John Basil Lamar

Before the war he was a "substantial planter" running his inherited family plantations in 13 Georgia counties and in Florida. He was said to be 'highly literate and well traveled' and was a well known Georgia Humorist. He was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives (1837-1838) and the U.S. House of Representatives (1843).

He was Howell Cobb's brother-in-law and Aide-de-camp on the Maryland Campaign. He was mortally wounded in action at Crampton's Gap on 14 September and died the next day.

A plaque by the Athens Historical Society (1994) states:

Colonel John Basil Lamar, Aide-de-camp of General Howell Cobb, his brother-in-law and close friend, was mortally wounded on September 14, 1862, while vainly trying to rally Cobb’s Brigade at Crampton’s Gap, Maryland. After temporary burial in Charles Town, Virginia, he was later re-interred here at Rose Hill.

His adult life was identified with Macon, where he settled in 1830. He resided on Walnut Street in the Abner House, known as “The Bear’s Den". He was master of a great cotton plantation empire in fourteen counties in Georgia & Florida, a practical and intelligent agriculturist, trustee of the University of Georgia, vestryman at Christ Episcopal Church, cousin of U. S. Supreme Court Justice L. Q. C. Lamar and Texas President Mirabeau Lamar, devoted brother of Mary Ann Cobb, and manager of Howell Cobb’s business affairs while Cobb pursued a political career.

He has found a lasting reputation today as a writer. His popular humorous sketches have been considered on a par with Augustus Baldwin Longstreet’s Georgia Scenes. He was, like Longstreet, a founder and practitioner of both the school of Realism in America and a genre of Southern Humor.

He is remembered as a loyal son of the South, which he defended with sword, voice and pen.

Source: Lamar Family Biographies by J. L. Sibley Jennings, Jr and others, posted online by Eleanor Colson; and
his Congressional Biography.

See his gravesite online courtesy of Find-a-Grave, and a fuzzy scan of a portrait of him from the Lamar Family.

11/5/1812; Milledgeville, GA

9/15/1862; Boonsboro, MD; burial in Rose Hill Cemetery, Macon, GA