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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, the LaGrange Daily News will be publishing a series of columns by Richard Ingram, a longtime resident of LaGrange and Chair of Friends of Lafayette.

Week of November 25, 1824

While he was a prisoner of state 1792-1797, Lafayette studied, when permitted, farming, especially the writings of Englishman Arthur Young.  Convinced that France could raise its standard of living by making its farms more productive, Lafayette was keen to learn the latest.  His visit to the Maryland Agricultural Society Festival outside Baltimore was not ornamental.  Besides studious attention to improved animal breeds, new implements, and perfected grains, Lafayette took note of “the spirit of research and improvement.”  The First American Industrial Revolution was well underway, heralded by the arrival of “Samuel Slater the Traitor” in New York City in 1789, at the age of 21.  Born in England, where it was illegal to export textile technology, Slater memorized machine designs, proceeded on to New York City, then to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where he and Moses Brown, benefactor to Rhode Island College, now Brown University, deployed combined resources into “Slater Mill,” and launched this country’s Industrial Revolution.  Innovation followed, in chemistry by DuPont; the cotton gin by Eli Whitney; and the 351-mile Erie Canal from Lake Erie to the Hudson River by a motley mix, as there were no civil engineers in America at the time.  Lafayette did not carry Jefferson’s aversion to industry, but he agreed that economic and social progress, in France more especially, would be found in coaxing the land to better yield.

Evenings were devoted to ceremony and culture, including dining with the mayor of Baltimore and with the president of the Maryland Agricultural Society, and attending “The Bride of Abydos,” at the Baltimore Theater, a three act play by William Dimon based on Lord Byron’s heroic poem of the same name with Selim and Zuleika playing the reincarnated Turkish facsimiles of Romeo and Juliet.

Lafayette left Baltimore at 11 AM, November 29, to return to Gadsby’s Hotel in Washington.  He wrote his family to say that President Monroe had wanted him to stay at the President’s House, but organizers of the tour had implored him to spend his leisure in public accommodations, for which they provided.

Even with all these visitations Lafayette managed to attend the Washington Theater for a performance of a play much admired by Samuel Johnson, “She Stoops to Conquer,” a comedy from which hails, “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies,” by the author of “The Vicar of Wakefield” Oliver Goldsmith.

At some point in early December, the exact date murky, Lafayette visited Kalorama, Greek for “Fine View,” home of Colonel George Bomford and his wife Clara.  Mrs. Bomford’s brother-in-law was Joel Barlow, minister to France in 1812 whom Lafayette knew well and whose acquaintance prompted the invitation to Kalorama.  George and Clara gifted to Lafayette a small female dog named “Quiz.”  The two, Lafayette and Quiz, became much attached.  When Lafayette was out of sight, says John Becica in “Trail Tales,” Quiz would scurry in search.  On May 8, 1825, steamboating the Ohio River to Louisville, “The Mechanic” ran afoul of a submerged tree and sank.  Lafayette escaped unharmed, but Quiz in the melee, and on the hunt for him, returned to Lafayette’s cabin.  She drowned.  Later Lafayette said, “I have but one thing to regret in all my travels, and that is the loss of my little dog who loved me so much.”