Who Might Have Met the Marquis de Lafayette? A Project Recipe for Building Community
Join me April 17 to learn how you can use an interactive timeline to share STORIES as a community and WHY it can connect people with their common experiences. Explore the background, and sign up!
Announcing a Special “Project Recipe” Event on April 17.
Events marking the bicentennial of the Farewell Tour of the Marquis de Lafayette have been celebrated across the Eastern third of the United States since late last summer. As a family historian with roots in the British colonial period, I wondered whether my ancestors might have met the Marquis on his tour.
The exploration brought me to a partnership with the American Friends of Lafayette and a role in the April 2025 celebration in Lafayette, California. In a new program in April, we’ll discuss the project, what worked, and how you might build on it.
Register here to join us:
“Who Might Have Met the Marquis de Lafayette?”
That simple question sent me down fur-lined rabbit holes on an exploration of both history and technology. I soon landed on an interactive timeline tool that would let me tell the story of his visit in each city, town, and village on his route. The “ah-ha!” moment came when I realized that a timeline would make it easy to see how one person’s connection to the story might overlay with someone else’s.
In a post I released in November 2024, I set it as a challenge to create a recipe for creating an interactive timeline as a storytelling artifact that could be shared with a community. The event on April 17th will let me share with all of you how I did this and how it could be used to share other stories.
My project is now complete and part of the April 2025 bicentennial celebrations in Lafayette, California.
The project recipe presentation will include three elements:
The timeline: Built using an open-source Javascript tool for journalists. I’ll share how to use it and discuss how it might be repurposed for family history use cases. You can explore it now at Projectkin.org/lafayette-timeline.
Specific instructions for repurposing this historical data I’ve compiled about Lafayette.
An explanation of how this interactive online tool can be used with a community to help connect individuals with a shared past using the example of the community event in Lafayette, California.
Background:
I was aware of the Northwestern University Knight Lab and its open-source tools for journalists, but my biggest challenge was finding an accurate source for the historical data. My November post helped connect me with the Acalanes Chapter of the DAR, and their Regent graciously introduced me to the board at the American Friends of Lafayette (AFL). Their tools and resources have been key to telling this story.
About Lafayette
This remarkable Frenchman was a bonafide hero of the American Revolution. He played a direct role in significant battles like Bunker Hill and Yorktown. Further, his cash contributions and connections with the court of Louis VI helped turn the tide in the war.1
The Marquis de Lafayette’s Tour of America took him to all 24 states in the young country over 13 months with grand gatherings in most every city, town, and village. Lafayette’s tour coincided with an early 19th century boom in local newspapers. They captured the detailed journey of the “Nation’s Guest” with enough detail to make a genealogist swoon. That fact made it fun to research his journey from town to town.
Note: An idea for a community extension to this project would be to compile a list of people and specifically Revolutionary War veterans mentioned in newspaper listings in each town he visited. The records are available now.
Acknowledgment
This project would not have been possible without the support of my sisters in the Acalanes Chapter of the DAR and the American Friends of Lafayette (AFL), and the Lafayette Historical Society (LHS) in Lafayette, California. Their tools and resources have been key to telling this story. I’ll share more about their help and our project in Lafayette, California, at our Project Recipe event in April. Register here.
The subtle point is made in the song “The World Turned Upside Down” which many will recognize from the Musical Hamilton.
I am so glad. I have registered.
Love this! This sounds incredibly useful to many of us!