ALEXANDER GORDON, THE ANTIQUARY. 33 



Here seemed a hopeless termination to my too tardy inquiries 

 after tlie old colonist. Early in November, 1864, General Sherman 

 telegraphed to Washington : " Georgia and South Carolina are at 

 my mercy, and I shall strike." On the 15th of the same month he 

 gave Atlanta to the flames, and set out on the great march in which 

 he swept, like a destroying angel, through the South. Columbia, 

 the capital of the latter state, experienced the same fate as Atlanta ; 

 and among the many treasures that perished I could no longer doubt 

 that, with all its other records of varying worth and value, the will 

 of Alexander Gordon, with the evidence it contained of family ties 

 and fortune's favours, had for ever passed beyond recal. But not 

 so. The indefatigable zeal of General de Saussure, stimulated by a 

 hearty appreciation of the interest attaching to the search, led him 

 to hunt for months among old deeds and records, with the gratifying 

 result of adding various facts to our knowledge of the object of in- 

 quuy, in addition to the recovery of the highly characteristic docu- 

 ment of the antiquary's last will, and its evidences of the ruling 

 passion strong in death. 



In one of the public offices, in Charleston, my kind correspondent 

 traced out the recorded copy of a deed by which one Hamerton, the 

 Registrar of the Province, farms out his office to Alexander Gordon, 

 and appoints him, as liis attorney, to transact all the business and 

 receive all the fees of the office. " The book," he adds, " in which 

 the deed is recorded, is so rotted away by the ink as to make it 

 scarcely legible, and the leaves fall in pieces as they are tiu-ned." 

 Nevertheless, it has been recovered ere too late ; and here we find the 

 old Aberdeen Master of Arts, Music Teacher, Painter, Land Sur- 

 veyor, Litterateur, Secretary of the London Antiquaries, of the 

 Egyptian Club, &c., in an entii-ely novel character as Attorney-at- 

 Law, and Registrar of the Province of South Carolina. Among 

 other recorded conveyances. General de Saussure has also traced one 

 of a large lot of land in Charleston, in 1746, to Alexander Gordon, 

 which he must have possessed at the time of his death ; though such 

 was not the kind of worldly estate of which he made much account 

 in the final disposition of his goods. It is also appai-ent, from the 

 same record, that he was domiciled in South Carolina prior to 28th 

 March, 1746, the date of the conveyance to him, and that he died 

 before 23rd Ju.ly, 1755, as upon that day Alexander Gordon and 

 [prances Charlotte Gordon, as devisees of Alexander Gordon, convey 

 the lot to Sii' Egerton Leigh. 

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