Notorious 1800s Minnesota con man gets his own play — and a cocktail

Lord Gordon Gordon

You've probably never even heard of Lord Gordon Gordon, but you will. He's the title character in an upcoming musical at History Theatre, he just earned a historian a tidy little grant and, soon, visitors to the St. Paul Hotel will be tippling a cocktail cocktail named after Gordon Gordon.

Gordon, whose name is a pseudonym but whose real name is not known, was a con man of the mid-1800s. Posing as a Scotsman, he began his swindling career in Minnesota but he shifted the con to New York, where he fooled society's elite. At one point, as depicted in Chan Poling and Jeffrey Hatcher's "Lord Gordon Gordon," which opens May 5, he almost touched off a war between the U.S. and Canada.

Jenny McElroy, a reference librarian at Minnesota Historical Society, knows all of that. McElroy -- who notes that Gordon's story rubs up against such luminaries as President Ulysses S. Grant and Horace Greeley -- has been researching Gordon for a series of articles or a book and she just received a $2,500 grant from a division of the American Library Association to continue that work.

The cocktail will be served at the St. Paul Grill and, yup, there's Scotch in it. The real stuff. According to the hotel's spokesman, Ryan Stanzel, the Lord of Larceny drink includes Glenlivet 12-year Scotch, bourbon, lemon juice, simple syrup, orange bitters and a maraschino cherry.