In 1829, he was an enslaved man taken from Virginia to Missouri, where he and his wife and children lived in St. Charles County. During the Civil War, after overhearing the area Confederates plotting, he risked his life to inform the Union soldiers at Fort Peruque of a plan to destroy the vital railroad bridge. He soon fled by the Underground Railroad, helping sixteen other freedom seekers at Howell’s Ferry crossing on the Missouri River. He made his way to St. Louis and the home of an abolitionist, Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot, a founder of Washington University, becoming the “last fugitive slave in Missouri”. He was granted freedom on September 24, 1863, for his assistance to the Union. In 1876, the formerly enslaved dedicated the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., with Archer Alexander representing the enslaved man with President Lincoln. Archer passed away in 1880 and was buried in an unmarked grave in St. Peter’s United Church of Christ Cemetery in Normandy (St. Louis County), where his burial is listed today on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Archer Alexander is the ancestor of Muhammad Ali. The Archer Alexander Memorial Foundation has established a fund for a new memorial sculpted by world-renowned St. Louis sculptor Abraham Mohler to be placed at St. Peter’s UCC Cemetery. Donations can be made at the link below, or you may contact us using the form below the QR Code.
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