Jefferson Mirabeau Lamar

He was the youngest of 8 children of prominent Milledgeville, GA lawyer and judge Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (1795-1834), who committed suicide 6 months before Jefferson's birth. In 1860 he was a prosperous 25 year old lawyer boarding with Sarah Sanders and her large family at Covington in Newton County, GA. He mustered into the Cobb's Legion, Infantry Battalion as Captain of Company C on 1 August 1861. He was promoted to Major of the Battalion on 16 November and to Lieutenant Colonel on 18 January 1862.

He was in command of the Battalion as senior officer present on the Maryland Campaign. "Holding the extreme right [at Crampton's Gap on 14 September], the Cobb Legion Infantry was quickly surrounded and nearly annihilated by the New Jersey Brigade. Within twenty minutes the Legion suffered 72 percent casualties, many taken as prisoners of war."

"In this horrible predicament the Legion likely would have followed Munford's men in panicked retreat up the mountain. But its lieutenant colonel, Jefferson M. Lamar, held them to their impossible work until he had been twice shot, once mortally. By holding on to the last possible moment Lamar bought time for Howell Cobb to assemble a last-ditch stand in the gap, further forestalling Union penetration into Pleasant Valley where it would compromise Gen. Robert E. Lee's tenuous hold on South Mountain and with it the Confederate expedition into Maryland."
(from Reese)

He was followed by Lieutenant Colonel Glenn in command of the battalion.

Lamar died the next day at Burkittsville, and was buried in the graveyard behind the German Reformed church there. He was later (1868?) reinterred at the Washington Confederate Cemetery, Hagerstown, and finally returned home to Georgia.

His service from his Compiled Service Records,1 online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860. His burial information from the Bowie List via WHILBR; his gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture is from a photograph owned by Mrs. W. Elliott Dunwody, Jr, thanks to Tim Reese.

He married his cousin Mary Ann Lamar (1843-1920) in July 1861 - she was also niece to Mrs. Howell Cobb.

See much more about the fight at Crampton's Gap - from the website of Timothy Reese.

01/03/1835; Milledgeville, GA

09/15/1862; Burkittsville, MD; burial in Oconee Hill Cemetery, Athens, GA