George Nelson Lester was an American politician. He served in the Confederate States Congress during the American Civil War.
Background
George Nelson Lester was born on March 13, 1824, in Abbeville District, South Carolina, United States. He was the son of Richard Henry and Mary Sims Lester. When he was four years old, he moved with his parents to Gwinnet County, Georgia, where he spent his youth hard at work on his father’s farm.
Education
Largely self-educated, Lester read law under N.L. Hutchins of Lawrenceville, Georgia, and began his law practice in 1843.
Career
Lester practiced law in Cumming, Forsyth County, and then moved to Cobb County, Georgia, where he was elected to the state legislature in the 1850s and served as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. In 1855, he became a reporter for the state Supreme Court.
When the Civil War began, he volunteered for service in the Confederate Army and organized the 41st Georgia Regiment. Lester fought in the Kentucky campaign in the fall of 1862, losing his right arm in the battle of Perryville. Later, he joined the state reserves and in 1864 represented the Sixth District of Georgia in the second Confederate House.
He served on the Quartermaster’s and Commissary Departments Committee, but he was often absent from Richmond. After the war, he practiced law in Marietta, Georgia. During Reconstruction, he was commissioner of the Home Department for the Georgia Bureau of Immigration.
He was the judge of the Blue Ridge Circuit and helped Judge Irwin to revise the state legal code during the 1880s. In 1888, he served as president of the Georgia electoral college. In 1890, he became the attorney general of Georgia.
Achievements
Politics
Lester was a Democrat and a secessionist.
Connections
George Lester married Margaret Isabella Irwin on November 1, 1843. The couple had seven children.