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Welcome LaFayette!
Nine-year-old John Howard Redfield sat in his room excitedly applying his knife to a small board. “He’s coming here!” he thought, “the Hero of Two Worlds is coming HERE!” Like most of his friends, John had spent the summer asking questions about the man and reading about his exploits, and he knew that he was to be “The Guest of the Nation,” but not for one minute had he imagined that this luminary would be coming to the Upper Houses! They were all going to line up at the street to watch his carriage drive by. He imagined himself standing in the front row of the gathering, proudly displaying the wooden banner that he himself had carved with the words “WELCOME LAFAYETTE!”
Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, commonly known in the United States as Marquis de Lafayette, was a 19-year-old French aristocrat who came to America to offer his services to the Continental Army in 1777, two years before France decided to assist the cause of American independence. While he was welcomed with some reluctance, Congress gave him a commission of Major General and he soon earned the respect and friendship of George Washington with his actions at the battle of Brandywine. In 1779, he went to France and helped to persuade Louis XVI to support the Revolution in America. He returned a year later and was given command of an army in Virginia where he conducted operations against Benedict Arnold and Lord Cornwallis until the end of the War. At least three men from the Middletown Upper Houses, David Ranney, Stephen Ranney, and Captain Abijah Savage, served with Lafayette during the War.
In 1824, forty years after the American Revolutionary War ended, President James Monroe, hoping to reinvigorate the country’s patriotism, invited Lafayette to visit the nation “whose ardent desire is once more to see” him amongst them. Lafayette accepted and arrived in New York in August with a small entourage including his son, George Washington Lafayette. What was planned as a 4-month visit turned into a year full of parades, ceremonies, soirees, and military reviews. Throughout all 24 states monuments were dedicated in his honor, towns were given his name, and general stores offered countless Lafayette souvenirs from stickpins to bed quilts. Lafayette had become “Our Marquis:” America’s hero.
Lafayette began his tour by making his way to Boston via the Connecticut & Rhode Island coastlines, stopping in several towns along the way including Stamford, Norwalk, New Haven, and Old Saybrook. After spending a week in the Boston area, he set out to return to New York by land to Connecticut where he would board a steamboat for the remainder of the journey.
Steamboats were relatively new on the Connecticut River. In 1818 the Connecticut Steamboat Company began transporting passengers between Old Saybrook and Hartford. Three years later, Franklin Kelsey of the Upper Houses developed a system of propelling steamboats with oars rather than paddlewheels, and William Redfield organized a company to realize the novel design. In February of 1824, Redfield’s Connecticut River Steamboat Company launched its first vessel intended to provide service between Hartford and New Jersey: the Oliver Ellsworth, captained by Thomas Stow of the Upper Houses.
On Friday, September 3rd, a horseman arrived in the Upper Houses with the news that Lafayette had set out from Worcester and would be passing through the village the next day. Following a day in Hartford, the Marquis was going to travel by barouche through Wethersfield to Middletown and board the Oliver Ellsworth to New York. Quickly, the people of the village devised a plan wherein they would line both sides of the main road near today’s Valor Memorial Green and laud the Marquis as he passed through. Children would be in the front of the crowd and a cannon was to “peal forth its thunders” from the top of Prospect Hill.
The city of Hartford already had a similar but more metropolitan plan in place. Parts of the city were being illuminated and decorated with evergreens and flowers and thousands of spectators were lining the streets, eagerly anticipating the Marquis’s arrival at six o’clock that evening.
At midnight, they were still waiting.
Heavy rain, poor road conditions, and a minor carriage accident had detained the Marquis and he arrived in Connecticut just before midnight. His expected guard of Tolland County horsemen had long since gone home and he decided to spend the night in Stafford. At ten o’clock the next morning, he finally arrived in Hartford and spent most of the day touring the city. As the day went on, it became clear that he was far too fatigued to ride to Middletown, and the Oliver Ellsworth was sent for to collect the Marquis. The people of the Upper Houses would not get to see the Nation’s Guest ride through the village after all.
At four o’clock, the Oliver Ellsworth departed Hartford with Lafayette and his entourage bound for Middletown. Residents of Wethersfield and Rocky Hill flocked to the bank of the river “to cheer and salute” the Marquis as he passed by. Middletown had an elaborate celebration planned for Lafayette’s entrance into the city that depended upon him arriving by land. Fortunately, there was one place on the river where the Oliver Ellsworth could put in before reaching the city: the Brick Warehouse dock at the Upper Houses.
Shortly before five o’clock, a rider appeared over the west slope of Prospect Hill carrying the news that the Marquis was coming by water rather than land and that he would be landing in the Upper Houses riverport. According to John Howard Redfield, there was a sudden “rush to the wharves, a mile distant.” The steamer was spotted around six o’clock and a signal cannon was fired to alert Middletown of Lafayette’s imminent arrival.
The Middlesex Gazette reported that “the scene of the landing of the General was impressing beyond expression.” The Oliver Ellsworth was “beautifully and richly” decorated with flags, banners, and wreaths and was packed with hundreds of passengers “who were induced to join the water excursion by the presence of the General and his suite.” Redfield was brought on board by his father and given the opportunity to “grasp the hand” of his “adored patriot and inspect the gorgeously decorated cabin that had been prepared for him.” He and his father then proceeded to Middletown on board the steamer after the Marquis disembarked.
Meanwhile, Lafayette was officially welcomed by the people of the Upper Houses and a deputation of thirteen dignitaries from the city of Middletown. He proceeded to the lower town in a barouche driven by four white horses in the company of the “deputation, an escort of cavalry, and a large train of citizens.” Twenty-four guns saluted his entry to the city where he was met by a gathering of the county’s military along with veterans of the Revolutionary War. The procession continued along a street strewn with “beautiful verdure” to the home of Charles Francis where a large floral arch was constructed over the doorway with the inscription “WELCOME LAFAYETTE.” The Guest of the Nation had finally made it to Middletown, and the Upper Houses had played its own brief, but unique part in the tale.
Forty years is a long time. Any 50-year-old can talk for hours about the culture of fear surrounding the nuclear arms race in 1984 with its apocalyptic drills and cinematic education, but one could hardly find a nine-year-old that knows anything about it today. Still, one extremely popular science fiction television series featuring a group of twelve-year-old friends in the 1980s can suddenly create a nostalgia for that same time that fewer and fewer people remember. In 1824, the last president of the founding generation asked the last surviving major general from the Revolutionary War to help keep the memory of their most important deeds alive. The result was the understanding and respect of the real sacrifices made to set this nation in motion in a new generation on the verge of succumbing to patriotic naiveite and mythology. The fact that John Howard Redfield could recall the details of his experience with such clarity nearly 70 years later shows Lafayette’s visit as the Guest of the Nation was a resounding success.
Forty years is a long time. Any 50-year-old can talk for hours about the culture of fear surrounding the nuclear arms race in 1984 with its apocalyptic drills and cinematic education, but one could hardly find a nine-year-old that knows anything about it today. Still, one extremely popular science fiction television series featuring a group of twelve-year-old friends in the 1980s can suddenly create a nostalgia for that same time that fewer and fewer people remember. In 1824, the last president of the founding generation asked the last surviving major general from the Revolutionary War to help keep the memory of their most important deeds alive. The result was the understanding and respect of the real sacrifices made to set this nation in motion in a new generation on the verge of succumbing to patriotic naiveite and mythology. The fact that John Howard Redfield could recall the details of his experience with such clarity nearly 70 years later shows Lafayette’s visit as the Guest of the Nation was a resounding success.
R. Franklin Donohue
The location of the Middletown Upper Houses Wharf near today's River Road
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