John Ker (planter)

Ker worked as a medical doctor.^[6][7] He served as a surgeon for the US Army in the War of 1812 and the Creek War of 1813–1814.^[3]

Ker also became a planter, owning the Good Hope Plantation in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, which produced cotton as a commodity crop, based on slave labor.^[6] He was a patron of Oakland College, near Rodney, Mississippi, a college founded by Rev. Jeremiah Chamberlain (1794–1851) that closed during the American Civil War.^[4]

In the 1830s, Ker was elected and served in the Louisiana State Senate.^[2] That same decade, together with major slave owners Isaac Ross (1760–1838), Edward McGehee (1786–1880), Stephen Duncan (1787–1867), and educator Chamberlain, all from Mississippi, he co-founded the Mississippi Colonization Society (MCS). Its goal was to send free people of color to a colony run by the society called Mississippi-in-Africa in order to remove them from the southern slave society. Ker served as a vice-president of the society.^[2][7][8][9] The organization was modeled after the American Colonization Society and focused on free people of color in Mississippi and later Louisiana, both of which had large enslaved populations but vastly different free populations of color.^[8][9] The Mississippi-in-Africa colony ultimately merged into the Commonwealth of Liberia in 1841.

Additionally, Ker later served as one of the vice presidents of the American Colonization Society.^{[2][10][11][12]}

He married Mary Kenard Baker, the daughter of Joshua Baker, who served on the Legislative Council of Mississippi Territory.^[13][14][15] They had four sons and two daughters:

• David Ker (1825–1884).^[10]
• Sarah Evelina Ker (1826–1868).^[10] She married Richard E. Butler, son of Thomas Butler and Mary Ellis.^[10]
• John Ker (1826–1870).^[10]
• Lewis Ker (1831–1894).^[10]
• Mary Susan Ker (1838–1923).^[6][10]
• William H. Ker (1841–1902).^[6][10]

Ker and his family summered at Linden, a mansion on the bluffs above the river in Natchez, Mississippi. It is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.^[6] The property was formerly owned by Thomas Buck Reed (1787–1829), a United States Senator from Mississippi and son-in-law of Isaac Ross, whom Ker knew through the Mississippi Colonization Society.

Ker was a Presbyterian, the Protestant church strongly associated with Scotland and its emigrants.^[7]