This brief outline of the Gordons of Lesmoir is abstracted from Memorials of the Family of Gordon of Lesmoir in the County of Aberdeen, by Captain Douglas Wimberley, printed for the author at the office of the Northern Chronicle, Inverness, 1893.

James Gordon of Lesmoir, later Sir James, 5^th laird and 1^st Bart., was born c. 1565 and lived until an advanced age in 1642. He married Rebecca Keith, daughter of Keith of Ravenscraig, whose father was Sir William Keith of Inverugie.

James was the son of Alexander Gordon, 4^th laird of Lesmoir (c. 1540 - 1609), who married Marriot (elsewhere encountered as Anne) Forbes, a daughter of Alexander Forbes of Pitsligo. Marriot / Anne’s mother was Beatrix, a daughter of Alexander, 4^th Lord Abernethy of Saltoun. Alexander and his wife, also Beatrix, obtained a charter from his father, John Forbes of Pitsligo, on 8^th December 1521.

George Gordon, 3^rd laird of Lesmoir, is stated to have been born c. 1516 and to have lived until c. 1590. His wife was Katharine, a daughter of Forbes of Tolquhoun.

George was apparently the eldest son of James, 2^nd laird of Lesmoir, but there is some difficulty here owing to a tradition that George predeceased his father. Wimberley goes some way to refuting this theory at p. 18, so that George, 3^rd of Lesmoir, was in all probability one and the same as James’s eldest son.

James’s fourth son was William Gordon, 1^st laird of Terpersie. James Gordon, 2^nd laird of Lesmoir, and his wife, Margaret Ogilivy, were therefore the common ancestors of the Gordons of Terpersie and of the subsequent Gordons of Lesmoir.