Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), a French aristocrat and Revolutionary War hero, was widely commemorated in the U.S. and elsewhere. Below is a list of the many homages and/or tributes named in his honor:
In 1792, James McHenry, whom Lafayette considered a good friend, purchased a tract called Ridgely's Delight about a mile west of Baltimore. On it, he built a country seat on 95 acres and named it Fayetteville in his honor.[1]
In 1824, the U.S. government named Lafayette Park in his honor; it lies immediately north of the White House in Washington, D.C.
In 1824, Lafayette was invited back to the United States to commemorate the anniversary of the American Revolution, and visited the Battle of Yorktown battlefield.[2]
In 1826, Lafayette College was chartered in Easton, Pennsylvania. Lafayette was honored with a monument in New York City in 1917.[3] Portraits display Washington and Lafayette in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives.[4] Numerous towns, cities, and counties across the United States were named in his honor.
In 1834, upon Lafayette's death, American President Andrew Jackson ordered that Lafayette be accorded the same funeral honors as John Adams and George Washington. Therefore, 24-gun salutes were fired from military posts and ships, each shot representing a U.S. state. Flags flew at half mast for thirty-five days, and "military officers wore crepe for six months".[6][7] The Congress hung black in chambers and asked the entire country to dress in black for the next thirty days.[8]
In 1899, Lafayette appeared with Washington on a U.S. coin, the Lafayette dollar that was minted in 1899 (though showing the year 1900). It was produced to raise money for a statue of him that was erected in Paris.
On July 4, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I, Colonel Charles E. Stanton visited the grave of Lafayette and uttered the famous phrase "Lafayette, we are here." After the war, a U.S. flag was permanently placed at the grave site. Every year, on Independence Day, the flag is replaced in a joint French-American ceremony.[9] The flag remained even during the German occupation of Paris during World War II.
In 1943, on visiting Corsica, General George S. Patton commented on how the Free French forces had liberated the birthplace of Napoleon, and promised that the Americans would liberate the birthplace of Lafayette.
In 1958, the Order of Lafayette was established by U.S. Representative Hamilton Fish III, a World War I veteran, to promote Franco-American friendship and to honor Americans who fought in France. The frigate Hermione, in which Lafayette returned to America, has been reconstructed in the port of Rochefort, Charente-Maritime, France.[10]
In 2020, President's Square was renamed Lafayette Square stemming from the Black Lives Matter movement's call of change for the sake of liberty as Lafayette had fought for.[15]
Military and maritime
The aircraft carrier USS Langley was renamed La Fayette by France
The French frigate La Fayette is a modern "stealth frigate" launched in 1992 and in use by the French Navy since 1996. It is the namesake of the La Fayette class of frigates.
Fayetteville, North Carolina was the first city named after Lafayette, and is the only one he actually visited, arriving in Fayetteville by horse-drawn carriage in 1825 during Lafayette's visit to the United States from July 1824 to September 1825. Has the largest city population.
Fayetteville, Tennessee is named indirectly; the city is named after Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Fayetteville, Arkansas is named indirectly; the city is named after Fayetteville, TN, which in turn is named after Fayetteville, NC. Has the largest metropolitan population.
Statue on Washington Street in Hartford, Connecticut, by Paul Wayland Bartlett. The original of this statue stands in the Louvre, a gift to France from the school children of the United States. 1957.[21]
Built in 1975, a statue of Lafayette stands atop a fountain in the courthouse square in LaGrange, Georgia.
Statue of Lafayette on Union Avenue & Warren Street in Havre de Grace, Maryland, 1976
Statue outside of the Gen. Horatio Gates House and Golden Plough Tavern, York, Pennsylvania, 2007
^Grouw, Hein van, Dekkers, Wim & Rookmaaker, Kees (2017). On Temminck’s tailless Ceylon Junglefowl, and how Darwin denied their existence. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club (London), 137 (4), 261–271. https://doi.org/10.25226/bboc.v137i4.2017.a3
^Robert Kalbach. "L'Hermione" (in French). L’association Hermione-La Fayette. Retrieved 11 August 2008.
^Speare, Morris Edmund "Lafayette, Citizen of America", New York Times, 7 September 1919. The article contains a facsimile and transcript of the Maryland act:"An Act to naturalize Major General the Marquis de la Fayette and his Heirs Male Forever... Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Maryland—that the Marquis de la Fayette and his Heirs male forever shall be and they and each of them are hereby deemed adjudged and taken to be natural born Citizens of this State and shall henceforth be instilled to all the Immunities, Rights and Privileges of natural born Citizens thereof, they and every one of them conforming to the Constitution and Laws of this State in the Enjoyment and Exercise of such Immunities, Rights and Privileges."
^"LaFayette Park". Watkins Glen Parks and Recreation. City of Watkins Glen. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
^Anne L. Poulet, Jean-Antoine Houdon (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2003), p. 260
^"CONNECTICUT, CT (05)". Marquis de La Fayette – Memory Spaces. 10 April 2016. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
Works cited
Kowsky, Francis R., Mark Goldman, Austin Fox, John D. Randall, Jack Quinan, and Teresa Lasher (1982). Buffalo Architecture: A Guide (Third printing ed.). The MIT Press. ISBN0-262-02172-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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