The Dictionary of Virginia Biography is published online through a partnership with Encyclopedia Virginia. Biographies that do not also appear in the three print volumes (surnames Aaroe�Daniels) link to lists of sources consulted.
Sources consulted for the biography of:James Lafayette (ca. 1748–1830)
Primary Sources
- Stanley J. Idzerda et al., eds., Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776–1790 (1977–1983), second quotation on 4:290, 357.
- Engraving of James Lafayette with text of the marquis de Lafayette's 1784 statement reproduced beneath, ca. 1824 (fourth quotation), Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Va.
- Jared Sparks Collection of American Manuscripts, MS Sparks 32, Miscellaneous particulars and copies from manuscripts examined in London and Paris, 1778–1798, 2 v. (third quotation on 1:250), Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
- Lafayette's lost 1784 petition recorded in Journal of the House of Delegates, 1784–1785 sess., 54.
- Legislative Petitions, New Kent Co., November 30, 1786 (first quotation) and December 28, 1818 (fifth quotation, "age of Three score years & ten"), Accession 36121, Library of Virginia.
- Lafayette's emancipation in William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619 . . . (1809–1823), 12:380–381.
- Lafayette's pension in Acts Passed at a General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia . . . , 1818–1819 sess., 188.
- Land Tax Returns, New Kent County, 1816, Record Group 48, Library of Virginia.
- Date and place of death in Revolutionary War Pension Records, APA Inventory Entry No. 230, and date of death in Revolutionary War Pension Rolls, 1786–1851, vol. 2, APA Inventory Entry No. 232, both in Auditor of Public Accounts, Record Group 48, Library of Virginia.
Newspapers
- Lost issue of Richmond Compiler excerpted in Salem (Mass.) Gazette, October 8, 1824 (sixth quotation).
- Richmond Enquirer, October 29, 1824
Secondary Sources
- James E. Heath, Edge-Hill, or, The Family of the Fitzroyals, A Novel (1828), 2:224.
- Luther P. Jackson, "James Lafayette, Spy in the American Revolution," Norfolk Journal and Guide, National Ed., November 20, 1943.
- John Salmon, "'A Mission of the most secret and important kind': James Lafayette and American Espionage in 1781," Virginia Cavalcade 31 (1981): 78–85.
Return to biography on Encyclopedia Virginia.
