Wake County, NC - Bicentennial

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Barbara Kawamoto <bakawamoto@earthlink.net>

Reprinted with permission of the News & Observer and cannot be 
reproduced without permission. 

                     Lafayette Visits Raleigh

The News and Observer
December 29, 1991
Raleigh 200/The New Capital
By R. B. Haywood

   Richard B. Haywood (1819-1889) was the youngest son of Sherwood 
Haywood, one of Raleigh’s original residents.  Educated at
the University of North Carolina and the Jefferson Medical College 
in Philadelphia, he returned home to establish a medical practice
in 1845.

   Haywood wrote about the Marquis de Lafayette’s 1825 visit to 
Raleigh in the 1880s.

   Lafayette arrived at Col. Roger’s (estate, 18 miles north of 
Raleigh) on the night of the 12th of March and on the 18th was escorted
to Raleigh by the Mecklenburg Calvary and 100 gentlemen on horseback.

   I have seen, since then, the Curassiers of Napolean, the Hussars 
of Germany, and the Horse Guards of London, yet the impression made 
on my youthful imagination was that Polk’s Mecklenburg Calvary 
excelled them all.  The Raleigh Blues, under Capt. Griffin, received 
the Escort at Mr. Thomas P. Devereux’s at the head of Halifax Street, 
where the Marquis alighted from his carriage and was introduced by 
his old comrade at Brandywine, Col. William Polk, to each soldier 
present by name.  Each man felicitated himself on hearing the sound 
of the General’s voice in that familiar and oft-repeated expression,
"howdy do, sair."

   There was great disappointment expressed at finding him so different
a man from what they expected to see.  Instead of the neat, dapper 
Frenchman their imagination had pictured, he was an exceedingly 
coarse, rough looking man over six feet in height and would have been 
taken on our market square for a mountain wagoneer.  He wore a 
military overcoat of gray that reached to within six inches of the 
ground, which did not, at all, add to the symmetry of his form.  
Monsieur La Vasseur, his private secretary, and George Washington 
Lafayette, his son, were no fraud on their nation, they acted the 
Frenchman and looked the Frenchman to a charm.

   After the formalities of a general introduction were through, a 
procession was formed under the marshal ship of our mercurial fellow
citizen Tom Cobb and moved to the Governor’s mansion.  First came 
the Mecklenburg Cavalry, then the Raleigh Blues and after that
an open landau drawn by four iron-gray horses with Col. Polk and the 
Marquis de Lafayette.  This carriage was driven by Willie Harrod, 
who boasted of it to the day of his death.  And this carriage came 
other carriages drawn by four horses, containing Monsieur
La Vasseur, George Washington Lafayette and the state escort.

      At the vestibule of the palace, they were received by the 
Governor and committee of arrangements and were conducted to the
reception room where many prominent citizens and the state officials 
were formally introduced.  In the evening a grand ball was given at 
the Governor’s Mansion where "the Capital had gathered there, her 
beauty and her chivalry" to do honor to the nation’s guest.  Gov. 
Burton introduced the ladies and Col. Polk the gentlemen.

   The rooms were handsomely decorated and in one of them hung 
the full-length portrait of Washington, which now adorns the
House of Representatives.  The Marquis was very complimentary 
in his remarks as to the beauty of the Raleigh ladies.

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