Lamar Farm
Hubert H. Longmire
Hobert C. Longmire
Naney Wallace Lamar
The Lamar Century Farm is only one East Tennessee example of how the Civil War and the arrival of the Tennessee Valley Authority dramatically influenced the fortunes of farm families. In 1851, Joseph B. and Mary Wallace Lamar established a farm of 217 acres about ten miles northeast of Clinton. Like their neighbors, Joseph and Mary produced hogs, wheat and corn. Unlike their neighbors, however, the Lamars had a very large family (fourteen children) and they raised mules to sell to cotton gin companies in South Carolina.
The Civil War directly affected the family. Northern officers conscripted one son, an action which so outraged one of his brothers that he ran away and joined the Confederate army. Northern troops also camped one night at the farm, leaving the next morning with most of the family’s food and livestock. The soldiers also burned the farm’s rail fence.
Despite the hardships, the Lamars survived the Civil War and in 1900 the farm’s ownership passed to Charles B. and Lizzie Tilley Lamar. Charles and Lizzie remained faithful to one Lamar tradition-they continued to raise wheat, corn and mules-but ignored another-they had only three children. In the 1930s, like the first generation of Lamars, Charles and Lizzie suffered property losses at the hands of the federal officials. The Tennessee Valley Authority took 111 acres of the farm for the Norris Dam Reservoir.
Rose Lamar Longmire, the granddaughter of Joseph Lamar, acquired the farm in 1963. Her family continued to manage its 85 acres and use one of its early structures, a barn now believed to be well over 100 years old. The farm is now owned by Hubert and Hobert Longmire, the grandsons of Rose.