Washington loved him “as if he were my own son,” and he called Washington "my adoptive father." - Harlow Giles Unger, Lafayette.
With the approaching 200th anniversary of Marquis de Lafayette’s farewell tour, it’s a great time to take a closer look at the intimate and special relationship the beloved Frenchman had with George Washington’s four famed step-grandchildren.
Lafayette (1757-1834) made so many memories during his triumphant tour in 1824-1825, which took him across more than 6,000 miles with stops in each of the 24 states. I would argue that some of his most cherished moments came when he was spending time with the Custises and their families.
We’re fortunate that a number of recent books give us updated insight into the strong bonds and feelings between Lafayette and the Custises. We were also helped by a few others we will name as we go along, as well as the observations of Lafayette’s private secretary, Auguste Levasseur (“Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825: Journal of a Voyage to the United States”). The latter has been expertly translated by Alan R. Hoffman and is in its third edition.
We begin with the most recent book, a new one titled, “Marquis de Lafayette Returns: A Tour of America's National Capital Region.” Elizabeth Reese writes about his visit to the White House on October 13, 1824.
She makes this point:
“Despite the kind offer of hospitality from President Monroe, Lafayette was itching for another reunion. Each day spent in Washington was one day closer to his return to Mount Vernon.”
George and Martha, of course, were no longer there to greet him, having passed away in 1799 and 1802 respectively. But spending time with Martha’s four grandchildren —Elizabeth Parke Custis Law, Eleanor (“Nelly”) Parke Custis Lewis, George Washington (“Wash”) Parke Custis, and Martha Parke Custis Peter — certainly brought much joy to Lafayette, and in turn, the Custises loved seeing their old friend.
Lafayette had first gotten to know the four kids when he spent some time with George and Martha at Mount Vernon in 1784. This was Lafayette’s post-war tour that lasted five months and took him from Boston to Richmond. Ron Chernow tells us,”Lafayette was instantly entranced by Nelly and Wash.” He wrote to his wife, “The general has adopted them and loves them deeply.”
Chernow also notes Lafayette “attained a unique place in Washington’s heart.” The winter of ’77-’78 had found the commander of the Continental Army at a low point. But he was very pleased in May, 1778 when he learned Congress had ratified the Treaty of Alliance between France and the US. France’s support would prove to be crucial in winning the war, and Lafayette, as a Major General would provide needed and key battlefield leadership.
Turning away from a lifestyle of balls and parties, and enraging King Louis XVI, Lafayette had taken a fifty-six-days-long voyage to help the patriot cause. After landing outside Charleston, South Carolina, he made his way to Washington’s war tent at Valley Forge. General Washington came to respect and admire the French General who, despite being shot in the leg in the Battle of Brandywine, continued to lead the troops. Lafayette was also instrumental in gaining 6,000 French troops. He helped defeat Cornwallis and had a role in the decisive win at Yorktown. Once back home, Lafayette continued to fight for equal rights. He did this despite the terror around him.
As the Mount Vernon website notes, the highlight of the tour in 1784 was at Mount Vernon, where he and Washington, “enjoyed the pleasure of each other’s company without the extreme pressures of war, with time for extended conversation and reminiscences amidst the relative leisure and tranquility of family life in the country.”
The same relative thing could be said about Lafayette’s time spent with the Custis family in 1824 and 1825. Lafayette visited many, many places on his exhaustive tour. Time spent with the Custises gave him the chance to relax and fondly reminisce about their step-grandfather.
When Lafayette visited Mount Vernon in 1784, the respective ages of the four Custis children were, Elizabeth (9), Martha (8), Eleanor (6), and Wash (3). Martha’s grandchildren had lost their father Jackie in 1781, when he died during the Siege of Yorktown. This prompted his widow, Eleanor Calvert Custis, (married Dr. David Stuart, a doctor in Alexandria, in 1783) to agree that George and Martha would raise Eleanor and Wash, the two youngest, at Mount Vernon.
Elizabeth and Martha lived with their mother and their step-father at Abingdon (site at National Airport) and then, starting in 1792, at Hope Park, their plantation home about fifteen miles west of Mount Vernon. From time to time, they visited George and Martha.
Lafayette probably was a bit closer to Eleanor and Wash, but he loved all of them dearly, and visited with all four and saw them more than once when he was in Washington and Virginia in 1824-1825.
On October 12, 1824, ten years after the British had burned the Capitol and the White House, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette was escorted into Washington by adoring throngs and military formations. His tour of the 24 states had so far seen the “Hero of Two Worlds” and the “Apostle of Liberty” cheered by gatherings as large as tens of thousands across the northeast and mid-Atlantic.
After a stop at the Capitol, Lafayette was greeted inside the White House by President Monroe (1758-1831), who was the last of the Founder-Presidents. Monroe had fought in the Revolutionary War and a serious wound gave him a brush with death in the Battle of Trenton.
Monroe had invited Lafayette to help commemorate the nation’s approaching 50th anniversary. A more powerful living symbol of democracy and lover of liberty there was not in Lafayette, to say nothing of the role he played in helping the Continental Army win the war.
Lafayette returned to the White House the next morning and had an experience that mere mortals could only dream about - dining with the President, his Secretaries of State, War, and Treasury, and sixty invited guests that included cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, and military officers.
In coming to the country that appreciated everything he had done for it, Lafayette’s timing was perfect. The presidential election of 1824 would certainly be contentious, but America was in the midst of what some historians would call the, “Era of Good Feeling.” In an earlier speech, Lafayette had referred to “the greatness and prosperity of the United States.” Enslaved humans felt none of this, but as Lafayette’s biographer, Harlow Giles Unger points out, “unprecedented economic development enriched every home.”
Having now been feted for two months, with still more to come, the 67-year-old guest must have felt in need of a break. At the three impressive Custis mansion homes (each now a National Historic Landmark, the highest honor), Lafayette would find that solace, as well as love, comfort, and good nights of sleep.
The Custises have always been a bit of mystery to most Americans. Even with the publication last summer of Dr. Good’s wonderful and definitive book, "the name Custis does not appear in the title or on the back of the book.
But now we have her book as a deep and great resource. Dr. Good gives us rich insight and detail on this final coming together of Lafayette and the Custis family. In her book she spends more than 20 pages on this part of his visit.
Good begins by pointing out the Custises had experienced tough emotional times before Lafayette arrived in 1824. All four siblings “felt the pain of losing daughters and nieces in their prime.” Nelly wore the cloaks of grief in 1820 when she lost her daughter Agnes (1805-1820) at age 15. Martha lost her son Columbia Washington (1797-1820) at age 13. Elizabeth felt the torment in 1822 when her daughter Eliza (1797-1822) took her last breath at age 25 and her granddaughter Harriet died in 1824 at age five.
The Custises, Good writes, “genuinely revered and adored Lafayette, whom they had turned to as a surrogate father in correspondence for years.” As mentioned, he was particularly close to Eleanor (“Nelly”) and Wash, the two youngest raised at Mount Vernon. When Lafayette had visited Mount Vernon in 1784, he observed that Washington loved the two “with great tenderness.” It was the beginning of a life-long relationship that was rekindled when Lafayette returned in 1824.
After the voyage from France, Lafayette arrived in New York’s on August 15. A fleet of boats dotted the harbor. Levassuer wrote:
“It is impossible to describe the majesty of this sail towards the city. The sea was covered with boats of all kinds, elegantly decked out, and loaded with an innumerable throng.”
The outpouring of booming guns, pealing bells, military salutes, tens of thousands of waving flags, crusty veterans standing at attention, and parades down Broadway kicked off a tour that would leave the 67-year-old heroic figure pleased, but exhausted.
After some of the first day events in New York, Nelly, who traveled from Woodlawn to greet Lafayette, dined with him. They also saw a play at Park Theater.
On August 10, five days before his arrival, Nelly had written her friend Elizabeth Borley Gibson from Staatsburg, New York, a small town north of New York. She recalled the “happy days” of when Lafayette had visited Mount Vernon.
Nelly, Good tells us, saw Lafayette as an adopted father. She also admired Lafayette’s son, George Washington Lafayette (1799-1849). In one of her letters to Gibson, Nelly described him as “my young adopted brother” (“George Washington’s Beautiful Nelly,” Edited by Patricia Brady). In another letter, she described Lafayette as, “my own great adopted father.”
Good also tells us the Custises played key roles in shaping Lafayette’s visit, which included his son and his private secretary, Auguste Levasseur. In 1892, Levasseur would publish “Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825: Journal of a Voyage to the United States,” a detailed account of the thirteen-month long tour.
Wash was with Lafayette quite a few times and would provide remarks at a number of events. The first came on October 7 when Lafayette arrived at Fort McHenry outside Baltimore. Nine years earlier, Francis Scott Key, a lawyer in Washington who lived in Georgetown, had watched the rockets red glare there while imprisoned on a British ship. He was inspired to pen the words to “Defences of Fort McHenry.” We know it today as the National Anthem.
When Lafayette entered Fort McHenry, cannon boom greeted him, as well as a number of former Revolutionary Officers, a detachment of infantry, and Wash. Custis had brought along George Washington’s famed war tent, which Lafayette and Washington had shared during the war. The American Revolution Museum describes the tent as, “the supreme relic of Washington.”
As he would a number of times with Wash alongside, Lafayette felt the strong emotions of memory. General Washington and General Lafayette had been through so many tough times during the war and the soldiers under them sacrificed deeply. With all the memories now flooding back, Lafayette teared up and the two embraced.
October 14, Tudor Place
It was now on to Washington where Lafayette spent an initial four days (October 12-15) in the capital city. On October 14, Lafayette took a coach to Georgetown to visit Martha and Thomas Peter at Tudor Place. The neo-classical mansion, built by the Peters and completed in 1815, added to the air of refinement to this older part of the District.
Like Alexandria, Georgetown was three-quarters of a century old in 1824 and had a cosmopolitan feel as a seaport. Ever so sadly, Alexandria, in the coming decades, would become home to one of the largest slave-selling operations in the South. Nothing would have depressed Lafayette more if he had seen enslaved humans being put on a ship so close to the halls of democracy and where the first boundary stone for the District of Columbia had been laid out. Franklin and Armfield, who began their operations in 1828 at 1315 Duke Street, sold and shipped thousands to the Deep South.
The famed architect William Thornton had Tudor Place on his resume, along with the US Capitol, The Octagon House, and Woodlawn. It is still arguably Georgetown’s grandest house and any tour of early Washington mansions must stop there high on the hill overlooking the Potomac.
Of course, Lafayette cared not about the dwelling, but who was inside. It’s hard to know for sure if the whole Peter family was there when he arrived, but if they were, greeting him were Martha, her husband Thomas Peter (1769-1834), and their children John Parke Custis Peter (1799-1848), George Washington Parke Custis Peter (1801-1877), America (1803-1843), and Britannia (1815-1911).
Like all four of the Custis siblings, Thomas Peter’s wealth and high social standing came at the expense of the scores of their enslaved humans. Some of the forebears of those enslaved to the Custises might have been enslaved as far back as John Custis II (1629-1696), who lived at his Arlington estate on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
Every generation of the Custis family, John Custis II, III, and IV, Daniel Parke Custis (Martha’s first husband), Jackie Parke Custis, his four children (Elizabeth, Martha, Eleanor, and Wash), and their children were enslavers. George Washington did not own any of those enslaved humans, but he controlled them and benefited greatly from them.
In August 1814, the Peters had watched the Capitol and the White House burn from their hilltop home. Britannia was not yet born, but we owe her thanks as resident and custodian of Tudor Place. Her remarkable span there lasted until her passing in 1911 at age 96.
The book “Tudor Place, America’s Story Lives Here,” edited by Leslie Buhler, tells us Britannia recalled Lafayette’s visit and the profound effect it had on her family. Her memories are all the more important, as Lavasseur did not go to Tudor Place, instead spending the three days in Washington to “gather some notes on the District of Columbia.”
Britannia wrote:
“Advancing to my mother, he tenderly embraced her… no doubt bringing to his mind recollections of former days when he had known her as a child, romping over the lawns of Mount Vernon, the guest of his everlasting friend George Washington.”
Lafayette received gifts on his tour, but he also gave some. To the US House of Representatives he gave an oil on canvas portrait of himself by the Dutch-born Parisian artist Ary Scheffer. When Lafayette addressed Congress (first foreign dignitary to do so), the Peter family attended.
To the Peters he gave an engraved copy by the French artist Jean-Marie Leroux. The Tudor Place book says it has hung in the home’s drawing room ever since.
Lafayette did visit Elizabeth, but not in a place one might expect. This eldest Custis initially lived in a mansion home in Washington after she married Thomas Law in 1796. It is located in SW DC and is known as the “Honeymoon House.”
After separating from and then divorcing Law, Elizabeth built “Mount Washington.” In her book, “George Washington’s Beautiful Nelly,” Patricia Brady described the dwelling as a “country cottage” and an “elegant little Federal-style house.” Later enlarged, it is now part of the Alexandria Episcopal High School, about four miles south of Arlington House.
After moving out and selling that house, Elizabeth lived, as Brady notes, a “peripatetic lifestyle in and around Washington.” This included a stay with Rosalie Stier Calvert (1778-1821) at Riversdale, Maryland. Rosalie married George Calvert (1768-1838), brother of Eleanor Calvert Custis Stuart (1754-1811).
Lafayette visited Elizabeth on the night after he visited the Peters. Thanks to research by Grant Quertermous ("A Georgetown Life: The Reminiscences of Britannia Wellington Peter Kennon of Tudor Place"), we know that at that time, Elizabeth was renting a home in Georgetown. So it was there Lafayette spent an evening with her.
A footnote by Quertermous reveals the dwelling to be “Peter Grove,” a house that was located on the corner of R Street (then Road Street) and 30th in Georgetown, about three blocks from Tudor Place. The house, built around 1808, was apparently demolished.
Lafayette and Elizabeth also corresponded. The Maryland Center for History and Culture has in their collections, fifteen letters between the two. Elizabeth also loaned her fancy coach to Lafayette for use during the Washington visits. After divorcing Law in 1811, she had a relationship with Louse Serurier, the French ambassador.
Good writes:
Leading up to the War of 1812, she told a pen pal, “My thoughts are all filled with the wish and anxiety to serve the cause of France.”
October 15, Arlington House
On October 15, the day after visiting Tudor Place, Lafayette got a tour of the Navy Yard. Commodore Thomas Tingey and a number of high-ranking brass showed off the frigate Potomack.
Lafayette then made his way to Arlington to see Wash and his family. What Arlington, built slowly by Wash and completed in 1818, lacked in elegance, it made up for with its impressive size and commanding view of the Federal city.
Lavasseur described it this way:
“His house, built on scaled-down plans of the Temple of Theseus (Hephaestus) stands on one of the most beautiful sites that one could imagine.”
And Arlington was more than a dwelling. It was a memorial to and de facto museum for Wash’s step-grandfather. Through the years, Wash enjoyed playing the role of story teller, showing off some of the Washington relics he bought and kept, and regaling visitors with stories about George and Martha. Perhaps nobody knew more about Washington than the man named after him. Where many others who had known Washington had passed away, Wash was able to tell stories and answer questions.
As in Baltimore, Wash greeted and hugged his old friend. Also waiting inside were two of Wash’s half siblings (as mentioned, his widowed mother Eleanor had married Dr. David Stuart), his brother-in-law Thomas Peter, and William Fitzhugh (Mary’s brother) and his wife Anna from Ravensworth, whose site is near Annandale.
Lafayette, of course, spoke with Wash’s wife Mary Lee Fitzhugh and their daughter Mary (1807-1873), future wife of Robert E. Lee (1807-1879) and future mother of their six children. Thanks to the book, “Mrs. Robert E. Lee, The Lady of Arlington” by John Perry, we have some insight.
Lafayette did not stay overnight, but Mary was pleased to talk to him. Perry writes:
“Lafayette smiled in approval at this energetic young woman who not only read and spoke French, but was also knowledgable of current affairs.”
Perry also notes that Lafayette returned to Arlington at least twice that winter. During one of those meetings, Wash gave Lafayette an umbrella and cup and saucer from the Washington state china (hang in there curators…).
Custis would also sit down with Lafayette and record his memories of Washington and the war. Custis wrote a 16-part series based on these conversations. Titled, “Conversations of La Fayette,” they were published in the Alexandria Gazette and then the National Intelligencer.
October 16, Alexandria
The Virginia side of the Potomac could not mach the aura and power of the Federal capital, but the colony had certainly helped make a difference in the American Revolution, the War, and political leadership for the young Republic. And Alexandrians sure knew a thing or two about George Washington.
Pulled by four gray horses, Wash sat in a carriage beside Lafayette’s son. Levasseur tells us the ride into Alexandria “was marked by the continuous sound of the artillery placed on the route and by the acclamations of the people who accompanied it.”
Lafayette’s stops included 301 S. St. Asaph where he spent the night, 601 Duke where he addressed the crowd, and the tavern that John Gadsby had helped make famous. Lee also paid his respects to the late Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee (1756-1818) by visiting his widow and son Robert E. Lee at 607 Oronoco Street.
While inside the impressive brick house, perhaps Lafayette reminisced about Lee who earned his nickname while serving under Lafayette during the war. In 1780, Washington had given Lafayette command of the Light Infantry Division. Unger tells us Lafayette clothed them in handsome uniforms and drilled them into a snappy and distinctive unit. "Lee's Legion" helped turn the tide of the war by playing their part in key victories.
October 17, Mount Vernon
On to Mount Vernon it was the next morning. The party on board the steamship Petersburg included Wash and John Calhoun (1782-1850), Secretary of War and soon to be Vice President. The party was greeted by Judge Bushrod Washington, a nephew of Washington, who had inherited Mount Vernon. Beside Bushrod were Washington’s nephew, Lawrence Lewis who had married Eleanor and was living at Woodlawn, and John Augustine Washington II, a grand nephew.
After Lafayette paid his respects to George and Martha at their tomb, Good tells us he had tears well up in his eyes. Wash gave him Washington’s Masonic sash and an engraved gold ring with a strand of Washington’s hair. The two embraced.
Mid-December, Woodlawn
No rest for the weary. After Lafayette visited Yorktown in October, and Monticello, Montpelier, and Fredericksburg in November, he returned to Washington. His December slate would include return engagements at the White House and the Capitol and speaking in Annapolis.
But before all that, Lafayette and his son stayed for four relaxing days at Woodlawn with Eleanor and her husband Lawrence Lewis. Nelly would remember that he “kissed her and her two daughters” (Frances Park and Angela).
Lavasseur tells us about the visit, which lasted three nights.
“This lady had been brought up at Mount Vernon with George Lafayette, and time had not destroyed the fraternal friendship which had been established between her and him. She received us with great affection, as did her husband and family.”
Nelly gave the Lafayettes -- “small presents that were of great value to us, because nearly all of them consisted of objects that had belonged to the hero of liberty, immortal Washington.”
September 7, 1825, Lafayette Departs
After 13 months, Marquis de Lafayette said farewell to the United States. After meeting with President John Quincy Adams at the White House, he spoke one last time.
God bless you, Sir, and all who surround us. God bless the American people, each of their states, and the federal government.
Lafayette stepped on a carriage and then the steamboat Mount Vernon that was waiting on the Potomac. As had been seen so many other times, the Lafayette party went past a line of soldiers. In this case, militias from Alexandria, Georgetown, and Washington.
As Good notes, the Lafayettes embraced Nelly and Eliza. Wash went on the trip to the Brandywine, which took the guest of the nation home.
We don’t know what Lafayette’s thoughts were as he reflected back, but the Custises were surely on his mind.
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