George C. Gordon

George Gordon was born in Canada sometime around 1830. At the time the Regiment was formed, he was a reputable attorney in Detroit. He was married to a woman named Carrie. He organized a company, helped in no small part by his influential social position. He enlisted in service as Captain of Company I at its organization. He was mustered at that rank, August, 15, 1862, commission to date from July 26, 1862.

George participated in the battles of Fredericksburg, Fitzhugh Crossing, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. He was on the Mud March and the Port Royal and Westmoreland expeditions.

George was taken prisoner at Gettysburg, on July 1, 1863. He was confined for a time at the infamous Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. He was transferred to Andersonville. As Sherman's troops approached Andersonville, the prisoners were sent to other camps in the south. George Gordon was moved to Millen, Georgia and then to Columbia South Carolina. He attempted escape three times and was twice re-captured. His third attempt on February 14, 1865 was successful.

He was given an honorary promotion to Brevet Major U. S. Volunteers on March 13th, 1865 in recognition of his "gallant and meritorious service during the war". He returned to the Regiment on either on May 1, 1865 or, as seems more likely, May 20, 1865. He was in nominal command of the Regiment for one day, June 16, 1865. He mustered out with the Regiment on June 30, 1865 at Detroit.

After the war, George apparently became involved in the grange movement. On at least one occasion, he was invited to speak at a grange meeting. George C. Gordon died in Redford, Michigan on August 27, 1878.

For a much more detailed and personal biography, please see below.

The letters that George Gordon wrote home to his wife have been preserved and are in the collections of the State Archives of Michigan in Lansing. I would like to express my sincere thanks to Diane Dismukes for transcribing them for me.

The Letters of George Gordon

The following was written by one of Captain Gordon's Descendant's. Don Gordon was very surprised to discover the George Gordon's letters on this website. He had not known of their existence. I am very proud to have been able to help him get to know his ancestor.

George C. Gordon

An Introduction

One hundred years is only as long ago as we want it to be. When we are children, one hundred years puts history into a fairy tale world of long ago. When we have lived fifty or more years ourselves, one hundred years seems like yesterday! Even when I was a small boy, I knew about my grandfather's father's service during the Civil War. His larger-than-life exploits maintained a ghostly presence in our family. That presence was given some material substance through his parade sword, which stood silently in the corner beside my grandfather's favorite chair. The Civil War doesn't mean much to a child of six or seven. But the presence of that sword, coupled with the tales my grandfather told about his father's captivity and escape from a southern prison certainly tickled my imagination.

Pop died in 1946 when I was fourteen years old. His passing was my first experience with the death of any member of my family. Shortly after he was gone, the magnificent sword also disappeared, finding its way into another branch of the family, and gradually the wonders of Captain George C. Gordon's adventures were put away in some dusty filing cabinet in the back of my mind. It has only been since I've grown old enough to realize just how short a time one hundred years really is, that I've felt the desire to know more about this man who seemed much larger-than-life when I was a child. Who was he, really? Was he actually the "adventurer" that he appeared to be in the eyes of a little boy? Did he enjoy his war-time duty? What led him to be a part of that great struggle of our nation's history? Did he consider war to be "glorious"?

George was born on October 15, 1832, into the family of Samuel and Clarinda Gordon. Samuel was a maker of windmills in and around the tiny village of Napanee in Ontario, Canada. His family roots went back to Northern Ireland, while his wife claimed a Welsh ancestry. Together they had six children, two boys and four girls. At this point I don't know exactly where George fit in relation to the ages of the other children, but I suspect he was the younger of the two boys, who were two years apart in age. Nor do I know what brought the Gordons to Napanee in the first place. Perhaps the family had settled there because the area was a "Loyalist" stronghold, during a period in which both Canada and the United States were struggling over issues of political liberty and questions of allegiance to the British Crown. We can't know that for sure, either.

When George and his brother were 10 and 12 years old respectively, Samuel died at the young age of thirty-six, the result of "consumption", brought on by having caught a severe cold. After his death it was decided that the two boys should be sent to Michigan to live with their uncles, Losson and Philetus Gordon, in Livingston County, near Fowlerville.

When he was seventeen, George briefly returned to Canada, where he taught school for one term. He then went back to Michigan, and taught in Redford Center (now a part of Detroit), not far from where he had been raised by his uncles. During this time, he was married to Charlotte Ross in 1853, and they had one child, "Lottie". But the marriage was short-lived, and Charlotte died two years later, in 1855 (perhaps in childbirth, though that is not certain). Left with a baby daughter to raise by himself, George soon re-married. His new bride was Miss Carrie Spencer, who was evidently from a prominent family in the Redford community, and soon after their marriage, George enrolled at the University of Michigan Department of Law. He graduated in 1861.

By 1862, George and Carrie had two more babies, bringing the number of children to three, and he had worked for a year as a member of a Detroit law firm. But now, the Civil War was underway, and something in George's inner-spirit led him to enlist in the cause. He changed his political allegiance from the democrats to the republicans (the party of Lincoln), signed up with Company I of the Michigan 24th Infantry, and became active in the recruitment of his friends and neighbors for enlistment.

"The rest," as they say, "is history!" He enlisted as a Lieutenant of Company I, but when they left Detroit in the fall of 1862, he was the Captain of the Company. The letters in this booklet reveal the movements of the Michigan 24th, also known as "The Iron Brigade". On July 1st, 1863, George and his men were involved in the horrendous Battle of Gettysburg. On that terrible killing field there were over 53,000 casualties in five days of fighting: 30,000 killed, wounded or missing on the southern side; 23,000 on the northern side. George Gordon was fortunate in a way. He was captured, not killed, on the first day of the battle. But he spent the next eighteen months in southern prisons. For a time he was held at the infamous Libby Prison in Richmond. Then he was transferred to the equally awful Andersonville. As Sherman's troops approached Andersonville on his famous "march to the sea", George, with other prisoners, was moved first to Millen, Georgia, and finally to Columbia, South Carolina. Three times he tried to escape, but twice he was recaptured. His third attempt, on February 14, 1865 was successful.

There are twelve letters included here, and as we read them we get small but significant glimpses into the heart and soul of George Gordon. One gets the impression that he begins his stint of military service with a great deal of zeal and dedication to the cause. But as time drags on, and the actual living circumstances prove to be cruel punishment, even for the strong, a tone of weariness and disillusion begins to appear. After a while we picture a man grasping desperately for his links with home and family, cynical about the people in Washington who control the burdensome movements of the men in battle. He begins to beg his wife to write more often, and in his times of waiting he takes up whittling pipes and rings from bits of root and bone. Always he writes home about the condition of the men under his command, for they are his friends and neighbors, and he knows that their families are anxious for any word of their well-being. He feels responsible for them. At one point, a brief visit by his father-in-law to the front lifts his spirits a bit.

Then, on January 8, 1864, we have his letter from Libby Prison. Now, more than ever, his only link with the "real world" is the receipt of letters and trinkets sent to him through the mail. That letter is followed by a year of "silence", during which he and his fellow prisoners are moved here and there by an increasingly dis-spirited Confederacy.

Finally, he managed to escape, and after his recuperation, was able to go home for a visit. As noted in his last letter, he had the option of leaving the service at that time and staying home, or returning to duty. He chose the latter. So he wrote to his wife, Carrie, from Springfield, Illinois of his weariness and boredom. He teases her that she should write three times each week to help him hang on. He is determined to stay to the end, when Company I, whose recruitment he had been greatly responsible for, is finally mustered out of service, and all the remaining soldiers can go home again. It is that letter that contains this stirring summary of his feelings about his military service:

It is a dull place here, Carrie, and I shall be glad when we get home. Home that word has charm for me above everything else. How nice it will be to get settled down once more and go and come when one pleases, with no orders to "report here or there at such and such a time".

You and Mother and Margaret will probably say, "Why didn't you stay (home) while you were here?"

Because from the first I have been determined to stay until the regiment went out of service, and I think I can stand it for ten or eleven weeks yet.

After the war, George settled down in the Redford community. He and Carrie went on to have four more children, including my grandfather, Donald Cassius Gordon, who was born in May, 1867. In all, including Lottie, there were seven children (3 girls, 4 boys) in the family. I have memories of knowing four of them, "Aunt Lottie" included, as a child.

For a while, George was the Superintendent of Schools for Wayne County (the Detroit area), and for years he was a Justice of the Peace. He was evidentially held in high esteem by his neighbors. Toward the end of his life, his time and energy were given to building a fine new home which he designed himself.

But life had taken its toll. Throughout his letters to Carrie we read that he had reoccurring "problems with his eyes". In the picture of him, taken after the war, we notice a conspicuous lump on his left temple. We wonder what it is perhaps a tumor of some sort? Whatever the case, his health declined, until finally, for the last year of his life, he was nearly incapacitated. He did complete the building of his new home, but only got to live in it for eight months. On August 27, 1878, at the age of forty-five, he died.

The letters help to put flesh on the ghostly image of a man that stalked my imagination as a child, and they help us understand the meaning of the life he lived. The image that emerges is less that of a "hero", and more of "an ordinary human being" who tries to live a faithful, responsible, and meaningful life.

Donald H. Gordon, Jr.
Saegertown, PA
January, 1998

Descendant: Don Gordon dongor@toolcity.net

Photograph courtesy of the State archives of Michigan. Used with permission.