Born in Belgium, George C. Lambert immigrated to Minnesota in 1883, at age sixteen. He was admitted to the bar in 1888 and practiced law and pursued business interests in St. Paul for the next four decades. He served on numerous civic organizations, was an officer in the National Guard, where he attained the rank of Colonel, and was appointed Adjunct General by Governor Lind. He died on February 22, 1934, at age sixty-six. In memorial proceedings by the Ramsey County Bar Association, his work to restore the Mississippi River as a navigable artery to serve Midwest business and agricultural interests was recalled:
"Probably, his most notable and spectacular achievement was in connection with his service to bring about favorable action on the part of the federal government ensuring the deepening of the channel of the Mississippi River. . . . He, more than any one person of his day and generation, acknowledged the heavy debt owed to the Mississippi River by the early explorers and pioneers for the part the river played in making possible and promoting the early and rapid development of this Inland Empire. Many years ago Colonel Lambert's prophetic vision foretold the necessity and value of improving and restoring the river as a facile and available method of transportation, in order that it might go hand in hand with the Great Lakes-Seaway project and thus lift the handicap under which the midwest had been laboring for many years as virtually a land-locked country."
An Appendix contains two articles about Colonel Lambert. A biographical sketch in Theodore Christianson's history of Minnesota, published in 1935, has this description of his contribution to the cooperative movement in the state:
"It is generally believed that Minnesota's escape from the profoundest results of the economic depression that settled over the agricultural West in the post war era, was due to the development of singularly efficient cooperative organizations for distributing and marketing. These various organizations have been extended to embrace nearly all the essential commodities which are produced in the Minnesota area, and also many of the commodities which the farmer buys. When the complete history of this movement is written, probably no man will receive a higher meed of credit for leadership than the late Col. George C. Lambert, whose death at St. Paul, February 22, 1934, was an unmitigated loss to the citizenship of the state."
The Appendix concludes with an article from "Waterways," a publication of the Upper Mississippi Waterways Association, on Colonel Lambert's efforts to improve navigation on the Great River -- resulting in "Lambert's Landing" being posthumously named after him.
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