Events at the N.E.H.G.S. in November

The New England Historic Genealogical Society is hosting two free events this month with Revolutionary roots.

Saturday, 12 November, 2:00-3:30 P.M.
General Lafayette’s Farewell Tour
Alan Hoffman and Dorothea Jensen

Between August 1824 and September 1825, General Lafayette—famed Revolutionary War hero—said a final farewell to America during a 24-state tour. Alan Hoffman—President of the American Friends of Lafayette and the Massachusetts Lafayette Society—will speak about Lafayette’s tour. Author Dorothea Jensen will then discuss the portrayal of Lafayette’s arrival in a small New Hampshire town in her recently published young-adult historical novel, A Buss from Lafayette. Diaries and correspondence from N.E.H.G.S. special collections documenting the farewell tour will be on display.

Wednesday, 16 November, 6:00-7:30 P.M.
“The Lord Alone Shall be King of America”: Hebraism and the Republican Turn of 1776
Eric Nelson

In this lecture, Eric Nelson, author of The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought, will demonstrate how the history of American constitutionalism and the history of Christian Hebraism are deeply intertwined. A conversation with Barry Shrage, President of the Combined Jewish Philanthrophies of Greater Boston, will follow the lecture.

Nelson is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Government at Harvard University, focusing on early modern political thought. He is also author of The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding, which makes a contrarian argument about the American Patriots’ support for monarchical power.