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Editor’s Note: This year marks the Bicentennial, 2024-2025, of Lafayette and his farewell tour, “Guest of the Nation”, which took place August 15, 1824-September 7, 1825. To commemorate the occasion, this is the third of four contributed columns by Richard Ingram, a longtime resident of LaGrange and Chair of Friends of Lafayette.

August 26-September 2, 1824

The week of August 26, two hundred years ago, Lafayette was in Boston.  People and the press were in the habit of referring to him as “Marquis.”  But Lafayette in late 1778 began signing his name “Lafayette,” without title.  He said it was not who you are, but what you do that counts.  He preferred “General,” said he earned it.  He visited the Navy Yard at Charlestown, and he inspected the beginnings of the Bunker Hill Monument.  He attended church at the Brattle Street Meeting House, sat in John Hancock’s pew.  That afternoon he and Mayor Josiah Quincy visited John Adams.  Lafayette found him physically frail, remarkable arthritis so severe he had to have help eating, but mentally keen.  Then Lexington, Concord, Marblehead, and Salem, cheers all along the way, before spending the night at Tracy’s Inn at Newburyport.  The next day to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to dine with Governor Morrill at Franklin Hall; leaving at midnight, arriving back at Boston at 7:30 AM.