On an early summer evening 200 years ago, the enthusiasm of an American Revolutionary War hero for the country he’d helped to found and the hopes and dreams of the people of a Vermont wilderness town came together on the top of the hill overlooking Burlington.
The Marquis de Lafayette, former general in the Continental Army, returned to the young United States in 1824 to tour the country whose independence he’d fought to secure nearly 50 years before. Over the course of thirteen months, General Lafayette visited all of the then 24 United States. In late June, 1825, he crossed over the Connecticut River at Windsor and travelled by carriage to Montpelier and, on the 29th of June, to Burlington. In Burlington he was feted by the townspeople and, late in the day, took part in a cornerstone laying ceremony for the new building of the University of Vermont, the structure now known as Old Mill. (University Hall, the institution’s first home, had burned to the ground the year before.)

Lafayette, like his former commanding officer, George Washington, was a member of the Masonic Order. The cornerstone laying took place according to the Masonic rites, with ceremonial anointments with, oil, wine, and corn, and the Rev. Willard Preston, UVM’s fourth president, delivered an oration. The entire ceremonial party then retired to dinner at the nearby Grasse Mount mansion, then the home of Vermont Governor Cornellius Van Ness. Later that night Lafayette departed Burlington for Whitehall, N.Y., on the steamship Phoenix II.

On June 29, 2025, exactly 200 years after Lafayette’s visit, the laying of Old Mill’s cornerstone was commemorated with a reenactment featuring a reprise of President Willard’s address by UVM past president Daniel Mark Fogel, and a formal rededication ceremony by members of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Vermont.

More details about Lafayette’s 1825 visit, and the history of UVM’s Old Mill, can be found in “The Cornerstone,” an article in the current issue of UVM Magazine.