Van Dorn House

Peter Van Dorn was raised in New Jersey with nearly a dozen siblings, educated at what became Princeton University and emigrated to the Mississippi when he was 21 years old, his first wife having died in Virginia. Territorial Governor Claiborne appointed him marshal of Natchez in 1804.[5] Many prospective settlers and their slaves traveled southward along the Natchez Trace, a historic trail from what became Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez, and the elder Van Dorn also helped develop Port Gibson and the surrounding Claiborne County alongside the road and Mississippi River. Governor Claiborne appointed Peter Van Dorn as clerk for Claiborne County in 1810, and in 1816 he became the clerk of the territory's new House of Representatives (which later became the state legislature). In 1821 the relatively new Mississippi legislature created an Orphan Court system (handling probate matters) and appointed Peter Van Dorn to the circuit including Claiborne County. That same year, the legislature decided to create a new state capital at Jackson, Mississippi and appointed Peter VanDorn among the commissioners who in April 1822 submitted a plan using a "checkerboard" pattern advocated by Thomas Jefferson, in which city blocks alternated with parks and other open spaces, giving the appearance of a checkerboard (although not always followed by later developers).

The elder Van Dorn bought the land on which this house was built in 1826.[6] He also was first clerk of the Georgia State House of Representatives Van Dorn married Sophia Donelson Caffery, of a prominent Tennessee family, who bore all his children who survived to adulthood. However, she did not live long in this house, nor to see them reach adulthood, dying before mid-1831. Sophia's great-grandfather Col. John Donaldson had been an aide to General George Washington during the American Revolutionary War before moving to what became Tennessee and helped found Fort Nashborough (which later became Nashville). Sophia's aunt Rachel Donelson Caffery had married a U.S. Army officer who became General Andrew Jackson, but died before his presidency. Jackson visited the house on various trips, and Peter Van Dorn once traveled to Washington, D.C. with his daughter Octavia to meet President Jackson at the White House. A nephew in Louisiana became a prominent sugar planter, Confederate officer and U.S. Senator Donelson Caffery after the American Civil War, and Sophia's sister Sarah was also the mother of future Confederate general.[7] Peter Aaron Van Dorn also designed McGregor (Port Gibson, Mississippi), located on SR 547 in Port Gibson, Mississippi, in a Greek Revival architecture style and built in 1835 for his daughter.[8][9]

Portrait of Major-General Earl Van Dorn

Future Gen. Earl Van Dorn was born in Port Gibson about a decade before this house was built. He received a private education, and was orphaned in 1837 when his father drowned en route to inspecting a plantation on the Yahoo River. The younger Van Dorn attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, graduating in 1842 and beginning a military career. He won promotions during the Mexican-American War and Seminole War and became the commanding officer at the border garrison at Mason, Texas by 1860, but resigned his U.S. Army Commission following President Lincoln's election. He rose to become a Confederate general in the American Civil War.[10] His womanizing (with two legitimate children by his wife since 1843, as well as three illegitimate children and a reputation as "the terror of ugly husbands") may have led to his death on May 7, 1863 in Spring Hill, Tennessee, shot in the side of his head by a local doctor and legislator, who turned himself in to Union authorities and was not prosecuted, possibly since he had caught his wife embracing VanDorn on April 12 and his unmarried 15-year-old daughter was pregnant.[11][12][13][14] His sister Emily Van Dorn later wrote a book "A Soldier's Honor" to clear her brother's name.[15]

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Claiborne County, Mississippi
• Confederate Army of West Tennessee