page_title: Thomas Edward Gordon
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Edward Gordon / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: "Chinese Taifurchis -- Kashgar Army", illustration from T.E. Gordon's "Roof of the World". Taifurchi were Yaqub Beg's corps of Dungan and Chinese gunners (from Chinese 大炮, 'big gun') during his reign in Kashgaria in the 1870s.
context_page_description: Sir Thomas Edward Gordon KCIE KCB CSI was a Scottish soldier, diplomat, and traveler. A British Army officer, he fought in India, served as a diplomat in Tehran, and travelled across the Pamirs. These days he is primarily remembered as an author of several books about India, Persia, and Central Asia of the 19th century.
context_section_description: In 1862, Gordon married firstly, Mary Helen Sawers, daughter of Alexander Sibbald Sawers.  They had four daughters,  Helen Elizabeth (1863–1942), Alexa Anna  (9 January 1867 –  18 November 1867), Jeanetta (1876–1963), and Violet Mary (1878–1972), and a son who died in childhood, Thomas William Gordon (1868–1876).
  Mary Helen died in 1879 and he married secondly in 1894, Charlotte Davison. 
  He was also a painter, perhaps the first European to paint the landscapes of certain remote locations of the Pamirs.
  Gordon died in 1914 at his home in Kensington.
caption: "Chinese Taifurchis" (gunners) in Kashgar, T.E. Gordon's drawing in The Roof of the World
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