{"id":307727,"date":"2026-06-15T09:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T09:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/307727\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T09:57:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T09:57:11","slug":"how-marquis-de-lafayette-shaped-tallahassee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/307727\/","title":{"rendered":"How Marquis de Lafayette shaped Tallahassee"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1824, U.S. Congress gave the Marquis de Lafayette<\/a> a 36-square-mile plot of land in gratitude for his service during the Revolutionary War.<\/p>\n

That land grant, which he never personally visited, shaped Tallahassee, and to this day remains a touchstone to an American hero from France in Florida’s capital city.<\/p>\n

There’s a narrow strip of grass a mile east of the state Capitol. In it is a stone monument with a July 4,\u00a01825 date. It\u00a0marks one of the most important developments in Florida history: the establishment of a “township” used as the point from which much of the state is measured into parcels of land.<\/p>\n

Across a busy highway from a shopping mall, the monument marks one of the fixed points for a congressional land grant to the Marquis de Lafayette, a French\u00a0nobleman\u00a0who\u00a0used his money and skills as\u00a0a politician and soldier\u00a0in the fight for America\u2019s\u00a0independence.<\/p>\n

The Lafayette township literally measured across the Florida landscape a vision of democratic self-government that the Marquis shared with future presidents George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.<\/p>\n

Yet the capital that grew up around that marker, like Lafayette, time and time again has shown there can be distance between one’s beliefs and actions.<\/p>\n

Lafayette was a General in Washington\u2019s army and helped give the colonists several key victories. However, Lafayette was also important as a statesman, helping to legitimize the American Revolution in France and in other European countries.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A marker at U.S. 27 and East Lafayette St designates the southern border of the 6-square mile township Congress awarded the Marquis de Lafayette. The marker is off Apalachee Parkway and directly across from Governor\u2019s Square Mall.<\/p>\n

“Lafayette is more complicated than being just an idealist,” said Rafe Blaufarb<\/a>, the Ben Weider Eminent Scholar in Napoleonic Studies at the Florida State University Department of History. Blaufarb, an expert on the American Revolution and Napoleonic France, said at one time Lafayette was a hero on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

“But it went to his head,” Blaufarb said.<\/p>\n

When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, Lafayette became a strong man at the head of a citizen militia, then fled to Austria.<\/p>\n

To critics like Napoleon Bonaparte, Lafayette was politically na\u00efve,\u00a0and to\u00a0radical Jacobins, he was a weak moderate. They dismissed him as an \u201cempty-headed political dwarf\u201d\u00a0unable to\u00a0comprehend\u00a0the hard realities of politics.<\/p>\n

“So in the U.S., Lafayette is a hero of liberty, a democrat, a supporter of republics against monarchies. In Europe, he is a kind of paramilitary strongman with political ambitions who supports kings against republics and betrayed his own country when it was at war,” Blaufarb said.<\/p>\n

But in Florida as the nation gears up to celebrate its 250th birthday, the Lafayette legend is about 1776 and 13 colonies at war with the British Empire.<\/p>\n

Of Lafayette\u2019s role in\u00a0convincing the Court of King Louis XVI to provide money and other aid to\u00a0the American Revolution, Jefferson said, \u201cIn truth, I only held the nail, he drove it.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the\u00a0battlefield,\u00a0Washington referred to him as a loyal \u201cson.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an expression of thanks, Congress awarded the Marquis a grant of 36 square miles\u00a0of forest, streams, and lakes just east of the capital of the newly\u00a0established\u00a0Florida territory.<\/p>\n

The grant was a perfect square of six miles by six miles. Today, highways, an interstate, big box stores,\u00a0neighborhoods, parks, schools, and hospitals crisscross and dot the six-by-six-mile\u00a0tract.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Lafayette Land Grant as illustrated by then Tallahassee Democrat artist John Roberge.<\/p>\n

On a map the township stretches from Apalachee Parkway, or U.S. Highway 27, to the north across Interstate 10 and the city limits. And it runs along the Parkway from the edge of downtown east toward Buck Lake.<\/p>\n

The northern boundary is what are now the Killearn and Bradfordville neighborhoods, far beyond anything Tallahassee was\u00a0in\u00a01825.<\/p>\n

The western line tracks north from Gadsden Street at Apalachee Parkway along Meridian Road through downtown, past Lafayette Park.<\/p>\n

The southwest corner of the grid coincides with the Tallahassee meridian, the point from which all land in Florida is surveyed.<\/p>\n

The grant did more than map land. It helped shape the character of the capital that grew around it.<\/p>\n

Land ownership fixed in a precise grid encouraged development along straight corridors. The Lafayette\u00a0 grant\u00a0steered Tallahassee\u2019s growth to the east\u00a0along\u00a0corridors that would become U.S. 27 and 90, or Apalachee Parkway and Mahan Drive.<\/p>\n

“In 1831, Lafayette, who opposed slavery, sent three friends and 60 Norman peasants to create a free labor colony on his land. On the banks of Prairie Lake, the colonists planted grape arbors and olive, lime and mulberry trees. But the crops failed, the French farmers were beset by illness and the colony was abandoned in a matter of months,” longtime Democrat columnist and historian Gerald Ensley wrote in 2002.<\/p>\n

In 1833, a year before he died, Lafayette sold his township for $46,520 to land speculators, who sold it off in pieces.<\/p>\n

Lafayette\u2019s influence\u00a0in\u00a0a city that he never visited is felt in another way. Lafayette is an American Revolutionary hero\u00a0and\u00a0idealist who was mocked by his fellow Frenchmen. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s\u00a0a split legacy. One\u00a0that’s shaped by political combat and shared by both the man and\u00a0the city.<\/p>\n

Tallahassee is where\u00a0former territorial Gov. Keith Call told Confederates that with seccession they had \u201copened the gates of\u00a0hell.\u201d <\/p>\n

A century later, the 1956 Bus Boycott by Black residents gave an early boost to the Civil Rights Movement. Coincidently, the heart of Tallahassee’s historic Black neighborhood is known as Frenchtown.<\/p>\n

And for the first election of a new millennium, an attempt by officials in Tallahassee to recount the\u00a02000 presidential ballots pushed the nation to the brink of constitutional crisis.<\/p>\n

More recently, Tallahassee’s resident-in-chief, Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been a front line soldier against \u201cwoke\u201d policies and an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting of congressional districts to cement a GOP advantage.<\/p>\n

Since its inception as a frontier capital, Tallahassee the city and Lafayette the man have been kindred spirits standing in that messy, confusing place where democratic ideals clash with political realities.<\/p>\n

James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at\u00a0jcall@tallahassee.com<\/a>. Follow on X: @CallTallahassee.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Lafayette never saw Tallahassee but helped guide its growth<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1824, U.S. Congress gave the Marquis de Lafayette a 36-square-mile plot of land in gratitude for his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[102711,28,128522,232,234,233,128523,125140],"class_list":["post-307727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-american-revolution","tag-florida","tag-marquis-de-lafayette","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news","tag-the-lafayette","tag-thomas-jefferson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}