John Ker (planter)

John Ker
Born	June 27, 1789
Died	January 4, 1850
Education	University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Occupation	Surgeon, planter, politician
Title	Doctor
Board member of	American Colonization Society
Spouse(s)	Mary (Baker) Ker
Children	6
Parent(s)	David Ker Mary Ker
Relatives	Joshua Baker (father-in-law)

John Ker (1789–1850) was an American surgeon, planter and politician in Louisiana. Together with several major Mississippi planters, in the 1830s Ker co-founded the Mississippi Colonization Society, promoting removal of free American blacks to a colony in West Africa (later Liberia). The state group modeled itself after the American Colonization Society, where Ker later served as a vice president.

Born in North Carolina, where his father was the first president of the new state university, Ker moved with his family as a youth to Mississippi after 1817, when his father was appointed to the state supreme court. He went to medical school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and returned to the South. Serving as a surgeon in the War of 1812 and Creek War, Ker later owned a cotton plantation in Louisiana and served in the state house.

John Ker was born on June 27, 1789 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His father, David Ker (1758–1805), born in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland and of Scottish ancestry, immigrated with his wife Mary to the United States in the 1780s. He served as the first President of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which was chartered in 1789 and opened for students in 1795.

The family moved to Mississippi about 1817, the year it became a state. President Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) appointed the father David Ker to the Supreme Court of Mississippi.

John Ker had been educated privately, as was common among the southern upper class. He went North to medical school, earning a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Medical School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1822.

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