New Spalding Club > House of Gordon > Gordons under arms

xlvi HOUSE OF GORDON.
A second foreign group, still more clearly defined, is descended from
the Gordons of Coldwells, through a younger son who went to Poland
as a merchant, as a birth brieve of June 27, 1718, now possessed by his
family at Laskowitz, and corroborated by a copy in the Aberdeen Pro-
pinquity Register, sei'ves to prove. The family is now represented by
Dr. Franz von Gordon-Coldwells, whose grandfather Adolf, with two
brothers Franz and Edmond, were all in the Prussian Army. The best-
known family settled abroad is that of the Gordons of Wardhouse, who
have been long connected with Spain, although they are also intimately
connected with their native Aberdeenshire, where they still own
Wardhouse.
The entry of the Scot into foreign armies came gradually to an
end with the discovery of our Dominions beyond the Seas, and the
foreigner's coincident growth of ability to do for himself what we and
others had largely done for him. Except for Gordons who had practically
become foreigners, we find a complete stoppage of foreign service ; al-
though the vitality of the Gordons is so great that in one case a Spanish
Gordon, Jose Mariajof the Wardhouse family, has lived to enter our own
service as commander of the forces in the Commonwealth of Australia.
The case is unique, for between 1840, when the laird of Buthlaw left
Greece, and the present time, I know of only one Gordon who took service
on the Continent, namely, the Rev. Charles Menzies Gordon, who raised
men for the Papal Zouaves in 1867. The London Weekly Despatch re-
ported (May I, 1904), on the authority of the " Conscript Department of
the Russian Ministry of War," that among the " 150 distinctively
British names among the Czar's non-commissioned soldiers," appeared
that of "Gordon, of Aberdeen"; but all efforts to verify the statement have
completely failed. One would have included him in the Foreign Legion,
for so many Gordons of good family entered the ranks of foreign armies
that the rule adopted in the British list of excluding everybody beneath
the rank of a warrant officer has been waived.
It will be noted that the details in the Foreign List are fuller than
in the case of the Home Services, for the simple reason that many
of them have been found in places unlikely to be searched by the
genealogical student, and several are the result of correspondence
carried on for several years before this work was contemplated. One
must wait patiently for the full examination of the more minute historical