1824-25 Bicentennial: Did Your Ancestors Meet the Marquis de Lafayette?

Where were your ancestors when the French general and veteran of the Revolutionary War toured the United States 200 years ago? I'm working on a tool to figure it out. Join me?

I love building things. I give myself bonus points if I can turn a project into a “recipe” others can follow. This post describes a sideburner project I started a few weeks ago. While working on it, I realized there may be others interested in collaborating with me on it — or maybe building it into something else. That’s what we’re here for at Projectkin! Read on…

Background

This starts with the compelling story of a French aristocrat widely celebrated as an American hero: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, or, as described more simply in our American history books, the Marquis de Lafayette. His compelling story is wound into our national narrative:

A dashing young French military officer comes to America and bonds with the charismatic leader of the continental army. He soon joins fight for the independence of this a colony from a rival nation. Forty years later, he returns to tour the nation, now expanded now to 24 states. The country welcomes him with a celebration in city and town he visits over 13 months. The national tour would be timed ahead of national celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the nation’s Declaration of Independence from Britain in 1826.

Were your ancestors alive then? Did they meet Lafayette?

Project: Baseline facts for interactive timelines & maps

Proper historians (which I am not) have extensively covered the facts of Lafayette’s visit. There’s little for me to add to the national story. As an American with roots in this continent predating this period, I was immediately curious whether any of my family’s ancestors might have greeted Lafayette during his tour. I have no diaries, letters, or other documentary evidence that my ancestors met the Marquis. That’s okay.

I soon realized that historical circumstances turned the project into a game to determine whether it was possible. This made me think deeply about how news traveled then and why someone might risk a journey of hours or days to meet the Frenchman. The project had become both fun and educational.

Map of the Marquis de Lafayette's 1824-1825 tour of the United States. From: Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center Collection

Lafayette’s journey in 1824, which covered so many American states, is widely documented and celebrated. A contemporaneous journal kept by his secretary, Auguste Levasseur, includes day-by-day activities. I could use these materials sources and focus on creating a generic tool anyone could use.

How YOU can play along

To play with “what-if” scenarios, I started with a generic Javascript timeline created for journalists developed for the Knight Lab to help me contextualize stops on Lafayette’s 13-month tour. I wanted to see where his stops coincided with locations my ancestors might have lived—or traveled to—at the time.

The resulting tool is conceptually straightforward. It leverages existing data about Lafayette’s journey, structured into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet data combines with the Knight Lab code to produce an interactive timeline. I used a variation on that data with the Google My Maps tool to complement it with an interactive map.

The bulk of the labor for this project is structuring Lafayette’s tour data into a spreadsheet. Fortunately, that data can easily be repurposed so that anyone can use it to see where their family members were at the time.

How it works

To find out where my ancestors might have encountered Lafayette’s tour, I first needed to capture each stop's location and contextualize it into the timeline.

Google Sheet

Since all of this data is subject to error and open to scrutiny, the base data is currently maintained in a single, publicly shared Google sheet with separate tabs for:

od1

• This must be the first tab in your sheet. The terminology, format, and placement of the data required by the Knight Lab timeline tool. It includes data started from the Wikipedia-based travel schedule tab. Additional images and notes were added from other research.

• Demonstration “group.” This version of the sheet also includes four of my ancestors who were alive at the time of Lafayette’s journey. See column Q, “Projectkin connections.” Group members can be added or deleted by adding or removing rows.

Travel schedule per Wikipedia

• This details Lafayette’s itinerary in spreadsheet form, gleaned from this prose write-up on Wikipedia.org. It is not a definitive itinerary, but it was accessible and something I could use to structure a base we could iterate on. With assistance from AI, I transcribed the prose into rows.

Lafayette's route for Google Maps

• Drawing from the Wikipedia list of stops, I formatted all travel locations into a single Google Sheet for use with Google Maps.

Knight Lab Timeline

The Knight Lab at Northwestern University is a collaborative environment for developing “open-source, adaptable, and lightweight tools for media makers.” The TimelineJS tool I’ve used is among their most popular. I first learned about its use in Family History projects in this post by

Robin Stewart

for

Genealogy Matters

.

You’ll see the result below. Note that the timeline updates as changes are made to the spreadsheet. (Tap below to view and explore the timeline)¹

Currently, a work-in-progress showing a timeline of Lafayette’s journey. Note the separate row for “Projectkin Connections.”

Google Maps

Google’s consumer My Maps tools make creating a personal map of any location list easy. Here are the steps I used to create an interactive map of Lafayette’s journey:

1. Settled on a “good enough for now” list of 135 stops in his journey and added that list to a Google Sheet.

2. Used a Google Sheets extension called GeoCode by Awesome Table to generate longitude-latitude pairs for each location on the sheet.

3. Displayed each location on that sheet on a “My Map.”

You’ll see the result below. Though this is a screenshot, the linked map updates as changes are made to the spreadsheet.²

Currently, a work-in-progress showing the stops on Lafayette’s journey. Note the experimental addition of the route between stops.

Next Steps

While software development would produce more elegant solutions, this approach is simple, extensible—and free. I am sharing it with members of the

Projectkin Community Forum

to solicit feedback and help expand and refine the project.

I want to solidify the components so anyone can use the solution as a Project Recipe to see where their ancestors fit into Lafayette’s visit timeline. To get there, I still need to…

1. Update Lafayette’s Itinerary: The itinerary description here is rough and based solely on data drawn from Wikipedia and unstructured research. These locations and dates should be rigorously reviewed against a more reliable list.

2. Update the visited locations: Any changes to the base itinerary should be reflected in the list of locations. This update is almost automatic.

Don’t you want to play, too?

Frankly, I would have given up on this project weeks ago if it weren't so much fun. My schooling in American history was abysmal, and before starting this project, I had only a sketchy understanding of Lafayette’s journey or its impact on the country two hundred years ago.

When I filtered the list of nearly a dozen Revolutionary War veterans in my family tree and discovered four still alive during the months of the Marquis’ journey, I was hooked.

I dove into their stories to see where each person probably was during Lafayette’s journey. Soon, I wondered whether they’d travel by foot, carriage, or boat to meet him. Did they struggle with war injuries? Google Maps gave me distances and walking routes; soon, I was visualizing a trip from Meridien to New Haven, Connecticut. Could he have traveled by boat?

What about you? Did ancestors in the area too? Would you like to play? I can quickly show you how to add your data to a shared timeline. With a copy/paste you can quickly create one of your own. Interested?

Vision for extensions

After exploring this idea, I realized its basic mechanics would apply just as easily to any shared journey. All you would need are:

• A baseline set of facts to use to create the timeline and map.

• Incremental detail for individual lives. These might be for your family members or those of a shared community or social group.

The resulting visualization gives you the context to consider individual lives and shared experiences in a given time and place.

Examples

The Knight Lab team has published a dozen or more examples on their Timeline page; the difference is the idea of inserting your relative's stories during these events. Examples might include:

• Arrivals at Ellis Island in New York, Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, or any other immigration point—anywhere in the world.

• The Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North, Midwest, and West, or Puritan emigrations from England. Migrations all define important milestones in family history, and understanding how one family fits in a larger context could be helpful.

• I’ve found many published battle timelines for WWII. Using this method, a private timeline created from a spreadsheet would give different members of a family—or a community—the context to appreciate each others’ stories.

Any of these examples might published as a public timeline. The difference is that this tool creates something where you can see when something else occurred on the same timeline. Plus, since the timeline structure can be shared, anyone can build on a timeline created by someone else.

As with any project, you need to appreciate how this combination of tools might be used to tell a story. As with any work published, your representations create expectations for the validity of the historical facts you present. You also incur obligations to respect copyrights, including citations and resource references. I’ll apologize in advance: The material presented here is very much in draft form and is a work in progress.

I wanted to share this draft with

Projectkin Community Forum

for several reasons.

• First, I think this Lafayette version, in finished form, may be helpful to communities and social groups involved in re-enactments and celebrations during this bicentennial year.

• Second, this project is a natural for collaborations. We’d get more done together and help inspire future generations with the struggles and motivations of generations gone by.

• Finally, I think this kind of project is a helpful demonstration of how the narrative facts of any local, national, or international story can provide a context for family stories.

  ⮕ I’m all about ways to create that compelling honey-pot of stories extended family in your shared history.

So, what do YOU think?

Are you interested in working with me on this Lafayette story? Do you have another story like it? Let me know in the comments, and let’s do this together!

Postscript:

Twelve hours after posting, I’m delighted by the feedback. I can see that many of you are interested in having your ancestors reflected on the timeline too. I’m thrilled.

Here’s how to add your ancestors:

1. Take a quick look at the format I’ll need. This gives you a sense for the simple fields I’ll need to have your details for. You’ll see there’s not much to it.

2. Email me confirming that you’re a member of Projectkin (hey, it’s free!) and telling me you’d like to be included. I’ll reply with an invitation to edit this Google Sheet. When you have edit access, add your details.

   1. For now, I’ll keep it simple and trust you not to delete other people’s data. (Keep a copy for yourself, however, in case of errors.)

3. I should be notified when you’ve made your additions.³ As soon as I can, I’ll copy and paste your details into this production timeline.

That’s it! Kind of amazing, huh? (🤫 We can pretend it’s super hard.)

1. Note that the timeline will not embed into Substack. Though it embeds nicely in many website builders, it works best using a full browser tab.

2. Google Maps does not embed in Substack.

3. A quick email to tell me you're done would be a nice touch.