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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 June 2, 1825

The Farewell Tour

After an early breakfast, Lafayette departed Waterford, his retinue of partisans trailing, north to Erie, Pennsylvania, on the shore of Lake Erie.  Erie was prepared with a parade that ended in the Public Square where the Commandant of the Naval Station Captain Budd welcomed him.  From there the procession went to Daniel Dobbins’ House for a reception.  Dobbins was a “Sailing Master” in the United States Navy, responsible for building the ships Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry commanded in the Battle of Lake Erie, 1813.  It was Perry who hoisted the battle flag, “Dont Give up the ship,” with no apostrophe in “Dont,” and who famously wrote army Major General and future ninth President William Henry Harrison, after the Battle of Lake Erie, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”  Perry had lived in the Dobbins’ house before Dobbins.

Lafyette then proceeded to the “yellow meeting house,” on Sassafras Street, home of Judah Colt, to “meet the ladies.”  Colt and Dobbins were early settlers of Erie; in fact, they came there together.  Colt joined the Presbyterian Church in 1815 and solved its want of a place to meet by providing his home for that purpose; thus, the “yellow meeting house.”  Dinner was at 1:30 PM on a bridge between French and State Streets with a table that ran the 170-foot length of the bridge, over which was a canopy made from the sails of ships captured by Commodore Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie.

Lafayette departed Erie at 3 PM and arrived fifty miles distant at Freedonia, New York, at 2 AM.  Despite the early hour, he was greeted by gun salutes, bells, bands, and babies asleep in arms.  At Abell’s Hotel the Reverend David Brown gave a speech followed by refreshments.  Lafayette was on the road one hour later, followed by a mile-long trail of well-wishers.  He had promised he would be at Boston for the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument on June 17; time was tight.

On June 4th at 5 AM Lafayette arrived at Dunkirk on Lake Erie.  The captain of the steamboat “Superior” demanded from the Buffalo Arrangements Committee $500 to transport Lafayette to Buffalo; the Committee wrangled him down to $100 after indignant protests no doubt both ways.  At Buffalo, Lafayette was taken to the Red Eagle Tavern on Main Street.  Red Jacket, or Sagoyewatha, speaker for the Senecas was there and recognized Lafayette right off, having first met him at the 1784 Council of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, at Fort Schuyler.  Red Jacket, now quite bald, was chagrined to see Lafayette still with a full head of hair.  Truth was Lafayette had started losing hair at the age of 27 and was completely bald at Olmutz in 1797.  These days he wore a dark brown wig.

After spending the night at Red Eagle Tavern, Lafayette boarded the steamer “Seneca Chief” at 10 AM in Buffalo Harbor, ascended the Niagara River to Tonawanda where the Niagara Committee awaited with carriages.  At 2 PM the entourage reached Manchester, now Niagara Falls Village.  After speeches and a public dinner, Lafayette was taken to Goat Island, the 75 acres owned by Judge Augustus Porter who had it up for sale for $10,000.  Goat Island separates the larger Horseshoe Falls from Bridal Veil Falls (which is separated from American Falls by Luna Island; Niagara Falls is really three falls).  Porter took Lafayette on a two-hour tour; Lafayette would have bought it had it not been so far, he said, from France.  Its name, Goat Island, derived from a herd of goats pioneer John Stedman left on the island in the winter of 1779-1780; when he returned only one goat had survived and for this goat, whose name has been lost to posterity, the island received its name.  Lafayette said the view of the falls from the island surpassed his expectations.  Levasseur wrote, “The General could not tear himself away from the imposing scene.”

He spent the night at Lewiston, New York, at Mrs. Kelsey’s, proceeding the next day to Lockport where he could access the “The Grand Canal.”  The Erie Canal was a civil engineering feat, 363 miles, forty feet wide and four feet deep (now, 120 feet wide and 12 feet deep), with 34 locks between Buffalo and Albany.  It cost $7.1 million, the equivalent today of $199 million.  Officially open October 26, 1825, its peak came in 1855; trucks and railroads gave the competition that has largely relegated it to historic interest and pleasure boats.

Lafayette boarded the “Rochester owned by Danile Drew on June 6th, at 7 PM, having been given special dispensation to travel the unopened canal as the Nation’s Guest.  By next morning, having slept peacefully through the night, Lafayette found he had travelled an astonishing 65 miles and disembarked at Rochester where Col. Silvius Hoard’s Tavern was to be his headquarters for the day’s events.  He left Rochester at 4 PM by carriage to Canandaigua, 35 miles away, where he spent the night at the mansion of John Grieg, after dining with 100 guests at Col. Blossom’s Hotel.

The next morning, eight miles outside Geneva, north end of Seneca Lake, fingerlake country, he was received at Ball’s Public House.  The large balsam poplar guarding the place was dubbed the “Lafayette Tree.”

At 10 AM he arrived at Geneva where he had breakfast at the Franklin Hotel.  On to Auburn, Waterloo, and, on June 9th at 6 AM, into Syracuse.  From Canadaigua to Syracuse had been 75 grueling miles covered in 24 hours.  At 9 AM he boarded the “Rochester” once more.