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How Diane Brenner and the WHS secured a Lafayette Trail Marker
The town of Worthington will receive a bronze historic marker from Lafayette Trail, Inc., as part of their project to mark the route taken by General Lafayette during his Farewell Tour of the United States in 1824-1825. This beautiful red, white, and blue sign will be placed close to the town library at the site of the former Pearce Tavern, where General Lafayette, his secretary, and his only son, George Washington Lafayette, spent the night on June 13, 1825. The Worthington trail sign, made possible by a donation from the William C. Pomeroy Foundation, will be dedicated at 1:00 pm on June 13, 2025, two hundred years to the date after Lafayette’s visit.
While Lafayette’s momentous visit to Worthington was previously commemorated with a stone and bronze plaque as part of the 1925 anniversary celebration, the official Lafayette Trail marker was a longer time coming. The main reason for this delay was the lack of primary source material confirming his stay in the town.
The Worthington Historical Society has various secondary accounts of Lafayette’s arrival, noting his lateness, the cavalcade of horsemen escorting his carriage down Buffington Hill Road, and the throng of townsfolk awaiting him in the dark and again the next morning. For months the Hampshire Gazette meticulously noted the Marquis’ progress throughout the United States as he headed toward Boston and the dedication of the Bunker Hill Memorial. But by the time Lafayette’s entourage left Albany for Massachusetts, the weekly paper was caught up in reporting events of the day and preparations for the Bunker Hill ceremony just days after Lafayette’s visit through western Massachusetts. In one edition, the Hampshire Gazette reported that Lafayette had left Albany and was on his way to Boston. The following edition went into great detail about the ceremony in Boston.
It was therefore up to the Worthington Historical Society’s adroit historians to seek out an acceptable primary source placing General Lafayette in Worthington on the night of June 13, 1825. And find it they did!
Archivist Diane Brenner searched the Library of Congress newspaper archive and the holdings of numerous Western Massachusetts and New York libraries without success. Then she turned to the Boston newspapers. Using the GenealogyBank newspaper archive, she found a brief single mention in an obscure (to her) paper, Columbian Centinel, in the morning edition from June 15. The report noted that Lafayette had arrived in Worthington and would be in Boston that evening:
The Lafayette Trail, Inc., and the William C. Pomeroy Foundation agreed that this was a valid primary source.
Join the Worthington Historical Society in front of the Worthington Library on June 13 at 1:00 pm as we unveil this lasting reminder of the day Lafayette came to Worthington.