John Foster Gordon was born August 18, 1850 in Walhalla, South Carolina, and moved with his parents to Georgia, when he was six years old.  He joined the confederate army as a teenager.  After the war, he came with his parents to Upshur County, Texas.  He became a civil engineer, studying at a college in Daingerfield.  He surveyed land in West Texas, moved first to .Brown County, then to Gatesville.  In February, 1876, he moved to Camp Colorado.  He helped survey and plot the City of Coleman.

In 1878, he married Dora Alice Mason, the daughter of William Mason, where the Coleman depot now stands.  She was born November 28, 1861 in Parker County and came to Coleman County as a child.  Her grandparents came from North Carolina and her great grandmother, who was an Adams, came to Virginia from England in 1700.  Dora died January 16, 1921, buried at Coleman.

J. F. Gordon served as County Surveyor, elected in 1878.  He served 2 or 3 terms as district clerk and was postmaster for the City of Coleman.  He started the first permanent drug store in Coleman in 1878.  Later, he took L. E. Collins as his partner.  Collins had come from Upshur County also, and had come to Coleman with Gordon.  He also operated hardware stores as sole owner as well as in partnerships; Gordon and Roscoe and Gordon and Pittman.  He also sold furniture and farm equipment.  He had extensive farming and ranching interests in Coleman County and New Mexico.  He retired to the old Kin Elkins place on the Jim Ned that he bought in 1931 or 1932.  He died January 31, 1941, at the home of his son, Dr. Jack Gordon in Coleman.  He had one sister in Coleman County, Josie Hambright, mother of Obie, John and Bill (see John W. Hambright).  Children of J. F. and Dora (Mason) Gordon:


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