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John Gordon (c. 1710–1778) was a Loyalist British merchant and trader of Scottish origin who lived in South Carolina for many years. He settled in Charles Town about 1760, and from 1759 to 1773 he was a major exporter of deerskins supplied by Native American hunters. Gordon also participated in the transatlantic slave trade, but was not a major importer of captive Africans. John Gordon did business in Charles Town and Savannah, as well as in British East Florida. The regional network of Scottish traders headed by Gordon in Charles Town, and the brothers John and James Graham in Savannah, served as a liaison between government officials (many of them fellow Scots to whom they were connected politically) and the Indian tribes, primarily the Creeks. Gordon also underwrote the mercantile activities of George Galphin, the wealthiest Indian trader in the Southeast, whose trading firm was predominant in the tribal towns of the Chattahoochee Valley and in Coweta. ==Early years== Gordon, the son of Mary MacQueen and John Gordon of Aberdeenshire, appears to have come to America in 1736, possibly among the 130 Highland Scots from Inverness aboard the vessel ''Symond'', in the same convoy that brought John Wesley and his brother Charles to America. They were part of the so-called "Great Embarkation" of settlers recruited to emigrate to the new colony of Georgia founded by James Oglethorpe. A list of the original settlers of St. Simons Island and the soldiers stationed at Fort Frederica in 1736 by General Oglethorpe includes a John Gordon among those who were both settlers and soldiers. His rank is given as captain in the 1751 marriage records of the register of St. Helena's Parish at Beaufort, South Carolina. Gordon started his entrepreneurial career during King George's War (1740-1748), supplying Oglethorpe's Regiment posted at Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island. When the regiment disbanded, he moved to South Carolina, and eventually became one of the leading deerskin traders in the colony. 〔Scottish Merchants and the Shaping of Colonial Georgia Paul M. Pressly The Georgia Historical Quarterly Vol. 91, No. 2 (Summer 2007), p. 151 Published by: Georgia Historical Society〕 Economic prospects for the colony of Georgia had improved considerably by 1759; consequently Gordon determined to expand his operations and opened an office in Savannah headed by Thomas Netherclift, the son-in-law of his deceased longtime partner, and channeled a sizeable part of the deerskin trade through that location. There Gordon purchased a wharf lot, invested in local shipyards, and involved himself in regional activities beyond the profitable mercantile trade, including the establishment of several plantations,〔Pressly 2013, p. 199〕 among them one on Daufuskie Island in South Carolina. During the 1750s, the firm of Elliott and Gordon was the most active in the trade between Beaufort and Georgia. John Gordon managed its affairs in Beaufort while Grey Elliot, a lawyer and land speculator, ran the Sunbury, Georgia office; the company was dissolved in 1760 when Elliot became the deputy auditor for Georgia. The Beaufort and Georgia trade had made Gordon rich—he sold his plantation, advertising his "very convenient dwelling house with kitchen, stable, stores and etc., on the Bay in Beaufort", and moved to Charles Town with his family. In the 1760s, the colony of South Carolina granted titles to the low-water lots on the south side of Bay Street in Beaufort, usually to merchants like Francis Stuart and John Gordon. Local merchants traded in rice and indigo, and ran dry goods stores to supply the townspeople with necessities. Planters from South Carolina had played a leading role in spreading rice cultivation into Georgia, but with the end of Georgia's prohibition on slavery in 1751, Scottish merchants and Indian traders were pioneers in the introduction of slave-based tidal rice cultivation to Georgia on the Savannah River and other saltwater marshlands. In 1762, Gordon, his partner Grey Elliot of Sunbury, and John Mullyrne purchased a 1300-acre tract of land on Hutchinson Island opposite Savannah, which had sold previously for a few shillings per acre.〔Scottish Merchants and the Shaping of Colonial Georgia Paul M. Pressly The Georgia Historical Quarterly Vol. 91, No. 2 (Summer 2007), p. 148 Published by: Georgia Historical Society〕 There they developed 800 acres on the Savannah River for rice cultivation.〔Rowland, 1996, p. 178〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「John Gordon (merchant)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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