page_title: Gazaway Bugg Lamar
section_title: Early life and career
hierarchical_section_title: Gazaway Bugg Lamar / Early life and career
caption_attribution_description: Mirabeau B. Lamar, second President of the Republic of Texas
context_page_description: Gazaway Bugg Lamar was an American 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. In 1846 he moved to New York City for business, where in 1850 he founded the Bank of the Republic on Wall Street and served as its president. He served both Southern businesses and state governments. After the start of the American Civil War, Lamar returned to Savannah, where he became 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.
  In December 1864, with Union General Sherman's troops approaching Savannah, Lamar took President Lincoln's loyalty oath to uphold the United States constitution, in return for the promise that all his property rights would be restored. A high proportion of cotton confiscated in the city by Sherman belonged to Lamar. After the war he was arrested and held for three months in Washington, DC, as a suspect in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
context_section_description: Born in 1798 near Augusta, Georgia (likely in the Sand Hills area), he was the third of twelve children of Basil Lamar and Rebecca Kelly. They were descendants of French immigrant Thomas Lamar, who settled in Maryland in 1660. Among his siblings was G. W. Lamar, who became a prominent banker in Augusta. He and his family had many connections to other leaders in the South. Brothers Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus and Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar were first cousins from Georgia; the former became a judge in Georgia; the latter served as the second President of the Republic of Texas.
  Gazaway's father was a charter member of the Steamboat Company of Georgia. The family moved to Savannah in the 1830s. By the time of his father's death when Lamar was 29, he had become active in the shipping and factoring business in Savannah and Augusta.
caption: Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:10:10 13:53:28", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8671", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "298", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "340"}