Biographical Sketch of William A. Gordon, M.D., Lafayette County, Missouri

>From "History of Lafayette County, Mo., carefully written and compiled
from the most authentic official and private sources" St. Louis, Mo.
Historical Company, 1881.
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William Abraham Gordon was born May 10, 1821, in Canton, Trigg county,
Kentucky.  His father, George Haynes Gordon was born in Hawkins county,
East Tenn., May 27, 1796.  His mother, Martha Boyd, only daughter of
Abraham Boyd and sister of John, Linn, Alferd and Rufus Boyd, was born
February 25, 1799.  The father and mother of our subject were married
in November, 1816, in Canton, Trigg County, Ky., in which town and its
vicinity they lived until the fall of 1832.  The father was engaged in
the mercantile business and in farming while he lived in Kentucky.  On
the 1st of October, 1832, he started for Missouri, and arrived in 
Lafayette county, October 28, 1832.  William A. Gordon was educated at
the common schools in the country in Lafayette county.  The branches 
taught were spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and 
English grammar.  He attended two winter sessions of about three months
each, at Dover, in the same county, assisted in teaching, and studied
geometry and trigonometry.  At the age of 22 he attended a high school
about two months in Cadiz, Trigg County, Ky., at which he studied latin 
and algebra.  His first step after leaving school was to teach, that he
might thereby be enabled to educate himself.  He taught his first school
six months, in the spring and summer of 1839, before entering upon his
nineteenth year.  The following winter he boarded and went to school in
Dover to John A. Tutt.  The next spring and summer he taught again at
the same place where he had been teaching the year before, and the winter
following again went to school in Dover to the same teacher.  He was
employed the next two years in teaching surveying, being deputy under his
father, and in farming.  In the spring of 1844 he commenced the study of
medicine, having for his preceptor William P. Boulware, M.D., of Lexing-
ton, and attended his first course of lectures in the city of Louisville,
Ky., at the Louisville Medical Institute at the session of 1845-6.  Upon
returning home he commenced the practice of his profession in connection
with his cousin, William L. Gordon, near Oak Grove, in Jackson county,
Mo.  They practiced together till the following fall, when he again went
to Louisville to attend a second course of lectures at the University of
Kentucky, and graduated March 1, 1847.  He returned home and resumed the
practice of medicine, locating at James Walton's in the southwest part of
Lafayette county, better known as Texas Prairie.  The doctor continued to
practice there till the fall of 1849, when he removed to Dover, in the
same county, where he remained until the following spring, when he deter-
mined to go to the gold mines of California, where he remained about a 
year and a half.  He left San Francisco for home November 1, 1851, on the
steamship Tennessee, and arrived on the 26th day of the following Decem-
ber.  In March, 1852, Dr. Gordon located in Wellington, Lafayette county,
where he practiced his profession until April 1, 1858, when he moved to
a farm about three and a half miles from Mayview in Washington township,
of the same county, and resided there until February, 1873.  He then
moved to Lexington, having been elected to the office of county collector
and is now (1881) living in the suburbs of the city.  The doctor's first
military record was made when he was only 17 years of age, in the fall
of 1838, in a campaign against the Mormons, then living on Caldwell
county, Mo.  The brigade commander was Gen. James H. Graham, of Lexing-
ton.  He went as a substitute for his brother, John B.  In July, 1861,
he enlisted as private in the Missouri State Guards, under Gen. Sterling
Price, at Cowskin Prairie, Missouri; and January 1, 1862, entered Company
A, Rives' regiment, confederate states army, at Springfield, Mo., and
was appointed regimental surgeon at Corinth, Mississippi, in May or June,
1862, serving in that capacity till the close of the war, most of the 
time with the 1st Missouri Cavalry, Col. E. Gates.  He was captured at 
the fall of Mobile, April 9, 1865, the same day that Gen. R. E. Lee,
surrendered the confederate forces to Gen. Grant, and got back to his
home June 19, 1865.  In August, 1860 Dr. Gordon was elected as one of the
representatives to the legislature from Lafayette county, for the term of
two years.  He served one regular session in that body, and also at the 
called session in May, and in the extraordinary session held at Neosho,
in Newton county, and in Cassville, in Barry county.  At the November
election in 1872 he was elected collector of Lafayette county for the 
term of two years.  At the November election in 1874, he was re-elected
to the same office, and in 1876, declined to be a candidate for a third
term.  He connected himself with the Christian church in Lexington in
the summer of 1841, and has continued in that faith.  His mother joined
the church in about a year after he did, and continued in the faith until
her death.  Dr. Gordon has been acting with the democrats since the close
of the civil war in 1865.  His first vote for president was cast for the
illustrious Henry Clay, in 1844, and he acted with the old Whig party as
long as it had an existence.  Dr. William A. Gordon was married to
Margaret V. Green, May 10, 1849, that being his 29th birthday.  His wife
was the 7th child of the late Col. Lewis Green, an old settler and a very
highly respected citizen of Lafayette county.  She was born October 27,
1826, in Sumner county, Tenn.  They have had born to them ten children,
all girls: Martha Elizabeth, Sophia Mildred, Emma Franklin, Mary Walker,
Lucy Ewing, Catherine Green, Florence Edwards, Jane Lee, Nancy Shelby,
and Minnie Carson.  Sophia and Emma died in infancy, the former when 
about ten months and the latter about sixteen months old.  Lucy died in
her twenty-first year.

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