William Fitzhugh Gordon (January 13, 1787 – July 21, 1858) was a nineteenth-century lawyer, military officer, politician and planter from the piedmont region of Virginia. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1830 to 1835.
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Early life and education
William Fitzhugh Gordon was born at Germanna to Elizabeth Gordon and her husband (and cousin) James Gordon, Jr. (1759-1799). His grandfather John Gordon had emigrated to the Virginia colony in 1738 from County Down in northern Ireland, as did his elder brother James Gordon (1711-1768), and they both became successful tobacco merchants and planters in Virginia's Tidewater region. John Gordon had initially joined his brother's business in Lancaster County, but moved across the Rappahannock River to Urbanna in Middlesex County and married Lucy Churchill, who bore a dozen children, including this man's father, who served in the Virginia House of Delegates alongside his cousin and father-in-law James Gordon Sr. (son of the immigrant James Gordon, and who inherited Verville plantation in Lancaster County). Although the immigrant John Gordon ultimately settled in Richmond County, James Gordon Jr. moved westward to near Germanna in what became Spotsylvania County and then Orange County, where he established a farm and plantation near an iron furnace established at the beginning of the century by former Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood. In 1787, James Gordon owned 21 enslaved adults and 34 enslaved Africans younger than 16, along with 17 horses, a stud horse, 51 cattle and a 4-wheeled chaise carriage in Orange County. His maternal grandmother was a cousin of Benjamin Harrison, signer of the Declaration of Independence and governor of Virginia. Thus linked to the First Families of Virginia, William Gordon attended private schools appropriate to his class, including Spring Hill Academy. After completing those studies, he read law.