Hardman, Lamartine Griffin, 1856-1937

Lamartine Griffin Hardman (1856-1937), physician, businessman, and politician, born in Commerce, Georgia.

Reputedly one of the wealthiest men in North Georgia at the turn of the century, Dr. Lamartine Griffin Hardman was a man who had diverse interests in a number of areas. Physician, businessman, manufacturer, farmer and statesman: Hardman's versatile career embodied the full spirit of the Progressive Era in the South. He was truly a Renaissance man. One of eleven children, Lamartine Griffin Hardman was born on April 14, 1856 in Harmony Grove (now Commerce), Georgia to Dr. William Benjamin Johnson and Susan Elizabeth Colquitt Hardman. His father was a physician and Baptist minister. Hardman inherited his political aspirations from the Colquitt side of the family, which counted among its members four governors in Georgia and Texas. Hardman first followed his father's footsteps by attending medical college. He graduated from the Georgia Medical College in Augusta in 1876 and opened his own practice in Commerce later in that year. He then furthered his medical training at Bellevue Hospital in New York, and pursued post-graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the New York Polyclinic and Guy Hospital in London, from which he received a second degree in 1890. Returning home after nearly a decade and a half out of the South, Hardman opened his own medical practice in Commerce, and later joined his brother, William B. Hardman, in establishing the Hardman Sanatorium in 1899. "They introduced into the hospital advanced apparatus," claimed journalist Louie Newton, "and before 1900 Dr. L. G. Hardman was a nationally known physician." The sanatorium served a large numbers of patients throughout northeast Georgia until 1945. During this period, Hardman experimented in the field of anesthetics. He had completely anesthetized an animal by injecting tincture of Indian Hemp (cannabis indica) into the femoral vein of a dog. This work brought him into close touch with the earlier work of Dr. Crawford W. Long. Long was well known in medical history as a pioneer in the use of ether as an anesthetic during surgery in the 1840s in nearby Jefferson. Besides his medical practice and research, Hardman was committed to creating manufacturing enterprises to stimulate economic growth in rural north Georgia. In 1893, Hardman founded the Harmony Grove Cotton Mills. He later established the Hardman Roller Mills, also in Commerce. In 1907, Dr. Hardman, along with W. A. Covington and W. J. Neel, authored the prohibition bill banning legalized whiskey in Georgia. Upon its passage, he received much acclaim, with favorable mail from around the country congratulating him on this early victory for the Prohibition movement. As both a physician and son of a Baptist minister, Hardman believed that alcohol was destructive to the human body and that no good could come from its use. For more personal reasons, 1907 was also an important year for Hardman. At the age of fifty-one, he married the twenty-five year old Emma Wiley Griffin, from a socially prominent family in Valdosta. They had met in 1901 when introduced by W. W. Landrum, an Atlanta preacher. On a bet, Reverend Landrum promised to introduce the matrimony-proof Hardman to a young woman in Valdosta if on their wedding day he would give the Baptist mission $1,000. After six years of courtship they married, and had four children together. During World War I, Hardman served as the U. S. Fuel Administrator for Georgia. After two unsuccessful gubernatorial campaigns in 1914 and 1916, he was finally elected governor in 1926 (at the age of seventy-four) in a run-off election over John Holder, who had generated controversy for fiscal improprieties as head of the state highway board. In 1928, he comfortably defeated E. D. Rivers in his bid for re-election as the state's chief executive. Governor Hardman promised to give the state a businesslike administration, eliminating waste and extravagance. In his second inaugural address in 1929, he declared: "It is apparent in our state, and indeed in most, if not all the states in the Union, that there is a need and a demand for a more modern, businesslike arrangement of operating the state's affairs." He went on in that speech to recommend the creation of an agriculture college as part of the University of Georgia, and the preservation of the "the majesty and enforcement of the law." Unfortunately, Hardman proposed this ambitious agenda just before the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression. Given the ensuing climate, the legislature was in no mood to embrace dramatic changes of this sort. Nevertheless, Hardman could claim more minor achievements for his administration. During his governorship, the state capitol was remodeled, the Rhodes home in Atlanta was accepted as a depository for the state archives, and a plant to produce license tags was established. His most significant achievement was in laying the groundwork for a comprehensive reorganization of the state's government, the Allen Commission on Simplification and Coordination, headed by Ivan Allen, Sr., that would be put into effect by Hardman's successor, Richard B. Russell, Jr. Hardman was seventy-seven years old when he relinquished the governor's office in 1933. He returned to Commerce, where he lived the last four years of his life. He died of a heart ailment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on February 18, 1937.