John Gordon of Aikenhead

Partner in Stirling, Gordon (q.v) of Glasgow, leaving £118,543 at death. Although John Gordon of Aikenhead died in 1828, he is very probably the same man as the John Gordon whose name was included with other partners in Stirling Gordon in compensation claims in Jamaica arising from mortgages entered into by the partnership while he was alive. [If he is not, then the John Gordon of the compensation records appears likely to be John Gordon the son of John Gordon of Aikenhead and Janet Hamilton].

1. Built Aikenhead House on the pre-existing Aikenhead estate in Cathcart, Lanarkshire, 1806 (with wings added 1823) from designs by David Hamilton. Stephanie Barczewksi shows his total spending on the house in purchase and rebuilding as £63,000 up to 1819.

2. Anthony Cooke shows his estate as including £16,628 in Thistle bank stock; £68,725 in James Finlay and Co.; £10,352 due from Stirling Gordon; and £11,223 from other Glasgow merchants (James Fyffe; Mungo and Alex Campbell).

W.D. Rubinstein, Who were the rich? A biographical directory of British wealth-holders Vol. 1 1809-1839 (20090 pp. 308-309, reference 1829/35.

1. J.Guthrie Smith and J. Oswald Mitchell, Old country houses of the old Glasgow gentry (1878) I Aikenhead, http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/smihou/smihou001.htm [accessed 09/01/2015].

2. Anthony Cooke, 'An elite revisited: Glasgow West India merchants, 1783-1877', Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 32.2 2012 pp. 127-165 at p.160, Will SC 36/51/7/901 11/08/1829, Inventory SC 36/48/21/618, same date; Stephanie Barczewski, Country Houses and the British Empire, 1700-1930 p. 27.