Andrew Jackson Lamar
The youngest child of Zachariah Lamar and Mary Ann Robinson Lamar, Andrew Jackson Lamar (1823-1848) was educated at the University of Georgia and in Europe before embarking on a career as a planter. He died on his plantation in Lowndes County, Alabama following an accidental overdose of paregoric.
Born February 2, 1823 in Milledgeville, Georgia, Andrew Jackson Lamar was the youngest child of the wealthy and powerful Zachariah Lamar and his wife Mary Ann Robinson Lamar. His mother died while he was still an infant and his father died in 1834 when Andrew was only eleven. Thereafter, his older siblings – John B. Lamar of Macon and Mary Ann Lamar Cobb of Athens – attempted with limited success to instill the rebellious teenager with discipline and focus. He enrolled at the University of Georgia, but left the school without a degree. Later he attended school in Liverpool, England, but with only slightly more academic success. Lamar’s efforts to launch a career as a planter – sustained by a sizeable inheritance from his father – similarly produced mixed results. Lamar married Mary Athena Jackson in 1841 in Athens. The couple had three children, two of whom survived to adulthood. Lamar sought greater financial opportunity by relocating his family to Lowndes County, Alabama, but as with so many of his ventures this one also came to a bad end. On May 9, 1848, while treating a toothache, the twenty-five-year-old accidentally took an overdose of paregoric and died shortly thereafter. After his wife returned to Athens, she had his remains exhumed and reinterred at Oconee Hill Cemetery.
