The Gordons

George started working on the Gordon family history in the first instance because he was fascinated by the family legend that we are descended from the Duke of Gordon. George’s research soon put paid to this legend, but once he had got started he got carried away and spent a great deal of time and money travelling around, digging into archives and hiring local genealogists to prepare reports for him. Nowadays most of this can be done through the internet, but George never got to grips with modern technology.

The second strand of George’s motivation was his ambition to find out more about his father, and perhaps to write his biography. George was only fourteen when the war broke out and he was still a teenager when he joined the army and was posted to East Africa, so he only knew his father as a rather distant person. I think there is a hint of disappointed hero worship in the successive drafts of his biography. He had hoped to celebrate the achievements of his father, only to find that he had feet of clay. Nevertheless, George was honest in his presentation of the facts as he found them and did not try to cover up his father’s failings.

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I have uploaded and tidied up George’s reports, corrected a few mistakes and added a few details which were not available to George in order to put George’s research findings on the internet for the family, and anyone else interested, to see. All relative references (our grandfather etc.) are to the generation of Alban Gordon's grandchildren.

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Click on the hyperlinks (underlined) to access the relevant pages.

Simon Clarke