The Gordon Surname: Scottish? Or German?

An opening like the title, above, seems to introduce a preposterous question. Ask any number of people their opinion on the matter, and the answer you're likely to get would be, "Scottish. Of course!"

Back when I first began this exploration of my husband's Gordon roots, the only resources at hand—other than the rare email exchange, like the longstanding relationship I mentioned developing with one Gordon researcher—were books. And in one book in particular—focusing on the Gordon family from precisely the location where our Gordons had once settled—even that Gordon family couldn't quite agree on the origin of their progenitor's surname.

You can hardly blame the innocent bystander answering such a question with an emphatic, "Scottish." Taking a look at surname histories for the name Gordon puts that location front and center of all possibilities.

For instance, in a confusing summary, Ancestry.com dubbed Gordon a "habitational name," and explained it likely referred to those living in Berwickshire—historically part of Scotland, though by 1482 considered part of England, yet later lying partly in either jurisdiction.

Further explanation showed, however, that Scotland did not have a lock on that surname. Of course, one likely reason is the migration patterns witnessed between Scotland and Ireland. However, that is not the only spread of the surname. A similar place name—Gourdon—may have come from Normandy or another French location. In addition, the name has popped up in Spanish history as well as in Basque language documents, all ostensibly referring to surnames drawn from place names. To add to the puzzle, apparently there are Jewish descendants from the region of Belarus claiming that same surname.

None of that, however, helps me find any explanation for the contention—by members of his own family, no less!—that our family's progenitor, John Gordon, emigrated to Maryland not from Scotland, but from Germany.

I was fortunate to obtain a copy of a slim genealogical volume entitled The Gordons of Greene County Pennsylvania, which laid out the case for the disagreement about John Gordon's origin. Although my copy doesn't state the author, publisher, nor date it was printed, I've found attributions—now—online, giving credit to Ellen M. Gordon-Dye and dating the volume to 1908.

In the book, the author jumps right into the explanation on the first page:

In so far as there are any traditions at all on the subject, it seems to be agreed that [John Gordon] either spoke a foreign language or at all events talked with an unusual and strongly marked accent—but as to his nationality a striking difference of opinion has existed. The Gordons of Greene County, Pennsylvania, have strongly maintained that he was a German; the Gordons of Ohio, with two exceptions, have been equally insistent that he was Scotch.

Within the first chapter of the book, there are some pages in which, other than one or two lines of text, the rest is filled with footnotes, detailing quotes from family letters with assertions and reasons why one side of the argument or the other was the correct explanation. Though one side of the story or the other would then, obviously, seem to be incorrect, each side felt very strongly that their version was the truth of the matter.

Perhaps the concluding compromise—still visible today on the property of the old Gordon homestead near Waynesboro, Pennsylvania—comes closest to the truth. From a monument erected ("recently," according to the 1908 Gordon family history book) in memory of the man considered the American family's patriarch:

John Gordon

Ancestor of the

Gordon Family

of Greene County.

Born

In Scotland A.D. 1739.

Removed to Germany,

and Thence Emigrated

to America.

Died

March 29, 1816.

Aged 77 Years.