William Gordon of Birkenburn
c 1650 to c 1740
GOR00028
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William
Gordon of Birkenburn, a small property, valued at £80
per annum in the LeeseBooks(?) (see a Survey of the
Province of Moray by Alex Leslie p 298 Ed. 1798). This, however, is an uncertain indication of
value or extent I think, it had contained between two and three hundred acres. It is situated on the banks of a streamlet
called the ? Soun/Loan/Loun ?, running into the Isla about two miles from Keith
in the county of Banff.
William
Gordon, Esquire of Birkenburn, is mentioned as one of
the proprietors of the Parish of Keith in a description of that place written
about 1742 (see Vol 2 of the Spalding Club’s Antiquities of Aberdeen and
Banffshire p242). On the death of his son
the old man had so far relented as to send for the two younger boys, James and
John, who certainly had left Peterhead and gone to him whether by invitation or
not prior to 1740.
(“The Gordon Victorian Narrative, c 1850”)
1660
Let’s say
William Gordon was born in about 1660. No records have yet been found, except for
the Victorian script written by an unknown great great
grandchild, so we have a working assumption to try to make sense of the facts.
He might have married an unknown person in say about
1680. His surviving children may have been born between 1685 and 1690.
By this time he had a ‘small’ property, Birkenburn which may have extended to 200 to 300 acres. The
Victorian script says it is about two miles from Keith.
There is indeed a location, the Mains of Birkenburn about 3 km southeast of Keith.
1807 map
Birkenburn was a notable house and estate in Keith, Banffshire
and historically a minor house of the Gordon family dating back to the 1500s
and linked to the Gordon of Lesmoir and the Earl of
Huntly. The house moved from the Gordons to the Stuarts in the 18th Century
when the male line died out. It had
disappeared by the time the Ordnance Survey began producing its maps but does
feature in earlier maps including the map above by Aaron Arrowsmith from 1807,
located a few miles south-east of Keith.
The
history of the family appears in many notable genealogy publications of the
time and opened up a new opportunity for my research. My findings found a
family whose history and links extend into many of the notable families and
historical events in Scotland. A 19th century local history book of the town of
Keith makes a tantalising claim of the Birkenburn
Gordons being related to royalty in both Scotland and England.
(Heart of
Scotland Ancestry blog, The Stuarts and Gordons of Birkenburn, 27 April 2021)
The Birkenburn link therefore ties the history of this part of
the family into the wider Clan Gordon history.
1742
He is mentioned as one of the proprietors at Birkenburn of the Parish of Keith in a description of that
place written about 1742.
1750
We know his older son William Gordon the Younger died
before he did. He probably lived to an old age. He may have lived until about
1750, when he might have been about 90.
All these dates are guesses, to try to make sense of
the Victorian script.