Hon. W. W. Gordon was born in Winchester, Tennessee, May 20, 1848. His father, Dr. Amzi B. Gordon, was a native of the county of Bedford, moving to Franklin County in about the year 1841, where he began the practice of medicine, soon building up a large and lucrative practice. He was a zealous member of the Baptist Church and one of the founders of the celebrated Mary Sharp College, at Winchester. He died in 1855. His mother is a daughter of John March, a highly respected farmer of the county, and a sister of Hon. Hayden March, who represented Franklin County several times in the Legislature.
Mr. Gordon received only the rudiments of an English education at Carrick Academy, in his native town, the suspension of the schools during the five years of war depriving him, as it did thousands of the youth of the south, of the means of obtaining an education. He entered a printing office during the war, partly for the educational advantages thus offered, but principally for the meager salary thereby obtained for the support of his widowed mother and sister. He moved to Nashville soon after the war, working in the various departments of the newspaper offices of that city. He spent several years in visiting the principal cities of the Union. In 1870 he was married to Miss Mary E. Fletcher, daughter of G. G. and Ann Fletcher, of Shelbyville, Tennessee. He has but one child, Russell W., born in 1871. In 1874 he moved to Lynchburg, Moore County, and in April of that year established the Sentinel, continuing its publication for five years. During that period he was four times elected mayor, and was chosen twice by the county court as superintendent of public instruction. Attracted by the excellent schools of his native town, he returned to Winchester in 1883, to educate his son.
In 1884 he was elected representative of Franklin County in the Forty-fourth General Assembly of the State. He is an enthusiastic advocate of popular education, a democrat in politics, and a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church South.