LAMAR, MIRABEAU BUONAPARTE LAMAR, MIRABEAU BUONAPARTE
(1798–1859). Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, son of John and Rebecca
(Lamar) Lamar, president of the Republic of Texas, was born near
Louisville, Georgia, on August 16, 1798. He grew up at
Fairfield, his father's plantation near Milledgeville. He
attended academies at Milledgeville and Eatonton and was an
omnivorous reader. As a boy he became an expert horseman and an
accomplished fencer, began writing verse, and painted in oils.
In 1819 he had a brief partnership in a general store at
Cahawba, Alabama; in 1821 he was joint publisher of the Cahawba
Press for a few months. When George M. Troup was elected
governor of Georgia in 1823, Lamar returned to Georgia to become
Troup's secretary and a member of his household. He married
Tabitha Jordan of Twiggs County, Georgia, on January 1, 1826,
and soon resigned his secretaryship to nurse his bride, who was
ill with tuberculosis. In 1828 he moved his wife and daughter,
Rebecca Ann, to the new town of Columbus, Georgia