A. P. Gordon: Teacher, Businessman, and Politician (1847–1921)

Alonzo Peyton Gordon (also referred to as A. P. or Lon Gordon), teacher, businessman, and politician, was born on February 13, 1847, to William and Mary Elizabeth (Peyton) Gordon in Pine Log, Georgia, a community in Cass (now Bartow) County, forty-four miles north of Atlanta. His father died in 1852. According to an obituary published in the Granbury News, Gordon served in the Second Georgia Regiment in the last two years of the Civil War. However, no record of this service has been located. About 1870 Gordon moved to Texas and worked as a schoolteacher. He settled in Granbury, Hood County, where he was joined by his mother, Elizabeth, until her death in 1879.

On March 4, 1874, Gordon married Lana Wright. She was the daughter of Andrew Jackson Wright, Hood County’s first sheriff. Lana and A. P. Gordon raised eight children. In Granbury’s early days, Gordon established himself as a leading citizen. He presided over the first board of directors of Hood County public schools and served as a school examiner and county superintendent. Later he was a founding trustee of the Granbury Community School, established in 1883.

Gordon was a successful merchant and businessman. He owned two dry goods stores, one in Granbury and another fifteen miles away in Bluff Dale, Erath County. He also operated a cotton gin in Bluff Dale and owned a half interest in the Granbury cotton gin. In 1882 Gordon’s commercial success enabled him to build a stately two-story home on Pearl Street in downtown Granbury, where it still stands. Gordon was elected Granbury alderman in 1894, 1898, and 1902. He served as a director of the First National Bank at Granbury and as a district vice-president of the Associated Commercial Clubs of Texas.

From 1899 to 1901 Gordon served in the Texas state legislature and represented House District 80, comprised of Hood, Parker, and Tarrant counties. He had been nominated at the 1898 district Democratic convention as a dark horse candidate following twenty-six rounds of balloting. His nomination was controversial; the Hood County delegation had backed Fred H. Chandler. In the general election, Morris won Tarrant and Parker counties while losing his home county to People’s party opponent R. S. Whitehead. Morris took his seat in the House on January 10, 1899. He succeeded former General Land Office commissioner William Lafayette McGaughey.

In the Twenty-second Texas Legislature Gordon served on five House committees—those on Finance, Internal Improvements, Commerce and Manufactures, County Government and County Finance, and Examination of Comptroller’s and Treasurer’s Accounts. He proposed House Bill No. 301, which would have repealed Article 491 of the Texas Penal Code, which levied a fine against those who failed to work on public roads after being legally summoned to do so. The bill was rejected in committee. Together with Representative Benjamin Palmer, he also proposed House Bill No. 762, which addressed a conflict in the times for holding district court in Hood and Palo Pinto counties. The bill passed both chambers unanimously and become law in 1899. In 1900 Gordon ran for reelection but lost the Democratic primary against Richard David Mugg.

Gordon’s wife, Lana Wright Gordon, died on April 8, 1903. In 1905 Gordon’s Bluff Dale cotton gin was destroyed in a fire. The plant was valued at about $5,000 but insured at only around $3,000. The following year Gordon and F. J. Salmon and Company, in which he was partnered, were forced into involuntary bankruptcy. Gordon settled his debts for thirty cents on the dollar.

On December 22, 1907, the sixty-year-old Gordon married Susie M. Baker, a native of North Carolina, in Fort Worth. Gordon lived the rest of his life in his Granbury home before dying from myocarditis on November 9, 1921. He was buried at the Granbury Cemetery. Gordon was a Mason and a member of the Methodist Church. His son George W. Gordon subsequently served as mayor of Granbury. The Gordon home remained in the family until 1982. The following year the Texas Historical Commission erected a historical marker at the house, which is now part of Tarleton State University’s Dora Lee Langdon Cultural and Educational Center.