Fort marks bicentennial of Lafayette’s farewell tour

On Aug. 16 the New York Harbor Defense Museum inside Fort Hamilton commemorated the 200th anniversary of the Farewell Tour of America by the Marquis de Lafayette.

Lafayette served as a major general in George Washington’s Continental Army. He returned to the U.S. in 1824, landing at the New York City port of entry at Castle Garden in lower Manhattan.

His tour included a visit to Fort Lafayette, where he received a 13-gun cannon salute. At the time, Fort Lafayette, just offshore from Fort Hamilton, which was originally designated Fort Diamond, was renamed in his honor in 1823. It had been built on a small island called Hendrick’s Reef. During the 1960s the fort was demolished so the Brooklyn tower of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge could be constructed there.

Justin Batt, curator and director of the Harbor Defense Museum, invited Julien Icher, a French geographer, and founder and president of the Lafayette Trail, to give a luncheon address about Lafayette’s role as one of George Washington’s closest military aides. It was appropriately held in the 2nd floor Washington Room at the Fort Hamilton Community Club.

The program also received cooperative efforts by the Garrison Command, the West Point Museum and American Legion Coffey/Wilson Post 688.

After the luncheon we tagged along with Batt, Icher and Charles Bowery, Jr., the executive director of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, to the Lafayette trail marker recently installed at Fort Hamilton.

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At the recent remembrance ceremony for the Maryland 400, at the Old Stone House, and representing the Society of Old Brooklynites, we had the honor of reading the names of the 8th company of the 1st Regiment of Marylanders that fought  in the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776. For this event in Brooklyn, a busload of present-day Marylanders participated and then were escorted by Old Stone House executive director Kim Maier and Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Martin Maher to the Maryland 400 monument in Prospect Park.