Born in Ohoopee, Georgia, to Alexander James Gordon and Sarah John Williams Gordon, Alexander Jackson Gordon floated logs down the Altamaha River as a young man to pay his way through medical school. After graduating from the Georgia Medical College at Augusta in 1888, he established a medical practice in Lyons, Georgia, later went to Waynesville, Georgia, and there met and married Carolina Butler Wiggins on October 30, 1907. In 1917 he moved to Jesup to join his boyhood friend Jeff Rogers in practice after Rogers had purchased the local hospital from Doctor Crummery, and Gordon bought the drugstore. In 1918 he purchased the house at 148 East Cherry Street and lived there for the rest of his life. He assisted in the formation of the Jesup Presbyterian Church in 1922 and the Mannington Presbyterian Church in 1929, was active in city government, and served on the Jesup City Council for several years. He also devoted much of his time to agriculture and was the first citizen to introduce Hereford cattle to Wayne County. In addition to treating the citizens of Jesup, he served as medical examiner for the local Selective Service board and physician to convicts at the State Highway Camp in Brantley County. He lived up to his Hippocratic Oath all his life, seeing his last patient the day before he died, and he is buried in the Jesup City Cemetery.