Andrew Gordon was the fifth child of Rev. Alexander Gordon and Margaret (Martin) Gordon. He was born on September 17, 1828, in Putnam, Washington County, New York, where his father, a native of Montrose, Scotland, was pastor of the United Presbyterian Church.
His mother died when he was a little more than four years old, and his father, when he was barely seventeen.
During his boyhood, Gordon was obliged to work in order to help support the family, but by attendance at country schools and a short period of study at an academy in Johnstown, Fulton County, New York, he managed to prepare himself for Franklin College, New Athens, Ohio, from which he graduated on September 25, 1850.
He attended the theological seminary at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and on November 2, 1853, he was licensed to preach by the Albany Presbytery.
In May 1853, the Associate Presbyterian Synod, assembled at Pittsburgh, resolved to establish a mission in India, and at its meeting in Albany the following year, elected J. T. Tate and Gordon as its missionaries.
The former declined the appointment, but after much hesitation Gordon decided to undertake the enterprise singlehanded, and on August 29, 1854, in the Charles Street Church, New York, he was ordained “to preach the Gospel in North India. ”
With this rather indefinite commission, accompanied by his wife and small daughter, he set sail for Calcutta on September 28, arriving there February 13, 1855. So long and tedious was the voyage, Gordon wrote, that “our child outgrew her clothes.
New garments became old and were worn out. The events of the voyage faded from memory in the monotonous past. ” After a further journey of some 1, 700 miles in a wagon drawn by coolies, he arrived in Sialkot, in the Punjab, which he had finally chosen as the seat of the mission. Here, more or less isolated, and for some time feebly supported, he succeeded in establishing an increasingly important work.
During this period Gordon was in the United States from 1865 to 1875, having been invalided home, but while here was actively engaged in behalf of missions.
After his final return from the field in 1883, he wrote a full and vivid account of the history of his enterprise under the title Our India Mission (1886), two chapters of which deal with the Sepoy mutiny.
He entered the sanitarium at Clifton Springs, New York, because of failing health, but a week before his death was taken to Philadelphia, where he died in the home of a friend and was buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery.
On May 18, 1852, Gordon had married Rebecca Campbell Smith of New Athens.
