Harry Gordon

Slave-owner of Grenada, who fought a legal battle to establish his legitimacy in 1818.

1. Will of Harry Gordon of Roehampton Villa Surrey proved 20/12/1836. In the will he left his estate called Peggy's Whim in Grenada to his nephew Peter Gordon, then residing on or managing Observatory, and left Observatory itself and his lands in Pennsylvania in trust to raise £10,000 for his daughter Hannah, who married Rear Admiral William Abdy Fellowes-Gordon in 1857.

2. Nov. 1 [1836], at Roehampton Villa, in the 70th year of his age, [death of] Harry Gordon. Esq., of Knockespoch and Terpeisie, in the county of Aberdeen, North Britain.

Reports of Cases in the High Court of Chancery during the time of Lord Chancellor Eldon vol. III pp. 400-483, 'Gordon v Gordon.' Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, is a descendant of the Fellowes-Gordon family: an unreferenced article reproduced at http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-man-behind-house-just-what-does-it.htm [accessed 27/04/2018] says that Thomas Fellowes (d. 1748) and his father had owned estates in Jamaica but that ['T]oday all record of the Fellowes's holdings in Jamaica is lost'; it describes Katherine Abdy, the first wife of Sir Thomas Fellowes, as 'daughter of a baronet with connections to the Duke of Wellington' and Hannah Gordon, wife of William Abdy Fellowes, as 'only child and heir of Harry Gordon of Knockespoch' and makes no mention of their slave-ownership.

1. PROB 11/1870/112

2. London Shipping Gazette 11/11/1836 p. 4.