It's not a hard concept to understand. Historic Preservation. It's like the saying "You can't know where you're headed until you know where you've been." But perhaps the basic point of it is to force us in the present to confront the physical presence of the past. Our past. We can imagine Roman aqueducts, German castles, and British redcoats burning down the White House, but to walk around a home that may have been constructed before the War of 1812 - one that is still situated on its original lot and square in June 2022 - calls into question all our assumptions about progress, expansion, and historical memory. That thing is an alien specimen made by people who never imagined or knew any of us. Our very existence is irrelevant to them. That house was built before your great-great-great-grandfather was even born. Zachariah Lamar, an incredibly wealthy man by all accounts, might even have employed him somehow. The builders are dead. The owners are dead. Even the slaves and servants are dead. Why should we care about the home of Zachariah Lamar of Milledgeville today?
When Chicago was bulldozing scores of its historic buildings in the name of "urban renewal" in the 1960s, preservationist Richard Nickel quipped: "Great architecture has two natural enemies: water and stupid men." We seem to have had more than our fair share of such politicians, developers, and commissioners in Middle Georgia since World War II. Macon's leaders destroyed entire blocks of irreplaceable 19th-century structures in the 1960s and 1970s when they caught the same strain of URV (Urban Renewal Virus), and sadly URV 2.0 has been making the rounds again of late (Blight Fight passes 180th demolition | Macon-Bibb County, Georgia (maconbibb.us)). Most of those historic late 19th and early 20th century homes could have been saved with only a little imagination, courage, and determination. Instead, politicians are actually bragging about how many historic homes they've bulldozed and problematic empty lots they've made.
Most counties in Georgia have historical societies or historic foundations. Some even have active historic preservation commissions, though these often have little to no real authority. But while smaller counties all around the region have such organizations, Milledgeville and Baldwin County have not had an historical society in decades. The older well-connected ladies who once cared about county history and preservation have all passed on, apparently. Milledgeville does have an Historic Preservation Commission, which started out in the 1980s, but seems to be dominated today by interest-groups representing realty companies, developers, and college lackies.
We interviewed past HPC Chairman Paul Campbell, who shared some very interesting information. He said he was put on the commission by then Georgia College & State University president Edwin Speir to represent college interests, but he fell afoul of Speir when he bought the historic 1806 Edward White house at 247 South Clarke Street and began agreeing more with the preservationists living around him in the historic district. He also stated that Speir used student housing in the historic district as a weapon against preservation-minded owners of historic homes. Students would cause problems and the police would be called, but under Speir's influence the incidents would be dropped. Sounds like feudal Oxford during the 1400s. Town & Gown, you know. He said that the HPC had complete inventory files, consisting of a description, the date of construction, and the name of the builder for each historic structure in the historic district, as well as one or more photos of each. But apparently some of these files would disappear as the colleges expanded in those directions. His takeaway wisdom from serving on the HPC is that "loyalty and liberty are cheap, and they can make you hungry."
Campbell also told us that Georgia Military College's leadership was very hard-nosed and anti-preservation until General Peter Boylan became GMC president. This gentleman wanted to be a good neighbor, so he tried to actually work with people. Such a strange concept. Boylan even invited the newly formed Georgia's Antebellum Capital Museum to occupy space in the historic Old Capitol Building. By 2003, a wonderful 7,000 square-foot local history museum had been created inside the central portion of the capitol building on State House Square. It was very happily ensconced there until another general came along in 2014. Under William Caldwell's leadership, the museum was evicted from the campus in 2017. Since then, it has been across town adjacent to the old Central State Hospital depot in a tiny house with no exhibit space. Apparently, Caldwell has never been one to shun controversy (Rolling Stone alleges Lt. Gen. Caldwell screw up with info ops in Afghanistan – Foreign Policy). GMC's expansion since his tenure began has proceeded at a staggering rate. Our research indicates that not even including the Zachariah Lamar house, six other historic homes in Milledgeville's National Register District were demolished soon after GMC acquired the property on which they had stood since the 19th century. Two more, not including the Lamar house, are in imminent danger today.
All this made us curious as to who owns what historic resources in Milledgeville, so we began researching property records and the architectural history of the city. From this map one can visualize what has happened in the city over the last few decades. It looks like GMC has been trying to catch up with GC&SU's growth. You can clearly see that the expansion of both colleges has had an adverse effect on Milledgeville's historic resources. There's no doubt about that. Another concern is the number of early 19th-century historic houses that have been bought and subdivided into student housing by for-profit LLCs, many with the word "Preservation" in their names. Just because one throws a word like that into a company's logo does NOT make one a preservationist. Several other early 19th-century homes are owned by college social organizations - groups that are hardly likely to respect the irreplaceable structures they inhabit.
We still haven't discussed the man who had this house built, sometime after he bought the lot in 1806. Zachariah Lamar was born in Jefferson, Jackson County, Georgia in 1769 to Thomas and Catherine Lamar of Maryland. He spent some years in Putnam County, where he was credited with bestowing classical, historic, and scientific names upon his nephews and other relatives. His wife, Mary Ann Robinson Lamar of Louisville, Jefferson County, Georgia, was born November 5, 1784 and died September 17, 1823, seven months after the birth of her youngest child.
The couple had ten children (imagine the pitter-patter of all the little feet in this house!), but only three survived to adulthood: John Basil Lamar (1812-1862), who later moved to Macon and became a noted Humorist & Author, as well as a soldier, planter, businessman, investor, and family financial savior; Mary Ann Lamar (1818-1889), famous for being the heiress whose money helped her husband Howell Cobb of Athens throughout his career as U.S. Representative, Georgia Governor, U.S. Treasury Secretary, & Confederate General; and Andrew Jackson Lamar (1823-1848), who died at the age of 25 in Alabama. At Zachariah's death he is said to have owned 15,000 acres of land throughout the state, over 200 slaves, and stock in multiple banks. The Lamar family obelisk in Memory Hill Cemetery was created by the internationally-renowned sculptor R. E. Launitz of New York, one of only 12 Launitz monuments the MGPA has documented in Georgia thus far.
From our research we have also learned the following about old Zachariah:
1806 - he purchased Lot 2 on Square 43 in Milledgeville for $655 on March 4; this is where he would soon build his house, and where it still stands in June 2022
1807 - he was in Milledgeville, where he had been appointed to sell & lay out lots in the brand new city
1808 - he served as Inferior Court judge at the very first session in January after the county seat was removed from Hillsborough
1809 - he was one of the superintendants of the Bank of Savannah
1812 - he could be litigious regarding debts, that he and two other Inferior Court judges accepted proposals for building a courthouse, and that he was a staunch member of the Democratic-Republican party (the party of Jefferson, Madison, and other U.S. presidents) and proudly put his name to a document demanding a declaration of war with Britain
1813 - he became a candidate for the Georgia House of Representatives (which met in Milledgeville across South Wayne Street from his house), and that he won election that autumn
1814 - he sold shipments of various kinds of cloth, coffee, sugar, and rum
1816 - he was Chairman of the Bank of the State of Georgia, based in Milledgeville, and placed an advertisement in the Georgia Journal warning trespassers off a new property he had bought
1819 - he was again a candidate for the Georgia House
1823 - he was selling shares on behalf of the Milledgeville Turnpike Company
1824 - he was a Jackson-Calhoun Elector in the U.S. Presidential Election
1825 - he was appointed one of the managers of the ball to be given on behalf of Gen. Lafayette, hero of the American War for Independence.
1827 - a land lot (202.5 acres) he owned was seized for debts he owed to another man
1832 - there was a mule missing from his lot in town, and he made his will
1834 - he was chairman of the Union (anti-nullification) Party, a stockholder in the Bank of Columbus, he died on Oct. 29 and was buried in the City Cemetery (now Memory Hill), and his will was probated on Nov. 1.
1835 - an article in the Federal Union stated there would be at least three Executor's Sales on the first Tuesday in February of some of his slaves, some Jones County property, and the furniture in his Milledgeville house
Finally, if the importance of the man and the fact of his house still being on the same spot it has been on since the War of 1812 is not enough, there is the archaeology. It is rare for anyone but archaeologists to consider the ground on which an historic building sits as being integral to the research and historical documentation of a person or his house. But that is exactly what archaeology does: it locates artifacts in the ground that help us tell the stories of the builders, the owners, and the slaves & servants. There may be pit features full of trash middens that could yield crucial artifactual information. Archaeology is especially good at reconstructing the stories of those who were illiterate and therefore did not leave written accounts of their lives. The stories of Zachariah Lamar's enslaved African-Americans servants who lived in his house at 341 South Wayne Street - directly across from the Old State Capitol on Statehouse Square - are crying out to be told. If the house is demolished or moved and the lot is graded and a trailer placed on the property, as GMC proposes to do, the stratigraphic context of the land will be destroyed just as surely as the house itself may be. The HPC should not allow this to happen.
The Milledgeville Historic Preservation Commission should refuse any demolition permits involving this property, and should also refuse to allow the Zachariah Lamar house to be moved. It should demand that GMC become a good steward of this important house - perhaps the earliest and last home left in downtown Milledgeville exhibiting Plantation Plain architecture - by restoring it where it is and paying for HABS/HAER documentation that will be sent to the Georgia SHPO and the National Park Service as a permanent record. The Middle Georgia Preservation Alliance will work with GMC and the HPC to conduct Phase I and Phase II archaeological excavations using our professional staff, volunteer students, and members of the local community, so that the stories of ALL the human beings who have lived in this house on Lot 2, Square 43 in the Old Capital of Milledgeville, Georgia can be told. We can and will learn from the past, so long as we don't keep repeating the same mistakes.
The City of Milledgeville, Georgia has made enough mistakes over the last couple of decades by allowing GC&SU and GMC and realtors/developers to have things their own way whenever a preservation concern is raised. There has been too much wanton demolition and lack of respect for this old city's architectural and human heritage. Let's take another, better path from here out.
References
Augusta Chronicle (Augusta)
"Returns of the Election." October 8, 1813. [Z.L. elected to GA House]
Beeson, Leola
History Stories of Milledgeville and Baldwin County. 1943. Reprint, Milledgeville: Mary Vinson Memorial Library, 1996.
Bonner, James C.
Milledgeville: Georgia's Antebellum Capital. 1978. Reprint, Milledgeville, Georgia: Old Capital Press, 2007.
Clark-Davis, Amy E.
Milledgeville. Images of America series. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2011.
Cook, Anna Maria Green
History of Baldwin County, Georgia. 1925. Reprint, Milledgeville: Mary Vinson Memorial Library, 2004.
Federal Union (Milledgeville)
"Strayed." December 27, 1832. [missing mule]
"Union Meeting." March 12, 1834. [anti-nullification]
"Died, Col. Zachariah Lamar." November 5, 1834.
"Executor's Sales." January 20, 1835 [3 separate ads]
Georgia Constitutionalist (Augusta)
"Died, Col. Zachariah Lamar." November 6, 1834.
Georgia Journal (Milledgeville)
"Will Be Sold." May 27, 1812. [court action to obtain money owed to Z.L.]
"Courthouse." June 17, 1812. [Z.L. one of three judges on commission]
"Public Sentiment." June 17. 1812. [Z.L. on (Democratic-) Republican Committee Demanding War with Britain]
"Candidate Zachariah Lamar." April 14, 1813 [Z.L. candidate for GA House]
"Goods." November 30, 1814. [Z.L. selling cloth, coffee, sugar, & rum]
"Bank of the State of Georgia." January 31, 1816 [Z.L. Chairman of Bank]
"Caution." March 17, 1816. [Z.L. posts his new property against trespass]
"We are requested to announce..." March 23, 1819 [Z.L. candidate for GA House]
"Milledgeville Turnpike Company." February 25, 1823. [Z.L. selling shares]
"202 1/2 acres of land..." May 29, 1827. [court action to obtain money from Z.L.]
Harrington, Hugh T.
Remembering Milledgeville: Historic Tales from Georgia's Antebellum Capital. Charleston: History Press, 2005.
Hines, Nelle Womack
A Treasure Album of Milledgeville and Baldwin County, Georgia. Macon: J.W. Burke & Co., 1936.
Hobbs, Billy
"City Rejects Special Use Plans After Historic District Residents Oppose." Union- Recorder, August 17, 2019.
Holmes, James
Reminiscences of Early Georgia and of Philadelphia and New Haven in the 1800s, edited by Delma E. Presley. Atlanta: Cherokee Publishing Co., 1976.
Linley, John
Architecture of Middle Georgia: The Oconee Area. Athens, University of Georgia Press, 1972.
Nichols, Frederick Doveton
The Early Architecture of Georgia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957.
Standard of Union and Free Trade Advocate (Sparta)
"Stockholders in the Bank of Columbus, Monday, 7th April, 1834." April 26, 1834.
Sturges, Daniel
A Plan of Milledgeville. Milledgeville: Secretary of State's Office, 1808. Traced by H. Jay Wallace, Department of Natural Resources, Division of State Parks, Historic Sites and Monuments, January 1938.
Union-Recorder (Milledgeville)
"Col. Zachariah Lamar." July 21, 1896.
"Baldwin County Courthouse at Old Hillsboro." May 28, 1931.
Walters, Katherine Bowman
Oconee River: Tales to Tell. 1995. Reprint, Eatonton: Eatonton-Putnam Historical Society & Spartanburg, South Carolina: Reprint Co., 2000.
Wright, Amy
"The Zachariah Lamar House, ca. 1815, South Wayne Street." Milledgeville: Georgia's Old Capital Heritage Center at the Depot, Inc., 2022
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