Havre de Grace: Lafayette Named It, the British Burned It
Maryland
Where the Susquehanna River finally empties into the Chesapeake Bay, a town sits that carries a French name given by one of the Revolution's most celebrated foreign volunteers. The story goes that the Marquis de Lafayette, watching the broad river meet the bay, exclaimed, 'C'est Le Havre,' comparing the scene to the great French port city of Le Havre de Grace. Whether Lafayette actually said those words is debated, but the name stuck, and the town incorporated in seventeen eighty-five.
Havre de Grace grew as a busy port at the head of the Chesapeake, a natural crossing point where roads and water routes converged. It nearly became the national capital, losing the vote to Washington by a single ballot in seventeen eighty-nine. Residents still mention that near miss.
The town's darkest morning came on May third, eighteen thirteen. British Rear Admiral George Cockburn, commanding a raiding fleet that had spent months terrorizing the Chesapeake coastline, turned his guns on Havre de Grace at dawn. A British landing force of sailors and marines in small boats came ashore and set fire to the town, burning roughly forty of its sixty buildings while residents fled into the surrounding countryside.
One man stayed and fought. American militia lieutenant John O'Neill manned a cannon on Concord Point alone, firing at the British ships until he was wounded and captured. The British, apparently admiring his defiance, released him shortly afterward. The grateful town rewarded O'Neill with a remarkable honor: he and his descendants would serve as hereditary keepers of the Concord Point Lighthouse in perpetuity. When the lighthouse was built in eighteen twenty-seven, President John Quincy Adams appointed O'Neill keeper at a salary of three hundred and fifty dollars a year. The O'Neill family kept that post until the lighthouse was automated in nineteen twenty.
Concord Point Light still stands today, one of the oldest lighthouse towers still standing on the Chesapeake Bay, a small granite tower at the river's mouth where the Susquehanna meets the bay.
