L.Q.C. Lamar House Museum
- Jay Brothers
- May 2
- 2 min read
616 N. 14th St. Oxford, MS
Circa 1869. Greek Revival cottage
Lamar House is a Greek Revival cottage built by Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus (L.Q.C.) Lamar, Jr. (1825-1893) and Virginia Longstreet Lamar (?-1884). He and his wife were Georgia natives. His family owned the Fairfield plantation in Georgia. Virgina's father was Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, president of Emory College. They wed in 1847. Originally, the 30 acres of land was extended to N. Lamar and the house had a gateway there. Virginia’s father was Augustus B. Longstreet, the second chancellor at Ole Miss. When father-in-law Longstreet became president of the University of Mississippi, the Lamars followed. Lamar resumed a law practice in Oxford, and in 1850, became an assistant professor of mathematics at the university. The Lamar family returned to Georgia for awhile, and then returned to Oxford.
L.Q.C. Lamar was a lawyer, Congressman, soldier, Instructor of Ethics at University of Mississippi, and a Judge in the U.S. Supreme Court. He had several prominent relatives: uncle Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar was the second president of the Republic of Texas; and cousin to two U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Hon. Joseph Rucker Lamar and Hon. John A. Campbell. He was famous for a speech eulogy about Charles Summers - it was important to North and South reconciliation. Lamar had a summer home and 1,000 acre plantation called Solitare near Holly Springs, north of Oxford. It was burned by Union troops. He was selected Secretary of the Interior by President Grover Cleveland in 1885.
In 1888, Lamar was nominated and confirmed as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Lamars transferred ownership to their daughter, Frances “Fannie” Eliza Lamar Mayes (1849-1923) and her husband, The Hon. Edward Mayes (1846-1917). They wed in 1869.
Mayes was a lawyer in Coffeeville and Oxford. In 1877, he taught law at the Univ. of Miss. Later, he served as Chancellor from 1887-1891. Mayes holds the distinction of being the first native Mississippian and the first Ole Miss graduate to be the chancellor. Later, in 1896, he became a professor and dean of the Law School at Millsaps College in Jackson, MS, when the Millsaps Board of Trustees wanted to start a second law school in Mississippi’s state capital.
By the late 20th century, the home was neglected and in poor condition. In 2000, Mississippi Heritage Trust included the LQC Lamar house on “Ten Most Endangered List.” It was rescued from demolition in 2004 by the Oxford-Lafayette Co. Heritage Foundation. Full restoration was completed by 2008 including 3 acres of landscaping, and the house was transferred to the City of Oxford. In 1986, Harold Houston owned.
A multitude of places are named in his honor: three U.S. counties in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi; Lamar Hill on the Ole Miss campus as well as Lamar Ave; Lamar School of Law at Emory College (1916-2021), now the Emory School of Law. in Oxford. NR 1975
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