Archives Observing 200th Anniversary of Lafayette’s Farewell Tour of America

Fayette County was organized on January 18, 1838 with La Grange as the county seat. Both were named in honor of the French nobleman, the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette’s home from 1800 until his death in 1834, was his estate, La Grange, that was located approximately thirty miles southeast of Paris.

On Thursday, April 17, at 6:30 p.m., noted Lafayette scholar, Alan R. Hoffmann, will return to La Grange to present his program, Lafayette’s Farewell Tour and His Role as a Symbol of Franco- American Friendship, in the Fayette Public Library’s meeting room.

Hoffman, who presented programs here in 2019 and 2020 is returning now to mark the 200th anniversary of La Fayette’s Farewell Tour of America.

Hoffman will explore the role Lafayette played as a symbol of Franco-American friendship, both during his lifetime and after his death. To the extent most people remember Lafayette, they recall his role in the American Revolution and his activities on behalf of American interests in the 1780s. However, Hoffman will emphasize the role of Lafayette’s Farewell Tour of 1824-1825, when he visited all 24 states of the Union as the “Nation’s Guest,” in imprinting Lafayette’s name and reputation on the American psyche.

Our early settlers would have been familiar with Lafayette’s return visit and we join more than 80 counties, cities and towns that were named after him as well as streets and roads everywhere. This program will explore this initial period of Franco-American friendship, but focus on Lafayette’s posthumous symbolic role, including his role as the inspiration for the Statue of Liberty, as a facilitator of America’s entry into and participation in the Great War in 1917, and finally as the emblem of the current thaw in Franco-American relations.

Alan R. Hoffman is traveling to La Grange from his home in New Hampshire. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he practiced in Boston for 50 years. Hoffmann’s book, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825, is his translation of the first-hand account of Lafayette’s Farewell Tour of America, written by Lafayette’s private secretary, Auguste Levasseur. Hoffmann spent two years on his translation of the journal, first published it in 2006 and now in its third printing. A noted speaker on the subject of Lafayette, Hoffman’s lecture schedule has been packed during the Farewell Tour Bicentennial with speaking engagements at many of the spots Lafayette visited and was grandly received. From La Grange, he will travel directly to a commemoration at Natchez, Mississippi.

This event is sponsored by The Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives. Signed copies of Hoffman’s book will be available after the program in the Fayette Public Library’s meeting room, 855 South Jefferson Street in La Grange and afterwards upstairs in the Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives’ gift shop.

Please note: the meeting room entrance faces Franklin Street toward the back of the building. For more information, phone the Archives at 968-3765 and ask for Rox Ann Johnson or visit www.lafayetteinamerica. com.