The Marquis de Lafayette’s Farewell Tour of America in 1824-1825 included visits
to all 24 states at the time, encompassing a wide range of cities and towns. The eastern
locations included trips to New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.,
as well as smaller communities and sites significant to the American Revolution. The
tour lasted for 13 months, with Lafayette receiving a hero’s welcome, often with
banquets and parades, at each stop.
During his tour, Lafayette had many trials, including losing his luggage and
important papers when his steamboat sank in the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky.
His trip to the Quaker town of West Chester must have seemed uneventful by
comparison, but he came here largely because he wanted to tour the Brandywine
Battlefield and, of course, West Chester was the county seat.
Even though the expected route from Philadelphia could have easily been done
by carriage, Lafayette traveled to Chester by steamboat on the Delaware River. After
celebrating there, he visited Wilmington, Delaware, and then onto West Chester. After
his overnight stay in the borough, he would leave for Lancaster on his way south to
Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Virginia.
The entire day leading up to a celebratory banquet at the 1786 courthouse (which
no longer stands) had been set in motion by “Judge” Isaac Darlington, cousin to the
renowned physician turned botanist William Darlington, who had extended an
invitation to Lafayette’s entourage to include West Chester in their travel plans. They
had hoped for a later visit. But as luck would have it, a letter of acceptance was received
on July 16th, 1825, and so the Judge’s committee had only ten days to plan for the
momentous occasion.
With nearly all the important local Revolutionary War heroes long dead –
namely General “Mad” Anthony Wayne and Col. John Hannum – the group felt lucky
to secure the veteran Col. Joseph McClellan, who had fought with Stirling at
Birmingham Hill.
The citizens of the county seat were said to have expected an all-out parade, with
plenty of militia to add to the pomp and circumstance. For that, they were glad to
secure “Major” Isaac Barnard, a 30-something West Chester resident who had become
an attorney following his military service in the War of 1812. He was considered a great
organizer and an experienced parade enthusiast. In fact, at the age of 27, Barnard
helped to mobilize the Republican Artillerists, a volunteer militia unit that raised funds
marking the site of the “Paoli Massacre” in present-day Malvern.
Local newspapers focused on the unsparing hospitality shown to the
Marquis, but particular attention was given to Lafayette’s ride to West Chester
after his overnight stay at the home of Éleuthère Irénée du Pont at Eleutherian Mills,
now part of the Hagley Museum in Wilmington, Delaware.
On July 26, Lafayette and his host departed early in the morning (the
weather was “cool and delightful”) and traveled to Chadds Ford by a barouche carriage pulled
by four gray horses, as one writer described it. Lafayette’s entourage included his son, George
Washington Lafayette, his secretary from France, M. La Vasseur, and M. Baudonis, a
“distinguished lawyer from Paris,” as well as several organizing committees from Philadelphia
and Wilmington and no less than fifteen militia on foot and two units on horseback, creating a
procession that could be seen for miles away.
While the entire “day was spent as a holiday by a great part of the county,” as one
writer stated, it was not a time for staying home. Residents did everything possible to
catch the attention of the carriage party as soon as it entered Chester County near
Chadds Ford, and “the roads were lined with enthusiastic spectators” and “flowers,
flags, handkerchiefs greeted the General and his party at every turn.”
Another newspaper reported that Lafayette’s approach was heralded “by
express riders who came hurrying into town in advance.” In his history of the borough,
contemporary historian Douglas Harper wrote that Lafayette was
“more than just a relic of the Revolution” but rather a war hero and a “survivor of
the European Enlightenment, the sister movement of the one that had founded
America.” Harper also gives a perspective on the estimated 10,000 spectators as
follows:
“The entire borough barely numbered six hundred citizens, and many
if not most of the throng had come out from Delaware County and
Philadelphia. Even hangings only drew five thousand or so in West
Chester in those days.”
Considering the size of the Marquis’s entourage, it is not surprising that it
was late in the afternoon when Lafayette’s carriage entered the western border of
the borough by way of the present-day Rosedale Avenue. In fact, they had so many
stops, a special trumpet player on horseback announced every halt and departure.
The entourage visited all the landmarks Lafayette had wanted to see, especially
the possible site where he was wounded near Birmingham Meeting. They also
stopped for lunch at the home of an unnamed host living at the corner of
Birmingham and Street Roads, according to newspaper accounts.
The group then headed for West Chester, stopping briefly at Strode’s Mill,
which was rather a strange landmark because it is where the British in 1777 lined up and formed three columns before heading to their battle staging ground at
Osborne’s Hill.
The group’s main stop was “Darlington’s Woods” (later Smedley
Darlington’s estate, Faunbrook, which is now elegantly preserved. Crowding in on
every available space, the party was joined by numerous veterans of the War of
1812, who were there to add a touch of military authenticity to the tour – and to
fire a 13-gun salute. Here they were joined by 17 companies, including two cavalry
units. (I won’t list all the groups by name as Futhey and Cope did in their long
account published in their 1881 tome, History of Chester County, but the
historians did say “the crowd here was immense.”)
With Maj. Gen. Barnard leading the way, the crowd left the grounds by way
of Rosedale and traveled up High Street. Incidentally, Lafayette’s entourage passed
the grounds near where a small group of Continentals skirmished with a Hessian
unit after the Battle of Brandywine. Futhey and Cope continued in their description
of Lafayette’s carriage ride in and around the borough, with the streets lined with
cheering crowds. They wrote that the “procession passed up High Street, to Market,
down Market to Walnut, up Walnut to Gay, up Gay to High, down High to Market,”
before returning to High Street by way of Church and Gay Streets and going north
towards an area just west of the present-day Marshall Square Park.
At that time, it was the farm of Jesse Matlack and at a spot now identified by a
stone marker along East Lafayette Street, the Marquis was greeted by another 13-gun
salute. Lafayette reviewed the troops and noted what was called the group’s
“soldier-like behavior.” After a few more speeches, Lafayette climbed back into his
carriage while a contingent of several hundred mounted citizens that formed in the
same field followed him through the streets. The Marqu i s was taken to stay
at the home of the Chief Burgess, Ziba Pyle, which still stands at the northeast corner
of Gay and Church Streets, while Lafayette’s son and associates stayed across the
street in the Cross Keys Tavern (later the White Hall Hotel and no longer standing) .
Newspapers of the period suggest that Dr. Darlington, who was fluent in French,
had encouraged his cousin to extend the invitation to visit West Chester because
Lafayette shared a Freemason connection with many of the attendees.
The newspapers also reported that Lafayette had only a brief repose before
heading to the heavily decorated “Grand Jury room in the courthouse,” as it was
called. Before the guests arrived for dinner, Darlington escorted the Marquis on a
special walking tour that included Darlington’s herbarium, a botanical and native
plant collection, as well as a stop on High Street to see a colony of Purple Martins that
lived in a birdhouse on a tall pole behind the Bank of Chester County.
That evening, an elaborate feast catered by the Turk’s Head Tavern was given in
Lafayette’s honor at the courthouse with numerous dignitaries in attendance. One
newspaper noted that despite the solemnity of a day spent visiting a former battlefield,
the dinner was summed up as “by all accounts a raucous good time with toasts made
by and for Lafayette, as well as for our country, and for many of the founding fathers.”
After the dinner, Lafayette returned to his quarters in Ziba Pyle’s house, but
apparently, he could not immediately head for his bed since a group of new visitors
arrived at his door. (The elaborately carved bed in Lafayette’s room was on loan to the
Burgess and later became a popular “Lafayette slept here” relic to be displayed at every
opportunity .) According to Futhey and Cope, Lafayette opened his door to “a large
number of people of both sexes, who were kindly received by him.”
The crowd included the daughter of a veteran whose regiment fought under
Lafayette at Yorktown, as well as other veterans introduced by Wayne’s son, Col. Isaac
Wayne. No toasts are mentioned, but the historians did observe that Lafayette was expected to
attend an early morning breakfast at a tavern in Humphryville, in East Fallowfield Township,
and so he soon retired to get the restful sleep he needed for another celebratory day.
A Facebook invitation posted by the West Chester Historical Commission