by Evan Johnson, Pamela Wicinas, and Evan Spring
On June 13, 2025, exactly two hundred years after General Lafayette’s arrival in Worthington, a bronze historic marker from Lafayette Trail, Inc., was unveiled outside the library along Route 112. The library stands at the former site of Pearce Tavern, where Lafayette – with his diarist, Levasseur, his valet, Bastien, and his only son, Georges Washington Lafayette – spent the night during his 6,000-mile farewell tour of the United States in 1824-1825.
The library grounds already held a memorial to Lafayette’s momentous visit. In 1925, during the town’s Lafayette centennial celebrations, an engraved bronze plaque was donated by the Springfield Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution and embedded in a boulder on the library lawn.
An official Lafayette Trail marker was a longer time coming, partly because Lafayette Trail, Inc., which approves the markers, did not have primary source material confirming Lafayette’s stay in town. The 1925 plaque and related newspaper coverage were considered secondary sources.
Accounts of Lafayette’s brief stay in town are mostly handed down to us from a single written source: the article “Lafayette’s Visit to Worthington in 1825,” by Katharine McDowell Rice (1859-1945), published in the June 21, 1925, edition of the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Setting down family and town lore passed down through the generations, Rice recounted Lafayette’s 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.
Back in 1825, the weekly Hampshire Gazette meticulously noted Lafayette’s progress throughout the United States for months as he headed toward Boston and the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument. But by the time his entourage left Albany for Massachusetts, the paper was caught up in preparations for the Bunker Hill ceremony and other events of the day.
It was up to the Worthington Historical Society’s adroit archivist, Diane Brenner, to seek out an acceptable primary source placing General Lafayette in Worthington on the night of June 13, 1825. And find it she did.
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 the June 15 edition of an obscure paper, the Columbian Centinel. The report noted in a postscript 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.
The dedication ceremony for the new trail marker on the library lawn was attended by Julien Icher, founder and president of The Lafayette Trail, Inc., along with board and committee members from the Selectboard, the Worthington Library, the Worthington Historical Society, and the town’s Lafayette 200th Anniversary Celebration committee, as well as other townspeople. Worthington’s state senator, Paul Mark, failed to show, but he did turn up at the Lafayette Ball later that evening with the town’s state representative, Lindsay Sabadosa.
First to speak at the trail marker ceremony was Jim Downey on behalf of the Historical Society. Addressing Icher, he spoke about the Connecticut-born Silas Deane, the first foreign diplomat from the United States to France.
“As you know, New Englanders can often be a subdued lot. When there was reason to celebrate a hero, much less one hired by another New Englander, who lived a little more than an hour away from here, New Englanders can become a raucous crowd. That Connecticut Yankee, named Silas Deane, met Lafayette in Paris, interviewed Lafayette, enthusiastically endorsed him, and gave him a glowing letter of recommendation to George Washington. And for George Washington, Lafayette proved to be the hire of a lifetime.”
“The plaque we are installing today memorializes Lafayette’s presence here, when he was taking his much-deserved victory lap in 1825. He was receiving the thanks and accolades of so many grateful Americans, who were finally learning of his pivotal role in the formation and the future of our country.”
In closing, Downey expressed gratitude to Lafayette’s ongoing legacy. “When the American colonel Charles E. Stanton visited Lafayette’s grave in Picpus Cemetery in Paris on July 4, 1917, to lay a wreath and to pledge the support of the United States of America to France in the First World War, he reportedly bowed his head and said, ‘Lafayette, we are here.’ Today we stand before this plaque, honoring Lafayette’s presence in our town two hundred years ago. We too can now proudly say, with eternal gratitude, ‘Thanks to you, Lafayette, we are here.’”
Next to speak was library Board of Trustees Chair Sheila Kinney, who gave some background on Pearce Tavern, where Lafayette was hosted in 1825. The tavern closed later in the 1800s, when the railroads ended much of Worthington’s stagecoach traffic. The tavern building was torn down years before the library opened in 1915.
As Kinney recounted, the town held a meeting in 1908 to discuss the design of the new library. Among those present was Seth Heacock, who came from Buffalo, worked in the oil business, and summered close to the library on Buffington Hill Road. Heacock told the meeting, “Now, as to the historical value of the property. I have known Worthington about fifty years. That old building was never anything more or less than an old groggery. The last one that was there that sold liquor was locked up.”
Kinney introduced library board member Christine Mendelsohn, who revisited the town’s 1925 Lafayette centennial celebrations, which were based at the library. Various committees from the local Grange, Royal Arcanum, Women’s Benevolent Society and the church were invited to assist. The extravagant program included:
- several numbers by a fife and drum corps from West Chesterfield
- procession in 1825 costume, two by two, around Worthington Corners with horseback riders bringing up the rear
- choral singing of My Country, ’Tis of Thee and The Star-Spangled Banner
- a Lafayette impersonator emerging from the library door
- speeches on topics including “Lafayette As an Internationalist,” “Lafayette’s Motto: Cur Non,” and “Lafayette As a Human Being”
- reading of the poem “When Lafayette Came in 1825”; and
- Jane Tuttle singing the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, and a number titled We Do Love Thee Lafayette.
Mendelsohn noted that Tuttle, a professional opera singer and music teacher, was the granddaughter of South Worthington’s Russell H. Conwell, a famous orator in his day and the founder of Temple University in Philadelphia.
Selectboard member Amy Wong briefly took the podium to thank various parties and imagine what Lafayette might have thought as he rode past the location of her property.
The final speaker was Julien Icher, a French national and founder-president of The Lafayette Trail, Inc. In April 2018, at age 24, Icher accompanied President Macron of France as the youngest member of the French Presidential Delegation during a state visit to Washington. Icher’s role was to emphasize the historical bonds of friendship that have united France and the U.S. since the signing of the Treaty of Alliance in 1778. Icher is host and director of Follow The Frenchmen, a YouTube-based web series exploring Lafayette’s legacy and the 1824-1825 U.S. tour.
Icher said the trail marker was approved much faster than usual because the Worthington community was “all in” on the project.
“The tour of Lafayette brought Lafayette all over the country, and not just to Boston, and to Washington, DC, but in the intimacy of little towns all over the country…He became basically the representation of the American Revolution, and certain values of honesty and humility that are still American values to this day.”
Julien commented on the 1925 bronze plaque in a boulder on the library lawn. “On the plaque that you see over here, Lafayette is spelled in two words, which to me is indicative of how Americans remember him as an aristocrat. It’s an incredible feature of history that a French aristocrat became the embodiment of ideals of democratic equality in the New World. To this day, many of you call him the Marquis de Lafayette, because his aristocratic endorsement of the American Revolution was essential in the 1770s and ’80s, and was even more essential in the 1820s, when he made his tour.”
“In the tradition of Lafayette today, we try to emphasize unity, the connection with France, the historical bonds of friendship, the ideals that unite. We have ups and downs, but…we are tied together in blood, basically. If you go to France, as many of you have, you go to Normandy and go see an American cemetery, and you know it will bring a few tears to your eyes. And it’s very important that Lafayette continues to be a symbol of our Franco-American relations.”
Julien then turned to the new trail marker. “In the 1820s the United States started to embrace a material culture with the production of handkerchiefs, plates, things of that nature, that compounded the effect of the tour…And so these markers are the incarnation in the 21st century of the very same material culture that was responsible two hundred years ago for making the tour a big deal.”
“In 1824, a lot of Americans that were fearful about the future of this country turned to Lafayette. They saw him as a providential envoy that was sent back to this country to attest to the national devotion of Americans to the principles of the Revolution…There’s a reason why the parties were going on two hundred years ago. It’s because you’re helping Lafayette tell his story of American exceptionalism.”
To cap off the ceremony, the new trail marker was unveiled – or rather, unpapered, as it was covered in brown wrapping paper. Icher and Evan Johnson, co-chair of the Lafayette 200th Anniversary Celebration Committee, did the honors.
Icher added a final comment on the marker’s design. “Blue, white, and red – or what you say in America, red, white and blue – these are the colors of France and of America. The design refers to Lafayette’s role in our revolutions, the French Revolution, the American Revolution…And the title ‘General’ and not ‘Marquis,’ because we don’t want to refer to his aristocratic birth, but to his choice to serve in the Continental Army in the name of freedom.”
MORE ON LAFAYETTE IN WORTHINGTON
For historical background on Lafayette and a thorough account of his brief visit to town, click here for Evan Johnson’s article “Our Marquis Comes to Worthington.”
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