Peter Aaron Van Dorn

Peter Aaron Van Dorn was born on September 12, 1773 near Peapack, New Jersey.[1][2] He descended from the Van Doorn family. Members of this family were elevated to the Dutch nobility in the 19th century.[1][2] Emigrants to the New World became wealthy farmers, particularly in Monmouth County, New Jersey and Somerset County, New Jersey.[1] His father was Aaron Van Dorn (1744-1830) and his mother, Ghacy Schenck (1748-1820).[2]

He studied theology and law at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), graduating in 1795.[1][2][3]

Van Dorn first moved to Virginia.[2] After his first wife died, he moved to the Mississippi Territory at the age of twenty-one.[2]

He became a lawyer in Natchez, Mississippi.[1] In 1804, Territorial Governor William C. C. Claiborne appointed Van Dorn Marshal of Natchez.[2] Shortly after, he moved to Port Gibson, Mississippi, forty miles away from Natchez, a port city on the Mississippi River and on the Natchez Trace to what became Nashville, Tennessee. Van Dorn established a private practise in Port Gibson and served as clerk of the Circuit Court from about 1810.[1][2] In 1817, he became Clerk of the Mississippi House of Representatives.[2]

He was a proponent of establishing public schools in Mississippi.[1] In 1821, he served on a commission alongside Dr William Lattimore and General Thomas Hinds to decide upon the location of the future state capital, Jackson, Mississippi.[1][2] The new town's plan followed a 'checkerboard' plan suggested by Thomas Jefferson, whereby houses would be interspersed by parks and green spaces.[2]

He built the Van Dorn House in Port Gibson, now listed on the National Register of Historic places.[2] He also built another house in Grand Gulf, ten miles away from Port Gibson.[2] It was destroyed during the Battle of Grand Gulf in 1863 during the American Civil War; it stood where the Grand Gulf Military State Park now stands.[2] Additionally, he owned a plantation on the Yazoo River as well as African slaves.[1][2]

Van Dorn was a prominent freemason, in the Washington Lodge No. 3 of Port Gibson, Mississippi.[2]

The Van Dorn House in Port Gibson, Mississippi.

Although Van Dorn wrote his will in 1830, he died on February 12, 1837 at his plantation near the Yazoo River.[1] He was buried with Masonic honors in the Wintergreen Cemetery in Port Gibson, Mississippi.[2] Daniel Vertner was the sole executor of his will.[2]