Van Dorn House

Van Dorn House
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Show map of MississippiShow map of the United StatesShow all
Location	Van Dorn Dr., Port Gibson, Mississippi
Coordinates	31°56′24″N 91°2′15″W / 31.94000°N 91.03750°W / 31.94000; -91.03750Coordinates: 31°56′24″N 91°2′15″W / 31.94000°N 91.03750°W / 31.94000; -91.03750
Area	5.6 acres (2.3 ha)
MPS	Port Gibson MRA
NRHP reference No.	71000446[1]
Added to NRHP	June 21, 1971

The Van Dorn House is a historic hilltop residence in Port Gibson, Mississippi built circa 1830 for Peter Aaron Van Dorn and which became the childhood home of his son, who became a U.S. Army officer then Confederate Major General Earl Van Dorn. A historic marker onsite gives the home's date as ca. 1830 and the style as Federal architecture. The residence was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 21, 1971, and the house and surrounding 5.1 acres donated to the State of Mississippi Department of Archives and History by December 1972. In 1979 a revised site survey due to development of the surrounding area expanded the historically relevant site to about 20 acres.^[2] The house is located on Van Dorn Drive.

Peter Van Dorn and his soldier son are not buried on the property but rather at Wintergreen Cemetery in Port Gibson. The general did not die in battle, but was shot over an alleged affair by a doctor/legislator near Nashville, Tennessee, and his corpse ultimately returned to Mississippi (although his wife is buried in Alabama and the doctor was not prosecuted).^[3][4]

Peter Van Dorn[]

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^{[citation needed]} 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. 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.^[7][5]

Major General Earl Van Dorn[]

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.^[8] 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.^{[9][10][11][12]}

His sister, Emily Van Dorn, later wrote a book, A Soldier's Honor With Reminiscences of Major-General Earl Van Dorn, in an attempt to clear her brother's name.^[13][14]

See also[]

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

References[]

This article about a property in Mississippi on the National Register of Historic Places is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

• v
• t