Greenland/Rye State Reps. Jaci Grote and Dennis Malloy along with State Senator Deb Altschiller with The Marquis de Lafayette during his visit to Greenland on Sunday September 1, 2024.
The Marquis de Lafayette made a triumphant return to Greenland, NH and several other Seacoast communities on Sunday, September 1, exactly 200 years after he last visited.
The Greenland Historical Society held a ceremony and social on the Parade Ground at the intersection of Post Road and Portsmouth Avenue. In 1824 on his Farewell Tour, Lafayette stopped at the tavern in the center of town.
Speaking to the group of over one hundred, Major General Lafayette said, “Whatever my reasons for leaving France, it did not take long for me to understand your quest for liberty within the very fiber of my being,” he said. “I swore an oath to conquer or die for America. The days that I have spent fighting for her, I shall count among the happiest of my entire life.”
Lafayette was appointed major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolution and served with no pay and contributing some of his own wealth. He became a Revolutionary War hero and a national celebrity and returned to the United States in 1824 for a Farewell Tour, visiting friends he had made and fought with during the war all around the country.
The Marquis de Lafayette was portrayed by interpreter Ben Goldman and the even was organized by the American Friends of Lafayette Bicentennial Farewell Tour.