James Lanier was born in 1800 in Beaufort County, North Carolina to Alexander Chalmers Sr. and Drusilla Cleaves Doughty. His home was in Bourbon county Kentucky from 1802-07 and then in Eaton Ohio until 1817, when his family moved to Madison, Indiana, the year after it became a state and lived at Schofield House. He studied law at Transylvania University and began practicing in 1820. According to an ad placed in the Indiana Republican newspaper of August 17, 1820, Lanier’s first law office at Madison was “in the south wing of Col. Stapp’s brick house, in the room…at present occupied by Dr. Cravens,” father of the man Lanier’s daughter Drucilla would later marry.
Career
During the 1820s, he was assistant clerk for the Indiana Legislature and later Clerk of the Indiana House of Representatives, where he was involved in assisting to move the capitol from Corydon to Indianapolis in 1825. In the early 1830s, Lanier became involved in banking. He became president of the Bank of Indiana in 1833 and eventually became a large shareholder of its Madison branch and was also on the board of directors that oversaw all branches. In the later 1830s, Lanier was involved with construction of the state's first major rail line connecting Madison and Indianapolis. He became a major stockholder in the line, which was finally finished in 1847. The line turned out to be very profitable. The same year, Lanier represented Indiana in a meeting with its European creditors. The state was on the verge of bankruptcy due to extreme overspending on internal improvement over the previous decade and was liquidating its assets. Lanier was able to negotiate the transfer of ownership of most of the Indiana canals to their bond holders in exchange for a 50% reduction in the value of the bonds. in MadisonHis sudden wealth allowed him to build a large mansion in Madison; it was completed in 1844. His wife Elizabeth died in 1846 and he was remarried to Margaret Mary McClure in 1848. In 1849, he began trading railroad shares in New York in a bank he started there in the same year with Richard Winslow called Winslow, Lanier & Co.. In 1851, he moved out of the state to New York, where he would manage his new business. He never moved back to Indiana. At the request of Gov. Oliver P. Morton, Lanier loaned the Indiana government over one million dollars without security to help the state avoid bankruptcy during the American Civil War. The money was used to pay interest on the state debt and outfit troops. It was all repaid by 1870. The state, grateful for his help, has preserved his residence in Madison, the Lanier Mansion, as a state historic site.
Personal life
In 1819, he married his first wife, Elizabeth G. Gardner. Following Elizabeth's death, he married Margaret Mary McClure.
Alexander Chalmers Lanier, an attorney who married Stella Louise Searing Godman.
Elizabeth Frances Lanier, who married Brig. Gen. William McKee Dunn.
Charles D. Lanier, who married Sarah E. Egleston, and who was a close friend of Pierpont Morgan, who carried on Winslow, Lanier & Co. after Lanier's death.
Jean Lanier, who died young.
James Lanier, who died young.
Katherine Howard Steuart Lanier, who married Myles Standish.
Through his youngest son, Charles, he was the grandfather of James F. D. Lanier, who married Harriet Bishop in 1885; Sarah Eggleston Lawrence, Fanny Appleton, who was married to Francis Randall Appleton, and Elizabeth Gardner Turnure, who was married to George Evans Turnure.His great-grandson is record producer Quincy Jones, whose maternal great-grandmother was a slave.
