Virginia (1842-43).

He married, November 12, 1850, his cousin, Nancy Watson "Nannie" Morris (b. 1832), daughter of James Maury and Ann (Morris) Morris of “Green Springs”, Louisa County. Their daughter, Patty Martha Gordon (1852-1900) was born in Charlottesville and lived in Louisa Courthouse area after her marriage to Robert Constantine Perkins (1834-1904). On October 7, 1900, while out driving, Patty was thrown from her buggy and killed.

Gordon was one of the secretaries of the Constitutional Convention held in the city of Richmond in 1861, which adopted the Ordinance of Secession; was special emissary of the Convention conveying the official copy of that document to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, at Montgomery, Alabama; and was a soldier in the Confederate States Army.

He was defeated in 1865 for re-election as Clerk of the Virginia House of Delegates by John Bell Bigger. He was a member of the House of Delegates, 1875-77.