Lamar County will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding on August 10 and discussions have begun on how to mark the occasion. The legislature passed a constitutional amendment on Aug, 10, 1920 which created Lamar County from portions of Pike and Monroe counties. The actual first day of business for the new county was Jan. 1, 1921. ’We have had some preliminary discussions on how to mark the occasion,’ commission chairman Charles Glass said. The county was named for Judge Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (1825-1893) . He served in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Mississippi before becoming Secretary of the Interior. He was later appointed as an associate justice to the US. Supreme Court. The Barnesville News-Gazette reported the formation of the county in its Aug. 12, 1920 edition. This is the long lead paragraph of that story: ’The Georgia Legislature Tuesday passed the Constitutional Amendment creating the new county of Lamar from portions of Pike and Monroe counties, thus ending a fight for a new county which began more than 50 years ago, and which has been carried on with vigor during the past few years. The creation of the new county will bring with it freedom from political bondage for the people of Barnesville and the territory involved which they had begun to believe was intolerable and from which they had determined to be relieved at all costs. Had it not ended now the fight would have grown in intensity and bitterness, the result of which no man could have foreseen or foretold. Well indeed it is that the fight is over.’
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