Did the Marquis de Lafayette visit Wilcox County in April 1825?

Marquis de Lafayette

Did the Marquis de Lafayette visit Wilcox County in April 1825?

This is a question that came to mind earlier this week as I read about Lafayette’s historic visit to Alabama 193 years ago this month.

As many of you will remember from American History class, Lafayette was a famous French general who fought alongside George Washington during the American Revolution. In 1824, in anticipation of the United States’ 50^th anniversary, President James Monroe invited Lafayette to tour the country, which was then made up of just 24 states, including the young state of Alabama. Lafayette was 67 years old in 1824, but he was a huge celebrity at the time in America and abroad.

Lafayette accepted Monroe’s invitation, and he and his entourage arrived in New York on Aug. 15, 1824. From there, he set off on a tour of the country, which took him by stagecoach, steamboat and horseback through New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. before he returned to France on Sept. 7, 1825. Just about everywhere he went, Lafayette was met with huge crowds, public ceremonies and artillery salutes.

Lafayette crossed the Chattahoochee River into Alabama on March 31, 1825, and he arrived in Montgomery on April 3. On April 5, Lafayette’s party, which was traveling down the Alabama River, visited Selma. From there, they continued down the river to Cahaba, which was the state capital at that time. On April 6, Lafayette’s party stopped at Claiborne, which was then the county seat of Monroe County, where Lafayette, a prominent Freemason, is said to have set the cornerstone for the town’s Masonic lodge.

With that said, anyone who has ever looked at a map of the Alabama River knows that to travel down river from Cahaba to Claiborne you have to pass through Wilcox County. My question is, did Lafayette stop in Wilcox County between his visits to Cahaba and Claiborne? While I could find no documentation of this, I think it’s very possible and probably likely given the long distance between Cahaba and Claiborne.

Modern readers should remember that in April 1825, Wilcox County was only a little over five years old, having been founded on Dec. 13, 1819. In 1825, Canton, now known as Canton Bend, was the county seat, and I think that if Lafayette stopped anywhere in the county it would have probably been here. Camden, which was originally known as Barboursville, didn’t become the county seat until 1833, eight years after Lafayette passed through Wilcox County.

With that in mind, I think it’s also possible that Lafayette made an overland crossing of Wilcox County. As many readers know, the biggest bend in the Alabama River is in Wilcox County. By boat in 1825, it was 40 miles around this great bend in the river from Bridgeport to Burfords Landing, and the distance between the two points on a straight line across the county was only about eight miles. In the heyday of riverboat travel, travelers headed south on the river from Montgomery commonly got off the boat at Bridgeport, traveled a short distance overland and then caught a boat again at Burfords Landing to continue south.

In the end, I’ve been unable to find any documented evidence that Lafayette ever set foot in Wilcox County, but that doesn’t mean that such evidence doesn’t exist. I think there is no doubt that he passed through Wilcox County by boat, and he could have easily gotten off to stretch his legs if they had to stop for fuel, mail, passengers or cargo. If anyone in the reading audience knows more about Lafayette’s passage through Wilcox County, please let me hear from you.