Biography

Robert Dorr was born in Chatham, was educated as a lawyer in Columbia County, and was employed with the Patent Office starting in 1837, followed by the Land Office, in Washington, D.C.. He practiced law and farmed in Dansville starting around 1842, and in 1852 married Mary Tompkins, with whom he had three children, all of them sons. He may be the Dorr that Frederick William Seward refers to in his letter to his father William Henry Seward on August 7, 1872.