Remer Young Lane (1826-1917), was a pioneer, planter and banker of Lowndes County, GA. He served as postmaster of Clyattville, GA. He was a contemporary of Richard A Peeples, Augustin H. Hansell, and Benjamin P. Jones. The 1860 census of slave inhabitants shows he owned 16 enslaved people; his uncle, Benjamin Lane, owned 51 slaves. The 1870 tax digest of Lowndes County show Remer Young Lane’s post-war land holdings included 1777 acres, and he acted as trustee for another 820 acres owned by his mother. In 1870, he employed five freedmen in the 662 Georgia Militia District, the Clyattville District. The city of Remerton, GA is named in his honor.
Remer Young Lane, Lowndes County, GA. Image source: Mills Morrison
According to William Harden’s History of Savannah and South Georgia,
Remer Young Lane, The president of the Merchants Bank of Valdosta is one of the oldest residents of Lowndes county, GA and for more than half a century has been closely identified with its agricultural and business development. A pioneer himself, Mr. Lane also represents a family of Georgia pioneers, and its members have been worthily connected with civic affairs and business enterprise in America from before the Revolutionary war down to the present.
Remer Young Lane was born in that part of Emanuel now known as Jenkins county, Georgia, on November 18, 1826. His grandfather, Abraham Lane (1745-1826), a native of Duplin county, North Carolina, was one of seven brothers each of whom gave soldier’s service to the cause of independence during the Revolutionary war. Soon after the close of that struggle he came into Georgia, locating in what is now Jenkins county, and took a pioneer’s part as a settler and upbuilder of that region. Practically all of Georgia was then a wilderness, the land, not yet surveyed, and many years passed before all the Indian titles were quieted. In this sparsely settled region Abraham Lane acquired several thousand acres, and spent the rest of his years in the management and cultivation of his broad acres. He died in 1826, aged eighty-one years. His wife, whose maiden name was Martha Wood, passed away some years before him.
John Lane (1795-1835), son of Abraham and father of the Valdosta banker, was born also in the present Jenkins county on April 1, 1795 and was reared amid pioneer scenes. Following in the footsteps of his father, he became a planter and with slave labor conducted a large estate. His death occurred at the early age of forty years. He married Mary Heath, who was born and reared in the same neighborhood with him. Her father, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, was Louis Heath, who married a Miss Vickers. John Lane and wife had five children, and after the father’s death the mother directed the home plantation and kept the children together until they had homes of their own. She lived to the age of about seventy years.
Remer Young Lane was in his ninth year when his father died, and he lived at the old home until he was twenty-one, being educated in the schools of the neighborhood. On leaving home he established a store at “No. 8” on the line of the Georgia Central in Burke county, and continued there for seven or eight years. The date of his settlement in Lowndes county was 1855, fifty-eight years ago. At that time the county comprised a large territory in southern Georgia, and the county seat was Troupville. Near Clyatville he bought a large tract of new land, and with the aid of slaves developed and farmed it for a number of years. Agriculture was his regular vocation until 1875, in which year he located in Valdosta. In association with Hon. A. T. McIntyre of Thomasville he engaged in banking, a business with which his name has been substantially identified ever since, and he is one of the oldest bankers of south Georgia. In 1889 he organized the Merchants Bank of Valdosta, and has been president of this institution ever since.
Remer Young Lane, President, Merchants Bank of Valdosta. Image Source: Mills Morrison
1889 Board of Directors, Merchants Bank of Valdosta. Left to right: The original board members of the bank included Henry Young Tillman, Edward Peck Smith Denmark, Mills B. Lane, Remer Young Lane, W. R. Strickland, Lowndes W. Shaw, Frank Strickland, unidentified.
Mr. Lane is one of the largest land owners of Lowndes county, his holdings comprising over four thousand acres, and through its management and his other business enterprises he has been for years one of the largest producers of actual wealth in this section of the state.
On September 13, 1855, Mr. Lane married Miss Henrietta Brinson. She too is a descendant of Georgia pioneers. Her parents were Mills M. and Sarah Hines Brinson, natives of Screven and Burke counties respectively. Mr. and Mrs. Lane have reared seven children, namely: Mary, Walter Thompson, Mills B., John, Augustus H., Edward W. and Ben.
- Mary Lane married E. P. S. Denmark, and her five children are Remer Z. Denmark, Elisha P. Denmark, Augustus H. Denmark, Irwin Denmark and Mary Estelle Denmark.
- Walter T. Lane, a resident of Valdosta, married Katherine Gairard, who died, leaving three children, Katrina Lane, Almerine Lane and Walter T. J. Lane.
- Mills B. Lane, who is president of the Citizens and Southern Bank at Savannah, married Mary Homer, and their children are Mary Lane, Remer Y. Lane. and Mills B. Lane, Jr.
- John Lane (1863-1917), who is a planter in Lowndes county, married Emma Tillman, now deceased, and their children are Mills B. Lane and Isaiah T. Lane; [delegate to the 1903 Southern Baptist Convention; buried at Sunset Hill Cemetery, Valdosta, GA.]
- Augustus H. Lane, the fifth child, is deceased;
- Edward W. Lane, who is president of the Atlantic National Bank of Jacksonville, Florida, married Anna Tollivar, and has two children, James T. Lane and Edward Wood Lane.
- Ben Lane, the youngest of the family, is engaged in business at Douglas in Coffee county.
One of Mr. Lane’s granddaughters, Katrina Lane, married William Ashley, and their child, Mary Katrina, represents the fourth living generation.
In late August 1868, Remerton Y. Lane, Richard A. Peeples, and Iverson Griffin, one of the men who had been implicated in the Clift Bombing at Valdosta in April, were among the organizers of a political rally at Valdosta to be held August 27. The announcement in the Valdosta South Georgia Times read, “there will be a free barbecue at Valdosta. Speakers from a distance may be expected. Let every man, white and colored, turn out.” In the 1870s, R. Y. Lane was a member of the Board of Trustees of the South Georgia College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts. In the fall of 1874 R. Y. Lane and Hamilton W. Sharp were discussed as possible candidates for the state legislature. On March 16, 1880, R. Y. Lane and his son-in-law E. P. S. Denmark were among the South Georgia Delegation traveling to attend the opening of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad. In 1890 he was one of the organizing board members of the Savannah Grocery Company.
Merchants Bank of Valdosta, 1916 letterhead
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