James Franklin Doughty Lanier (November 22, 1800 – August 27, 1881) was an entrepreneur who lived in Madison, Indiana, prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861–1865).

James Lanier was born in 1800 in Beaufort County, North Carolina, to Alexander Chalmers Sr. (1778–1820) and Drusilla Cleaves Doughty (died 1838).

His home was in Bourbon county Kentucky from 1802 to 1807 and then in Eaton Ohio until 1817, when his family moved to Madison, Indiana,[1] the year after it became a state and lived at Schofield House.

The state was on the verge of bankruptcy due to extreme overspending on internal improvement over the previous decade and was liquidating its assets.

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.

[13] His funeral was held at the Presbyterian Church at University Place and 10th Street in Manhattan and he was then buried at Green-Wood Cemetery.