New Spalding Club > House of Gordon > Gordons under arms
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xxil HOUSE OF GORDON.
Indian officers, Thomas Wilkinson Gordon, was among the first
men to fall at Cabul in the awful tragedy of 1841 (in an attempt to
rescue the Commissariat Fort). Another of the same group. Colonel
Stannus Verner Gordon, won the Distinguished Service Order in Chitral
in 1895. None of them has been connected with the North of Scotland
since they took to the India service in 1803. On the other hand, the
landowning side of the house has kept to the home services and is
intimately associated with Aberdeenshire, the only son of the present
laird of Newton having given up his soldiering at an early age in
favour of cattle-raising and other activities of a countiy-gentleman's
life, thereby illustrating the trend of circumstance which I have
described. This particular case is typical.
As a pendant to this note on the India Office material, it should be
remarked that the names of places have been transcribed in the spelling
in which they appear at the moment of the original entry. To stan-
dardise them is a hopeless task, when the authorities themselves have
failed to agree on any one system of spelling.
On leaving, though not exhausting, the India Office, Mrs. Skelton
returned for a second time to the Record Office, to " redd " up various
moot points and to tackle the Navy more thoroughly than she had
hitherto done. Not that it amounted to much, for the number of
Gordons in the services at the present time (102 in the Army to 23 in
the Navy) represents very fairly the proportion that has always existed
in the two Services.
Mrs. Skelton had now amassed material from five main sources,
acquired in the following order : (i) The Gentleman's Magazine, the Scots
Magazine, and the Times ; (2) the printed Navy and Army Lists
and East India Registers; (3) the London Gazette; (4) the Public
Record Office ; and (5) the India Office. She held in addition a mass
of notes accumulated by the Editor of the House of Gordon, who has
been responsible for most of the purely genealogical data throughout
the whole book. She had been looking in ships and regiments for
Gordons ; now she had to connect Gordons with particular ships and
regiments ; in both cases the genealogical character of the work was
paramount, and it is here that the whole task has differed from all other
efforts in Service biographj'.
It is not easy to decide which of the two tasks was the more
Indian officers, Thomas Wilkinson Gordon, was among the first
men to fall at Cabul in the awful tragedy of 1841 (in an attempt to
rescue the Commissariat Fort). Another of the same group. Colonel
Stannus Verner Gordon, won the Distinguished Service Order in Chitral
in 1895. None of them has been connected with the North of Scotland
since they took to the India service in 1803. On the other hand, the
landowning side of the house has kept to the home services and is
intimately associated with Aberdeenshire, the only son of the present
laird of Newton having given up his soldiering at an early age in
favour of cattle-raising and other activities of a countiy-gentleman's
life, thereby illustrating the trend of circumstance which I have
described. This particular case is typical.
As a pendant to this note on the India Office material, it should be
remarked that the names of places have been transcribed in the spelling
in which they appear at the moment of the original entry. To stan-
dardise them is a hopeless task, when the authorities themselves have
failed to agree on any one system of spelling.
On leaving, though not exhausting, the India Office, Mrs. Skelton
returned for a second time to the Record Office, to " redd " up various
moot points and to tackle the Navy more thoroughly than she had
hitherto done. Not that it amounted to much, for the number of
Gordons in the services at the present time (102 in the Army to 23 in
the Navy) represents very fairly the proportion that has always existed
in the two Services.
Mrs. Skelton had now amassed material from five main sources,
acquired in the following order : (i) The Gentleman's Magazine, the Scots
Magazine, and the Times ; (2) the printed Navy and Army Lists
and East India Registers; (3) the London Gazette; (4) the Public
Record Office ; and (5) the India Office. She held in addition a mass
of notes accumulated by the Editor of the House of Gordon, who has
been responsible for most of the purely genealogical data throughout
the whole book. She had been looking in ships and regiments for
Gordons ; now she had to connect Gordons with particular ships and
regiments ; in both cases the genealogical character of the work was
paramount, and it is here that the whole task has differed from all other
efforts in Service biographj'.
It is not easy to decide which of the two tasks was the more
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Publications by Scottish clubs > New Spalding Club > House of Gordon > Gordons under arms > (32) Page xxii |
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