S2 ALEXANDER GORDON, THE ANTIQUARY. 



the author of the Itinerarium and other learned folios and quartos. 

 When the address which supplies those facts was delivered, in 1829, 

 a younger Alexander Gordon, possibly enough a grandson of the 

 antiquary, was secretary of the Society. In the centenary address 

 due attention is given to the memory of notable members ; Alexander 

 Skene, an original Member of the Council of the Province ; John 

 Fraser, a favourite trader among the Yamassee Indians, and cele- 

 brated in the early history of the state for his romantic escape, with 

 his family, from a massacre, in the Indian War of 1715 ; Mr. 

 Crokatt, first Treasurer of the Society, a wealthy Charleston mer- 

 chant, and the link, as we may presume, between the old Charleston 

 Club and his namesake of the Golden Key, who styles himself 

 Bibliopola ad Societatem. The Londoner was a bibliopole of note in 

 his day ; originated the Universal History, and had a hand in starting 

 the Daily Advertiser. His Excellency, Governor Robert Johnson ; . 

 Robert Wright, Chief Justice of South Carolina ; The Honourable 

 James Abercrombie, of the House of Tullibody, second President of 

 the Society ; the Rev. Dr. Alexander Hewat, the earliest historian of 

 the state; and others of the South Carolinian brethren of St. Andrew, in 

 like manner come under review ; but so wholly had the literary or 

 antiquarian fame of tJie author of the Itinerarium proved an exotic in 

 his New World home, that my fresh inquiries after any surviving 

 traces of him in South Carolina were responded to by the acknow- 

 ledgment that such a name did indeed appear on the old rolls 

 of the Society, but nothing was known of the man. No one 

 dreamt of its being that of the ever-memorable Sandie Gordon 

 of Jonathan Oldbuck ; and so I received, in lieu of what I 

 craved, a minute record of another Aberdonian colonist, Dr. Alex- 

 ander Garden, P. R. S., a zealous student of botany and natural 

 history, and subsequently Vice-President of the Royal Society of 

 London, who in. 1755 accompanied Governor Glen on a journey into 

 the country of the Cherokee Nation. As to the actual subject of my 

 inquiries, my informant added that, after diligent search, his labours 

 resulted only in the two following facts: — "That about 1750 one 

 Alexander Gordon became a member of the St. Andrew's Society ; 

 and that about 1755 one Alexander Gordon's will was proved before 

 the proper Probate Court ; but the records being destroyed by Gen. 

 Sherman when he burnt Columbia, the will could not be found." 



