ARCHER ALEXANDER

The Rock Creek Civil War Round Table (RCCWRT) is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

“Archer Alexander and the Underground Railroad”

by Dorris Keeven-Franke, Writer, Historian and Acclaimed Speaker

Time: Saturday, February 7, 2026, 9:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) 8:30 AM Central Time

Historian and writer Dorris Keeven-Franke shares the story of Archer Alexander, a freedom seeker enslaved in St. Charles County, Missouri.  Among sixteen men who in 1863, made their attempt for freedom at Howell’s Ferry on the Missouri River, Alexander had overheard his enslaver plotting to destroy a vital Union Army railroad bridge and informed nearby Union Army officers.  Eventually making his way to St. Louis and the home of William Greenleaf Eliot, an abolitionist, Alexander was pursued by his enslaver, who attempted to recapture him. Because Missouri, a Border State, was under Union Army jurisdiction, a military investigation followed, and Alexander was granted freedom on September 24, 1863, under provisions of the Second Confiscation Act.

A Virtual Presentation

Via

Zoom Meeting

Link to Join Zoom Meeting: 

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83854509314?pwd=ZHZLyqktu6jWCzJ22eeX96YCJayZpb.1

Meeting ID: 838 5450 9314

Passcode: 008441

In 1865, following President Lincoln’s assassination, a fund for a memorial to Lincoln was initiated by Charlotte Scott of Virginia, a formerly enslaved person.  Funding for what became the Emancipation Memorial featuring a statue of President Abraham Lincoln, began  with a $5 donation from Miss Scott.  Initial donations from formerly enslaved people, U.S. Colored Troops (Union), and freedmen were held in trust for them by the Western Sanitary Commission, a St. Louis-based volunteer war relief agency. In 1869, sculptor Thomas Ball chose Archer Alexander as the model of a freedmen to be included in the statue. The Emancipation Memorial was dedicated on April 14, 1876, in Washington, DC’s Lincoln Park, in a ceremony that included Frederick Douglas.

Following his death in 1880, Archer Alexander was buried in an unmarked grave in St. Peters United Church of Christ Cemetery in Normandy, Missouri.

Among other descendants, Heavy-Weight Boxing Champion Muhammad Ali was a great-great-great-grandson of Alexander.