Upon the death of Ambrose Gordon in 1804, William Washington Gordon was sent to school in
Rhode Island and then attended the
United States Military Academy. He graduated from that institution in 1815 and was the first person from Georgia to do so. He remained in the army for half a year, serving as an aide-de-camp to
Edmund P. Gaines. He then returned to
Savannah, Georgia to study law under
James Moore Wayne. Gordon married Wayne's niece, Sarah Anderson "Addy" Stites, in 1826 and purchased Wayne's Savannah home, at
10 East Oglethorpe Avenue, in 1830. Washington's granddaughter,
Juliette Gordon Low—founder of the
Girl Scouts of the United States of America—was born and raised in the house. Gordon became a member of the state bar in 1820 and served in several local public positions. In 1834, Gordon was elected as the
mayor of Savannah and served in that position until 1836. During his mayoral service, he was elected to the
Georgia General Assembly as a member of the
House of Representatives in 1835. In 1838, he was elected to the
Georgia Senate. He founded and served as the first president of the Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia, which would later be reorganized as the
Central of Georgia Railway. Today the Central of Georgia lines are a component of the
Norfolk Southern Railway. Gordon died in Savannah in 1842 from bilious
pleurisy and was originally buried in Colonial Cemetery in that city; however, his grave was later moved to
Laurel Grove Cemetery. One year later, in 1843 the railroad he founded desecrated the important Native American site of
Ocmulgee National Monument, sacred to the
Creek Indians, when it constructed a rail line through the site that partially destroyed the Lesser Temple Mound. In 1873, the Central Railroad built a second rail line through the site, this time nearly destroying the Funeral Mound which contained the graves of the ancestors of the Creek Indians. The workers removed bones and other artifacts from this burial mound further desecrating this sacred site. On June 25, 1882, the Central of Georgia Railroad and Banking Company constructed the
William Washington Gordon Monument in Savannah's
Wright Square. To do so they destroyed the grave of Indian Chief
Tomochichi who had given General Oglethorpe the land on which to found the city of Savannah. Gordon's daughter-in-law, Nellie Kinzie Gordon, was outraged at this perceived insult to Tomochichi thus she and other members of the Colonial Dames of the State of Georgia erected a new monument to Tomochichi, made of granite from
Stone Mountain, and located in the southwest corner of the square.
Gordon, Georgia and
Gordon County, Georgia are both named after Gordon. ==References==