Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, known in America as Lafayette, was born on September 6, 1757, and died on May 20, 1834. At his own expense he sailed to South Carolina, then traveled to Philadelphia and offered his services without pay to the Continental Congress, which accepted him and commissioned him a Major General to aid General Washington. During the Revolutionary War he rode with Generals Washington and Greene to Iron Hill on August 26, 1777, before the sharp skirmish at Cooch’s Bridge on September 3, and on his twentieth birthday he was at the Hale-Byrnes House as Washington and his senior staff planned the redeployment of American troops. At the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, he was wounded in the leg while rallying troops and leading a delaying action that helped much of the American army escape. After visiting France in 1779-80, he helped coordinate American and French plans following Rochambeau’s arrival in 1780, then in 1781 led 1,200 light infantry soldiers sent to help repel the British invasion of Virginia under Benedict Arnold and later faced Cornwallis until the British withdrew to Yorktown, where Lafayette was responsible for the American troops in the final allied assault before the British surrender on October 19, 1781. As one of the last surviving general officers of the Continental Army, he toured the United States in 1824-1825, traveling thousands of miles and visiting all 24 states, including Delaware. He became the first honorary citizen of the U.S., having first been made an honorary citizen of Maryland in 1783, with later recognitions by Maryland and Connecticut in 1823 and by a joint congressional resolution in 2002. The debt owed to France for aiding the American cause was invoked again during the First World War when American troops marched through Paris on July 4, 1917, to Lafayette’s grave, where Colonel C.E. Stanton, aide to General John Pershing, declared, “Lafayette, we are here.” Because of Lafayette’s role in aiding the American cause, an American flag has flown over his grave ever since the end of World War One and is changed every year on July 4.