SOURCE: Genealogy and History A Branch of the Family of LAMAR With It's Related Families of Urquhart, Reynolds, Bird, Williamson, Gilliam, Garratt, Thompson, Herman, Empson, and others," by Edward Mays of Jackson, Mississippi, Page C-5.
Supplied by Hazlehurst Beezer.
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Justice L. Q. C. Lamar in his lifetime on more than one occasion spoke to the writer of a relationship existing between his family and the French statesman and author, Alphonse de Lamartine; but the allusions were casually made, and the writer, understanding them to be mere speculations based on the similarity of names and not made seriously, paid but little attention to the matter. However, it seems that there was more of conviction or knowledge on the subject than the writer apprehended, as will appear by the following extract from a letter written December 15, 1903, by Mrs. Harriet C. L. Jones, of New York City, daughter of Gazaway B. Lamar, to Mrs. Mary A. Ross, of Grenada, Miss, sister of L. Q. C. Lamar:
"It surprises me greatly to find no mention in the book about Cousin Lucius of his visit to Lamartine, and especially to learn that he never told his son-in-law, or you his beloved sister, about that visit. I know I did not dream what he told me of that interview. Why he should have spoken to me about it, and been so silent to his own family, I cannot understand excepting that he knew my mother's family, the Careneous [Cazeneau] were Huguenots and took refuge in Switzerland at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Before my father died he spoke of knowing that Lamartine was our blood relation. Being a child I never thought to ask him how he knew it. Then years after father's death, when cousin Lucius spoke of the fact that he knew Lamartine was our relative, and that Lamartine acknowledged it to him very willingly, I was not at all surprised, remembering what father had said on the subject. When Dr. Currey was sent to Spain to represent the United States, he called to see me before sailing, and I told him then what cousin Lucius had said of his interview with Lamartine. I asked Dr. Currey, as the Lamars were originally Spanish (according to Lamartine) to see if he could get any trace of them in Spain. After Dr. Currey left, I was plunged into ten years of law suits, and afterwards years of inflamation of the nerves, and consequently did not follow up the subject."