The visit of Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (1757-1834) to the United States at the invitation of President James Monroe was an epic event. And in the midst of a bitter Presidential contest, Lafayette stood as a symbol of national unity, as Mike Duncan put it in his recent Lafayette biography Hero of Two Worlds:
Lafayette inspired universal love among all parties in America—a marked contrast to France, where he exceled at unifying otherwise disparate groups in their shared hatred of him. In America, he was a living legend—a pristine icon of the most glorious days of the Revolution. Lafayette was eager to play the role the Americans assigned him in every town and city he passed. He found himself as celebrated in Philadelphia as New Orleans; Vermont as much as South Carolina; rural hamlets as well as big cities; Jacksonians as well as anti-Jacksonians. Lafayette belonged to everyone, and wherever he went he was described as the Nation’s Guest. Whether Lafayette intended it or not, his very presence reminded local and state leaders they were a single nation with a shared past and collective future. Lafayette certainly never let them forget it.
Buried In Local History
What i find particularly intriguing about Lafayette’s tour is that much of the story of the tour and its significance is buried in local history. The tour was a very significant event in national history as a last huzzah to the revolutionary generation, When it comes to local history, though Lafayette’s brief stop in 1824 and 1825 may be the most memorable thing that happened in a small town in the 19th Century. A handshake with Lafayette was something worth noting in the obituary of someone who died in the gay nineties some seventy years later.
It is sad to say that Worcester County as a whole does not seem to have made much of an impression on Lafayette. Here is the account of Lafayette’s secretary, Auguste Levasseur, as translated by Allan Hoffman, President of the American Friends of Lafayette :
September 2 – The first day in Bolton, we had stayed in the charming country house of Mr. Wilder, whose amiable hospitality will not be erased from our memory. The second day, we stayed at Stafford, after having attended the glittering festivities of Worcester, and on the 4th at ten o’clock in the morning, we arrived at Hartford, a pretty, very mercantile city, situated on the West Bank of the Connecticut, 40 miles from its source. Its population is 4,726, and it shares with New Haven the advantage of being the seat of the Government of Connecticut.
That second day – September 3, 1824 – little noted as it was by Lavasseur, nonetheless left its mark on the eight towns (including the bustling metropolis of Worcester) that he and Lafayette passed through. One of those marks is the source of my obsession with Lafayette’s visit and my desire to celebrate its bicentennial.
On September 3, 1824 General the Marquis de Lafayette was greeted by the people of the Town of Leicester, led by Captain Howe. Here, on the site of Stone’s Tavern, a welcome was made by Rev. Jospeh Muenschner of the Episcopal Church, which was followed by an address to the crowd by Lafayette.
A Growing Obsession
I live less than a mile from that marker and pass it often on my walks. I have to with some embarrassment also mention that like the Episcopal Church, brandy new in 1824 and still across the street, the marker is an Ingress portal and has generally been in Resistance hands for many years thanks to my efforts. I have read the maker enough times for a normal person to have memorized it, but my mind does not work that way.
At any rate the marker is on Stafford Street, which refers to the very Stafford where Lafayette spent the night of September 3, probably having arrive in the wee hours of September 4. Stafford Street follows the route of the Worcester-Stafford Turnpike, which was Lafayette’s natural route to Hartford. Generally the Nation’s Guest did not have to pay the toll.
One of the obsessions of my walks became thinking about the upcoming bicentennial of Lafyette’s tour. Mind you this was in 2016, with eight years still to go. I had attended a number of Civil War Sesquicentennial events and I began to wonder how it was that you made things like that happen. My long walk thoughts can become rather grandiose, so I was thinking about contacting the National Park Service and of course there would be military interest in this grand reception of the last surviving Major General of the Revolution.
Meanwhile I discovered another Lafayette marker not that far down Stafford Street in Charlton.
It is in a preserved militia filed with numerous other markers and across the street from the Rider Tavern.
That’s Julien Icher in the picture, but we’ll get to him later. Eventually I started restraining my grandiose designs. The first thing I decided that I needed to do was to improve my knowledge of Lafayette, which was pretty sketchy. And there was my knowledge of the tour beyond what I read on the markers. What I knew was that it was a really big deal and that was pretty much it.
Learning About Lafayette
I started with Lafayette : His Extraordinary Life and Legacy by Donald Miller. The most important thing I learned from that book was that the American Friends of Lafayette which was founded in 1932 is still alive and thriving. As noted the current President Alan Hoffman translated Levasseur’s account of Lafayette’s journey. He introduced me to Julien Icher whose Lafayette Trail Inc. is documenting Lafayette’s journey and adding new markers. We spent a couple of days driving around Western Mass and Connecticut. Rider Tavern made quite the impression on Julien.
There is no doubt that the American Friends of Lafayette would be on the Bicentennial in a big way, but I think it is fair to say that I gave them a little bit of a nudge. There are now bicentennial committees in most if not all of the 24 states that Lafayette visited (That was all of them in 1824. Be sure to get your 24 star flag early as maybe they will run out. It pairs well with a French tri-color.) Naturally I am on the Massachusetts committee.
What will be coming in the next few weeks is as detailed an account as I can put together of each of the stops. My hope is that each of the towns will do something on September 3, 2024 to commemorate Lafayette’s visit. You can count on me being there regardless.
If you are interested in helping get something going, please contact me at peterreillycpa@gmail.com or put a comment below.
There will be links to the individual articles about the towns coming, so be sure to check back.
Afternote
Reminiscences of Worcester for the Earliest Period – Caleb Arnold Wall – Tyler & Seagrave Worcester MA- 1877- gives the most detailed account I have found so far of Lafayette’s visit to Worcester County.,
Peter J. Reilly majored in history at the College of The Holy Cross in Worcester MA. A brief stab at graduate work in history at the University of Chicago prompted him into a career in public accounting. He is member of the Bicentennial Committee of the American Friends of Lafayette.