Background
Gazaway Bugg Lamar was born in Richmond County, Georgia, the son of Basil and Rebecca Kelly Lamar and a descendant of Thomas Lamar who, coming from France, settled in Maryland before 1663.
Gazaway Bugg Lamar was born in Richmond County, Georgia, the son of Basil and Rebecca Kelly Lamar and a descendant of Thomas Lamar who, coming from France, settled in Maryland before 1663.
Gazaway Bugg Lamar manifested a keen aptitude for business and rose quickly to a place of prominence in the financial circles of Augusta and Savannah. Quick to discern the trends of the time, he rarely missed an ascending movement in commerce. He introduced the first iron steamship in American waters, building the John Randolph in Savannah in 1834 from plates and structural shapes fabricated in England (commemorative tablet, City Hall, Savannah).
The next year he was one of the incorporators of the Iron Steam-Boat Company of Augusta, which established a line of steamers on the Savannah River. He was financially interested in the Mechanics' Bank of Augusta, of which his brother, George Washington Lamar, was a cashier.
In 1838 he bought the Centre Street toll bridge over the Savannah River at Augusta, selling it two years later to the municipality. He is said to have rendered financial assistance to the Republic of Texas when his cousin Mirabeau B. Lamar was president, and at another time to have assisted in the floating of a Mexican bond issue. His ship Mary Summers served as an American transport in the Mexican War.
In 1845 he removed to New York, becoming president of the Bank of the Republic. In November 1860 he bought 10, 000 muskets at the Watervliet Arsenal, New York, and shipped them to Georgia, where they arrived just after the secession of South Carolina. On January 22, 1861, New York police took from the steamer Monticello at her North River pier 200 muskets consigned to Savannah; and the Georgia authorities seized five New York vessels lying at Savannah as a reprisal.
Lamar acted as agent for the state of Georgia in the settlement of the affair, which was effected, with restitution, on March 18. He remained in New York until well after the commencement of hostilities, acting as a Confederate intelligence and postal agent.
Returning to Savannah as head of the Bank of Commerce, he was elected president of the Bank Convention of the Confederate States, held at Atlanta in July 1861. For the next three and a half years he was actively engaged in banking and blockade running. In October 1863 he incurred considerable popular disfavor through the exposure of overtures he had addressed to Fernando Wood, former mayor of New York and then a member of Congress, looking toward a copartnership in blockade running. Lamar proposed to finance and manage the venture if Wood could "grease" the blockade so that their ships could pass freely at Ossabaw Inlet. The proposals were intercepted and printed in the New York Times and were reprinted in many Confederate papers. Lamar vigorously defended his proposition on the basis that the end justified the means: that to loosen up the blockade it was as consistent with the public good to use bribes as gunpowder.
He considered the war over when Sherman occupied Savannah, and immediately took the oath of allegiance to the United States in order to save as much of his property in the occupied area as possible. After many disputes with Federal officers, however, over the property which they claimed as "captured and abandoned," he was arrested by the military authorities on charges of conspiring with his nephew, G. B. Lamar, Jr., and others, to appropriate government cotton and to bribe various military and civil officials. He was confined for a time in the Old Capitol Prison at Washington but was released by President Johnson. He retained General Benjamin F. Butler to press his claims against the government. Considerable sums were recovered by his heirs and legatees.
Gazaway Bugg Lamar was known as a merchant in cotton and shipping in Savannah, Georgia, and a steamboat pioneer. He was the first to use a prefabricated iron steamboat on local rivers, which was a commercial success. He was also active in banking and supporting the war effort in several ways. With associates, he founded the Importing and Exporting Company of Georgia, which operated blockade runners.
Gazaway Bugg Lamar was known to advise "representatives of the Confederate and Georgia governments, including President Jefferson Davis, Confederate Secretary of the Treasury Christopher Memminger, and Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown."
Though an astute politician and trader, Lamar was a generous man. He endowed hospitals for Negroes in Augusta and Savannah and was one of the endowers of the Young Men's Library Association of Augusta.
Gazaway Bugg Lamar's first wife was Jane Meek Creswell, to whom he was married in Augusta, Georgia, on October 18, 1821. On the night of June 14, 1838, his steamship Pulaski went down off the Carolina coast, and though Lamar himself and his eldest son were rescued from the water, his wife and six children were among the 140 who were lost. The surviving son later came into prominence in the affair of the slave ship Wanderer, and as a lieutenant-colonel in the Confederate army was killed in one of the last engagements of the Civil War.
A few years after his first wife's death Lamar married Harriet, daughter of Charles Antoine de Cazenove, a native of Switzerland, and his wife, Anne Hogan of Alexandria, Virginia. By his second marriage, Lamar had two sons and three daughters.
