People of the Year: David and Lisa Durham
This year saw the fruition of their decade-long quest for a city-wide celebration of the bicentennial of General Lafayette's visit to Fredericksburg.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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There are hundreds of events planned in cities and towns across the eastern United States to celebrate the bicentennial of General Lafayette’s 1824-25 visit to the country, but Fredericksburg’s celebration last month ranks among the biggest and most comprehensive.
That’s according to the American Friends of Lafayette and is due to the vision of David and Lisa Durham, who chaired the Fredericksburg Lafayette Bicentennial Commemoration Committee and who are the Advance’s People of the Year for 2024.
“We are always advocating for our city,” Lisa Durham told the Advance. “It’s a wonderful city with wonderful residents.”
There were four pillars to Fredericksburg’s celebration of the bicentennial of Lafayette’s visit—a yearlong lecture series exploring different aspects of the French general and his times; an exhibit at the Fredericksburg Area Musuem titled “Lafayette’s World: Revolutionary Ideals and the Limits of Freedom,” which will be up through 2025; placement of Fredericksburg on the Lafayette Trail, which marks the route of his 1824-25 tour; and Commemoration Weekend itself, which took place on November 23-24.
David Durham said he first reached out to the City about commemorating the bicentennial of Lafayette’s visit 10 years ago. He’d been looking into the relationship between Fredericksburg and the French general.
“I thought there must be a relationship because of all the buildings and roads named for him,” Durham said.
He found reference to a pamphlet published in the late 19th-century by Rufus Merchant, founder and publisher of Fredericksburg’s Daily Star newspaper, that described the events of Lafayette’s three-day visit to town.
Intrigued, Durham tracked down a physical copy of the pamphlet in the College of William and Mary’s rare books collection. Even though it was published years after the 1824 visit, “there was such amazing, incredible detail of every speech made, every song sung, every toast given that I thought, ‘This has to be a contemporaneous account,’” Durham recalled.
The pamphlet provided an outline that Durham thought the city could follow to commemorate the bicentennial of Lafayette’s visit.
He went to then-Mayor Mary Katherine Greenlaw with a PDF of the pamphlet, which was not yet available online, and said, ‘We’re 10 years away from this—we have to do something.”
Greenlaw was on board—not in the least because Merchant was her great-grandfather.
It was not until this spring that Durham discovered the source from which Merchant lifted the account of Lafayette’s visit to Fredericksburg. It was a lengthy article published on November 27, 1824—the week after the visit—in the Virginia Herald, which was Fredericksburg’s paper of record in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
“The archives of the Herald are at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library [in the Virginiana Room],” Durham said. “I looked it up on the microfiche and there it was. The text is exactly like what was published in the pamphlet. That helped us feel comfortable with the accuracy of what we were planning.”
To plan the commemoration, the Durhams brought together a comprehensive group of the city’s historical and cultural organizations—the Washington Heritage Museums, the George Washington Foundation, the James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library, the Fredericksburg Area Museum, the Central Rappahannock Regional Library, the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation, Inc., Masonic Lodge No. 4, St. George’s Episcopal Church, the Fredericksburg Sister City Association, the Fredericksburg-Este Association, local chapters of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, the City of Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg City Public Schools, King George County Schools, the University of Mary Washington, and Germanna Community College.
To the Durhams’ knowledge, this is the first time all of these groups have worked together.
Over a three-year-long active planning period, each organization took ownership of one aspect or event of the commemoration, with the Durhams “keeping the train on the track.”
“We decided to trust each organization as professionals and didn’t tell them what to do,” Lisa Durham said. “They all brought their own vision, and by having all the organizations plug in we had a much deeper celebration.”
The Durhams said they are members of many of these organizations and support the work they do to preserve local history and build community.
“Our big motivation was to highlight [these organizations],” Lisa Durham said. “We wanted others to know about them and to spur historic tourism to Fredericksburg. We wanted to put a big spotlight on them.”
The three years of hard work paid off, as the commemoration events went off “seamlessly,” Lisa Durham said.
The FAM exhibit and the lecture series leading up to Commemoration Weekend provided the community with a chance to get to know Lafayette and his strong belief in the ideals of liberty for all, including for Black Americans.
“He was worthy of this,” Lisa Durham said.
To honor Lafayette’s belief in egalitarianism, all the commemoration events with the exception of the Lafayette Ball were free and open to everyone.
The Durhams said they “achieved everything [they] wanted to” through the commemoration, with the invaluable support of the partner organizations.
“This was a celebration of Fredericksburg and our community,” Lisa Durham said.
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This is really neat, and reveals important aspects of the character of our community. Congratulations to the Durhams for making this happen.