Ray City History Blog

John Carroll Lamb, Signer of the Georgia Ordinance of Secession

John Carroll Lamb came with his parents and siblings from North Carolina to settle north of Milltown, GA (now Lakeland) in the late 1840s. He was a son of Margaret Carroll (1799 – 1860) and William Lamb (1782 – 1862).

In 1922, historian Folks Huxford provided the following information on the parents:

Among the early settlers of Milltown and what is now Lanier county, were William Lamb and his family. He was a native of North Carolina, where his family lived near Raleigh. Coming here they settled and lived until the death of the elder Lamb, on the present farm of Nathan Lovejoy, near Milltown.

Mr. Lamb was twice married. By his first wife, whose name is unknown to the writer at present, were born the following children:

Aaron, who remained in North Carolina; Julia, who married a Dr. Hale and who likewise remained in her native state; and Catherine, who married John Carroll of this section.

It seems that the first Mrs. Lamb died in North Carolina, and before leaving there, Mr. Lamb married his second wife, Margaret Carroll, who was a sister to Jesse and James Carroll, early citizens of this county. To this union were born:

1. John C. Lamb, who married Satira Lovejoy.
2. Lizzie Lamb, who married Daniel McDonald.
3. William Lamb, Jr., who married Mrs. Mary Knight, a widow, and daughter of Jesse Carroll.
4. Edward Lamb, who married Henrietta Griffin, a sister of the late William H. Griffin of Valdosta.
5. Ann Lamb, who married Dougal McDonald. These two McDonalds were twin brothers.

The Carrolls were likewise from North Carolina, near Wilmington.

The 1850 census records show John C. Lamb in the household of his father in that portion of Lowndes County, GA which was cut into Berrien County in 1856.

1850 Census enumeration of John C. Lamb and family in Berrien County, GA

William Lamb, the father, engaged in farming and acquired approximately 1620 acres consisting of all of Land Lot Nos. 446, 447, 476 and 150 acres of Lot No. 445  in the 10th Land District. He had an estate valued in 1850 at $600 –  a level of wealth equivalent to about $3.8 Million measured in 2012 dollars.

1869 Berrien County Map detail showing location of Land Lots 445, 446, 447, and 448.

In 1850, at age  18 John C. Lamb  was occupied as a teacher.  About 1858, he married Satira Ann Elizabeth Lovejoy. She was a daughter of James L. Lovejoy  and Eugenia  Talley,  of Clinch county, GA and a granddaughter of Methodist minister Reverend Nathan Talley.  John and Satira established their household at Milltown near the plantation of John’s uncle, Jesse Carroll.  To the Lambs a daughter was born, Lillian Eugenia “Jennie” Lamb, in December of 1859.

The Lambs, John C., Satira, and Lillian were enumerated in the Census of 1860 in Berrien County (formerly Lowndes). Also in the Lamb household was John’s brother, Edwin Lamb, age 16.  Before the Civil War, John C. Lamb opened and ran a store in Milltown and his brother, Edwin, clerked. J.C. Lamb was a successful merchant and by 1860 his property was valued at $6500 dollars, making him a multi-millionaire by today’s standards.

1860 Census enumeration of John C. Lamb and family in Berrien County, GA

https://archive.org/stream/populationschedu111unit#page/n361/mode/1up

John C. Lamb was appointed as postmaster of Milltown on December 19, 1859, probably posting and distributing mail from his store. On September 29, 1860 he relinquished this position to  his cousin John T. Carroll.

On November 11, 1860, election of Abraham Lincoln was announced.  Before the month was out, on November 28 1860, John C. Lamb joined the “Muster Roll of Capt. Levi J. Knight’s Company of Volunteers, Styled the Berrien Minute Men“

The election of Lincoln ignited the call for secession in the southern states. South Carolina was the first to secede, officially withdrawing from the Union on December 20, 1860, and was quickly followed by Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.  Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown called  a special election on January 2, 1861 to select delegates for a state convention on the issue of secession.  John C. Lamb was elected to represent Berrien County, along with Woodford J. Mabry, at the Georgia Secession Convention of 1861.  When the Georgia Ordinance of Secession passed on January 19, 1861, John C. Lamb was one of the signers of the document.  His participation was documented in the  Journal of the Public and Secret Proceedings of the Convention of the People of Georgia,
Held in Milledgeville and Savannah in 1861, Together with the Ordinances Adopted,  and Lamb’s name appeared on the published Ordinance. Among other signers of the Ordinance of Secession was Benjamin Sirmans, a former resident of Lowndes, representing Clinch County.

Ordinance of Secession

John C. Lamb, of Berrien County, was a signer of the Georgia Ordinance of Secession in 1861.

When war finally came John C. Lamb and his brothers, William J. Lamb and Edwin Lamb, were among those who volunteered to serve in Captain Levi J. Knight’s Company of Berrien Minute Men.  In August of 1861, he was mustered into the 29th Georgia Regiment Volunteer Infantry at Savannah, originally in Company C, as a private. Lamb took his horse with him to war. Perhaps because of his political leadership, business experience and education John C. Lamb was marked for command.

At Savannah, the campfires of the Berrien Minute Men were initially made at Causton’s Bluff, overlooking St. Augustine Creek and Whitemarsh Island. By August 20, 1861 the Berrien Minute Men were sent to Brunswick, GA with the 13th Georgia Regiment.

On October 11, 1861 three companies of the 29th Regiment including the Berrien Minute Men were stationed on Sapelo Island. They were manning  Sapelo Battery, an earthworks and gun emplacement on the south end of Sapelo Island defending Doboy Sound. The Civil War letters of  Private John Hagan described Battery Sapelo as armed with five cannons the largest of which was a 160 pounder.   He wrote, “We…havent Elected any of our offiscers for the company yet we feel assured that John C. Lamb of mill town will be our Capt…”  By October 14, 1861 Lamb was indeed elected Captain of Company B, Berrien Minute Men.  He received official notification of his commission from the Georgia Adjutant General, and accepted his commission by letter on October 24, 1861.

John C. Lamb to Adjutant General Henry Constantine Wayne, Oct 24, 1861 letter accepting commission as Captain of the Berrien Minute Men, Company B.

To H. C. Wayne
Adjutant General
Milledgeville, GA

Sapelo Battery, GA
Oct 24, 1861

Sir

Yours of the 17th Inst has been duly rcvd covering commission for myself as Captain of Berrien Minute Men Company B.

I accept the commission and have taken and subscribed to the oath herewith attached.

Very Respectfully Your Obedient Servant

John C. Lamb

March of 1862 found the 29th Georgia Regiment at Camp Tattnall, GA. The Berry Infantry had cleared a campground for Camp Tattnall on January 22, 1862. From Camp Wilson, this new camp ground was “one mile nearer the city, to the right of the White Bluff Shell Road, and named…after old Commodore Tattnall, ‘the hero of the age,”  and the senior officer of the Navy of Georgia. At Camp Tattnall,  the duty of ordering supplies for the unit fell to Captain Lamb.  In addition to the routine requisitions for  shoes, horse fodder, tents, axes, fuel for the camp fires, etc.  Captain Lamb had the unhappy task here of ordering coffins for men lost from his command.

On May 16, 1862 the Berrien Minute Men were sent with the 29th Georgia Regiment to Camp Causton’s Bluff (renamed in 1863 as Fort Bartow).  The station at Causton’s Bluff had suddenly become more significant as Federal forces had captured Fort Pulaski on April 11, 1862 after a 30-hour  bombardment.  Causten’s Bluff overlooked St. Augustine Creek and Whitemarsh Island, and the fall of Fort Pulaski made Savannah vulnerable to attack from that direction.

Captain Lamb was promoted to major of the 29th GA Regiment May 10, 1862, when Major Levi J. Knight declined to be re-elected to the position due to illness.   Jonathan D. Knight succeeded Lamb as company captain . This  re-organization occurred while the 29th GA Regiment was stationed at Camp Debtford, GA.  Camp Debtford was on the Debtford Plantation, situated east of Savannah on the grounds of present day Savannah Golf Course. Debtford Plantation was adjacent to and allied with the Causton’s Bluff plantation. This was just east of Fort Boggs and near Battery Lee.

Major Lamb was detached for a few weeks for service “on the Savannah River near Fort Jackson.”  This site was about a mile and a half from the camps of the Berrien Light Infantry, Company I, 50th Georgia Regiment.  Fort Jackson, officially known as Fort James Jackson, a brick fortification constructed 1808-1812, was considered by General P. G. T. Beauregard  to be “a very weak work.” Beauregard’s October, 1862 inspection of Savannah defenses found armaments at Fort Jackson consisted of two 8″ Columbiads, seven 32 pounder guns, and one 18 pounder gun (from Craig Swain’s discussion of Batteries in the Marshes.)

The following month the 29th Georgia Regiment moved to Camp Mackey, GA, where Major Lamb was placed in command. Camp Mackey was a picket post located on a rice plantation on Mackey’s Point, on the Savannah River. “Many soldiers … lost their lives by disease contracted from the malarious rice fields about Mackey’s Point, below Savannah, where the Twenty-ninth Georgia Regiment was stationed for a long time” (Savannah Morning News, April 29, 1874) .

In July, 1862  it Major Lamb was stationed at the Regimental headquarters of the 29th Regiment at  Camp Troup, but the Major was on detached service at Advanced River Batteries on the Savannah River. In November it appears the Major’s Regimental headquarters were moved to Camp Young near Savannah, and in December to Camp Clingman at Ashville, NC.

While stationed at Camp Young, 20 men of the 29th Georgia regiment deserted.  Four of the deserters were from Company K, the Berrien Minute Men, including Elbert J. Chapman, Albert Douglas, Benjamin S. Garrett, and J. P. Ponder.

John C. Lamb’s father, William Lamb, died near Milltown in 1862 and was buried in Milltown in the old cemetery. John C. Lamb and his brother-in-law, Dougal  McDonald, were appointed executor of his father’s estate. In accordance with the will probated in Berrien County court, John C. Lamb stood to inherit “Land lot No. 446 in the 10th district of Berrien Co…also,  Negro man, Cato, ca 28 yrs old, Negro girl, Senah, about 6 yrs old & horse mule named Ball.” However, Lamb was with the command of the Berrien Minute Men and the rest of the 29th GA regiment, taking part in the battles of the western wing of the Confederate army.

When the 29th Regiment was deployed to Meridian, MS  about late April of 1863, Major Lamb took his horses with him. On May 1, the 29th Regiment halted at Vaughan Station, MS, about 32 miles east of Yazoo City and 1 mile west of Big Black River. There Major Lamb requisitioned and received  forage for his horses.

When the 29th Regiment caught up with deserter Elbert J. Chapman in Mississippi, Major Lamb served as the Judge Advocate for the court-martial.  Chapman was convicted of desertion, but his sentence was withheld while the Confederate Army fled before Federal forces.

This was just after the fall of Vicksburg. The Berrien Minute Men, the 29th Regiment and the rest of the Confederate Army were making a disorganized retreat.

In a battle near Jackson, MS Major Lamb was killed on July 13, 1863.  T 29th had retreated across the Big Black River where they formed a battle line against the pursuing federal forces. From July 9th through the 12th, shelling, skirmishing, and sometimes hard fighting went on.  John Hagan wrote, “on the morning of the 13th shelling began at 8 a.m. & continued till 11 a.m. our Regt suffered again Maj John C. Lamb was killed instantly by a round Ball.  He was on the right of our company & within  2 feet of Capt Knight, J. M. Griffin & myself when he was shot…our men was turablely Shocked but all acted the part of a Soldier.”

William Washington Knight also gave an account of  the death of John C. Lamb.  In a letter to his wife, Mary, written July 22, 1863 from Scott County, MS, between Jackson and Meridian, MS,  Knight wrote, “About ten minutes after fire open Maj Lamb was hit with a twelve pound round shot on the head. It knocked off half his head, kill[ing] him so dead he did not move but very little. He was standing on his feet among or at the feet of our men, in two feet of Jonathan [Knight] and Lt [Wiley E] Baxter.”     It was not until after Major Lamb’s death that the deserter Chapman was executed by firing squad.  Knight himself would be dead within six months; his widow Mary Carroll Knight later married John C. Lamb’s brother, William J. Lamb.

Lamb’s cousin, John T. Carroll, and his father-in-law, James Lovejoy, were the executors of his estate. The following January, they ran the legal announcement in the Milledgeville Confederate Union.

Disposition of the Milltown, GA property of John C. Lamb, 1864.

Milledgeville Confederate Union
January 26, 1864

Georgia, Berrien County
By order of the Court of Ordinary of said county, will be sold on the first Tuesday in March next, at the Court house door in said county, one improved lot in the village of Milltown, lately occupied by J. C. Lamb, belonging to the estate of the said John C. Lamb, deceased.  Sold for benefits of the heirs and creditors of said deceased.  Terms on the day of sale.

JOHN T CARROLL,  Adm’rs
JAMES LOVEJOY,

Paid $5
January 9th, 1864

The settlement of the estate continued after the War ended.

The estate of John C. Lamb was administered by his cousin, John T. Carroll, in 1867.

Milledgeville Federal Union
June 4, 1867

GEORGIA, Berrien County.
TWO months after date application will be made to the Court of Ordinary of Berrien County for leave to sell the land belonging to the estate of John C. Lamb, decd.

W E C                                          JOHN T. CARROLL, Adm, r.
May 6th, 1867.                                                                    41 9t.

The land Lot 446,  10th District, which John C. Lamb had inherited from his father, was auctioned October 1867 to settle estate debts.

Administrator’s Sale for the estate of John C. Lamb, 1867.

Milledgeville Federal Union
October 8, 1867

Administrator’s Sale.
Will be sold before the Court House door in Nashville, Berrien county, Ga., on the first Tuesday in OCTOBER next, one Lot of Land No. 446 containing four hundred and ninety acres, in the 10th District of said county.  Sold for the purpose of paying debts.  And sold as the property of John C. Lamb deceased.  Terms Cash.

          (W E C)          JOHN L. CARROLL,  Adm’r.

      Aug.    5th, 1867.                                        2 tds.

Folks Huxford provided the following:

During the war, Mrs. Lamb stayed with her parents, at their home in the Stockton district of Clinch county. To Major and Mrs. Lamb only one child was born, Lillian Eugenia Lamb,  who married Hampton Anderson Howell of Milltown.  The children of Mr. and Mrs. Howell were Will H. Howell,  who served as clerk of the superior court of Lanier county, Hamp Howell, Jr., who was postmaster at Milltown, [and Elizabeth Howell].

After the War, widow Satira Lovejoy Lamb continued to live with her parents, James L. Lovejoy  and Eugenia  Talley. In the 1870s, her grandfather Reverend Nathan Talley and his second wife, Martha Travis Talley, were also residing in the Lovejoy household.  Satira’s widower uncle, Dr. James W. Talley had taken Miss Araminta Mississippi Holzendorf as his second wife, and it was undoubtedly through this connection that Satira came to know her uncle’s brother-in-law, Robert Stafford Holzendorf.

A few years after the close of the Civil War Mrs. Lamb married Robert Stafford Holzendorf, who had emigrated to Clinch county with his father, Alexander Holzendorf, and located at Stockton during the war. The Holzendorfs were members of an old Camden county family, who had lived there since the days of the Revolution. Alexander Holzendorf and his family “refugeed” as it was known, from Camden to Clinch on account of the exposed danger of Camden county to the enemy during the war.

To Mr. and Mrs. Holzendorf were born four children, viz.:

1. James A. Holzendorf, who married Hattie Phillips, daughter of Wm. S. Phillips of Stockton. Mr. Holzendorf was a railroad agent at Stockton a number of years.
2. Robert Holzendorf, Jr., who married Elizabeth Williams of Greenwood, S. C, and who lived at Norfolk, VA.
3. A. M. Holzendorf of Waycross, who first married Mamie Penland, and she died, leaving a son, Algeron; and the second wife was Lula, a daughter of Jasper Roberts of Echols county.
4. John L. Holzendorf, who married Stella Carter, daughter of Irving Carter, and who died in Milltown.

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Related Posts:

Obituary of William J. Lamb ~ died June 13, 1908

William J. Lamb ~ Confederate Veteran

Resolutions of the Berrien Minute Men

How Old Yellow Was Killed