Aaron Van Camp

Who was Aaron Van Camp?

Aaron Van Camp was an espionage agent for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He and his son Eugene B. Van Camp were members of the Rose O'Neal Greenhow Confederate spy ring, which in 1861 was broken up by Allan Pinkerton, head of the newly formed Secret Service.

At the time of the Civil War, Van Camp was a well-known dentist in Washington, D.C.. After his arrest and imprisonment in the Old Capitol Prison, he was paroled in early 1862. During the remainder of the Civil War, he continued spying for the Confederacy.

He had taken his family to California during the Gold Rush of 1848, and then traveled in the South Pacific. In the 1850s he operated a whaling supply company in Samoa, where he was appointed as Commercial Agent for the United States in the Navigator Islands from 1853 to 1856. Later in 1881 he was appointed as Commercial Agent in Fiji, serving until 1884.