William Washington Gordon was an American lawyer, railroad president. The last few years of his life, he was President of a local railroad company.
Background
William Washington Gordon was the son of Ambrose and Elizabeth (Meade) Gordon.
Ambrose Gordon, a native of Monmouth County, New Jersey, served under Col. William Washington in the Southern campaigns of the Revolution as a lieutenant of cavalry. He moved to Georgia about 1790 and on account of his war services received various grants of land from the state.
He settled in Augusta, but he owned a plantation in Screven County, where his eldest son, William Washington Gordon, was born on January 17, 1796.
Education
In due time young, Gordon received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point and was the first Georgian to be graduated (1815). He became an aide to Gen. Gaines, but resigned in October 1815 to study law under James M. Wayne of Savannah, afterward associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Career
Gordon made Savannah his home and in 1818 began the practise of law there. His vision, however, was broader than the four walls of a lawyer’s office, and his interests widened accordingly to include some of the movements which were developing in the state.
During the third decade of the nineteenth century, the foundation of the Georgia railway system was laid with the construction of the Central Railroad of Georgia and the Georgia Railway.
The Charleston and Hamburg Railway, extending from the South Carolina coast to Augusta, Georgia, began operation in 1833. It threatened ruin to Savannah’s trade with upper Georgia, the main artery of which had been the Savannah River, navigable to Augusta.
Gordon and his associates determined to save Savannah’s primacy as the port of outlet for Georgia’s principal export crop, cotton, by constructing a railroad from the coast to Macon, situated in the heart of Georgia and in the center of the cotton-producing area.
Following this idea, they obtained a charter from the legislature in 1833 authorizing the construction of the Central Railroad of Georgia. Two years later, the charter was amended in such a way as to give the railroad banking privileges. This amendment was put through the legislature by Gordon who had been elected to the legislature largely for the purpose of working for the railroad.
The road as laid out called for 190 miles of track. Gordon, trained in engineering at West Point, was fitted to manage this enterprise, and was chosen first president of the railroad. At the close of 1836 a beginning of construction was made, but owing to the crises of 1837 and 1839, the road progressed slowly.
In October 1838, Gordon reported that the road had begun to operate a passenger train and that some cotton was being transported. By May 1839 seventy- six miles of track had been laid. Stage coaches connected the end of the road with Macon.
In 1842, difficulties multiplied - the company could not sell bonds: the price of cotton fell to starvation levels; great freshets washed away the roadbed ; and contractors could with difficulty be kept at work when money due them was not forthcoming. The strain on the officials of the road was severe.
Gordon actually met his death in the effort to keep the enterprise going, finally succumbing in 1842, a year and a half before the road reached Macon.
Achievements
Connections
Gordon was married, in 1826, to Sarah Anderson Stites, of Savannah. His son, W. W. Gordon, a graduate of Yale, was a captain in the Confederate army and served with the rank of brigadier-general in the Spanish-American War.