Those Southern Lamars

About the Book

Fascinating real life stories of five Lamar family members. Included are a fantastically successful New York banker who returned to Savannah and started a blockade running company which was not successful. At the end of the war Sherman seized tons of his cotton. It took him years, but he was finally able to recover a fortune of more than $25 million (in today´s money) back in the 1870´s. Two Lamars were U. S. Supreme Court justices, and one of these had been deepely involved in a variety of Confederate activities, including writing the article of secession for Mississippi. After the war he returned to the U.S. Congress as senator from Mississippi, and based on his activities there, John F. Kennedy wrote about him in the book "Profiles in Courage". Another was a hero of the Texas battle of San Jacinto and later became President of Texas. They named a county and a University after him. Yet another was a slave-blockade runner and had owned the infamous slave ship "Wanderer". This red-headed firebrand was the last Confederate officer killed in a Civil War battle. For more information, please visit www.lamarbook.com

About the Author

Growing up in the North, the author was fascinated by the stories told by his mother of her big old southern family, stories that she had heard from her relatives as a young girl in the early 1900s. Many of these stories pre-dated the Civil War and painted a picture far different than life in the 20th century. This fascination led him to seek out some of the places and stories of his ancestors. In so doing he discovered that among the family members were two justices of the United States Supreme Court, a President of Texas, a steamboat pioneer who ran the Union blockade and his firebrand, blockade-running son who was one of the last to die in the Civil war.