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Historian, producer and journalist Bruce E. Mowday, who has spent almost a generation researching and writing about the life of the Marquis de Lafayette, spoke to the Society on September 23 about the French nobleman he considers one of the most important figures in America’s independence.

“We would not have beaten the British in the American Revolution without Lafayette,” Mowday told an audience of PSSR members and guests at Historic Waynesborough as part of the society’s quarterly lecture series.

Mowday, of West Chester, is the author of numerous historical books, including “Lafayette at Brandywine: The Making of An American Hero” and “Lafayette: America’s Young Hero and Guest.” He has also written about the Civil War, Phillies baseball and notorious Chester County crimes.

Attracted to the ideals of freedom and independence, the wealthy young Lafayette presented himself to the Continental Congress in 1777 and asked to command troops. He shed blood at Brandywine, an event that Mowday suggested truly made him an American patriot. He was with Gen. Washington at Valley Forge and became almost a son to him. He was at the British surrender in Yorktown. And perhaps most important of all, he was a convincing advocate for France to ally itself with the colonies against Great Britain.

Mowday noted that Lafayette was such a key figure that, 50 years after the Revolution, in 1824 and 1825, he was feted at 300-plus events on a tour of all 24 states which existed at that time. The parades and dinners and speeches went on for 13 months.

When the American Expeditionary Force arrived in Paris in 1917 to aid the French in World War I, Gen. John J. Pershing visited Lafayette’s grave. Pershing’s aide said, “Lafayette, we are here!”