Noted Lafayette Expert To Speak in LG Next Week

The Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives has invited Alan R. Hoffman, a noted expert and speaker on the Marquis de Lafayette, to return to La Grange for an America 250 event. Hoffman’s program, “Lafayette in the American Revolution and his Evolution as an Antislavery Advocate,” will be given in the meeting room of the Fayette Public Library on Thursday, March 19 at 6:30 p.m.

It seems appropriate that during this 250th anniversary of American Independence we celebrate Fayette County’s namesake, the Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolution. Our county seat is named after La Grange, the chateau about 30 miles south of Paris where Lafayette lived from 1799 until his death in 1834.

Alan Hoffman has been the guest of the Museum and Archives on three previous occasions, speaking on various aspects of Lafayette’s life, but never specifically about his contributions during the American Revolution. Among Lafayette’s personal friends were American Presidents and Founding Fathers, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe.

Hoffman is coming to us from his home in New Hampshire. A Boston attorney for over 40 years, he obtained his undergraduate degree in history from Yale College and then earned his JD degree from Harvard Law School. After becoming interested in Lafayette in 2002, he spent two years translating Auguste Levasseur’s “Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825,” the first-hand account of Lafayette’s Farewell Tour of America written by his private secretary.

Almost fifty years after the American Revolution, Lafayette traveled to all 24 states as the last surviving major general of the Continental Army and was greeted with a grand reception by the American people wherever he visited. During the past two years, the 100th anniversary of Lafayette’s Farewell Tour, Hoffman was a popular speaker at many of these places Lafayette had visited.

Hoffman’s book, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825, was first published in 2006. The Museum and Archives has a few signed copies available for purchase.

The Fayette Public Library is located at 855 South Jefferson Street in La Grange. Please use the after-hours entrance to the library’s meeting room on Franklin Street, toward the rear of the building.