Author: Dorris Keeven-Franke
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March 1863
In January of 1863, Archer Alexander had overheard the area men, plotting to destroy the Peruque Creek railroad bridge, a vital link for the Union troops. Risking his life, he would make his way to warn the troops of what was about to happen. By February, the identity of the informant was known, and his…
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A Woman in the Shadow
Louisa was born around 1810 to a woman enslaved by John McCluer, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian elder in Rockbridge County, Virginia, who was also her father. When McCluer’s daughter Nancy married James Alexander in 1820, Louisa would meet Alexander’s enslaved man named Archer Alexander. Louisa and Archer would marry …
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FEBRUARY 1863
He thought to himself “Go for your freedom, ef you dies for it!'” So he held on his way right southward,.. he fell in with a party of … negro men, who, like himself, were making for freedom; [on February 17, 1863] but … they were overtaken by a band of mounted pursuers, who compelled…
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The Emancipation Monument
On April 14, 1876, a 70-year-old black man named Archer Alexander, would be immortalized as the man that represented the former enslaved on the Freedom Memorial in our Nation’s Capital. President Lincoln was the very man who had given him freedom …
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William Greenleaf Eliot
Within two years, he would take in a Fugitive Slave from St. Charles County, and under that law, could have been jailed himself. However, he would instead assist that slave in achieving that freedom, an act that he said President Lincoln himself (who was a personal friend) helped in.
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January 1863
On a frigid January night in ‘63, nightfall came just about dinnertime. Under the cloak of darkness, several area secesh men met in the backroom of James Naylor’s store, just north of Dardenne Creek on Boone’s Lick Road. Missouri winters can be brutal, and the windswept prairie was especially cold and windy that year. Like…
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Washington Metropolitan AME Zion
When Archer Alexander passed away in December of 1880, his funeral would be held at his church, on Morgan Street in St. Louis. Washington Metropolitan AME Zion had begun in St. Louis on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865, and would become the first AME Zion church west of the Mississippi.
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Archer Alexander Day Events
On September 24, 2022, residents of St. Charles County, the City of St. Charles, and the City of St. Louis would commemorate the emancipation of Archer Alexander…
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September 24, 1863
Archer was emancipated for “his important services to the U.S. Military forces.” He was freed by the Order of Brig. Gen. Strong, which was announced on September 24, 1863.
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The Untold Story
Isn’t it time we tell the whole story? There is so much more to this man’s life than we knew. Recent research has uncovered so much more…
ARCHER ALEXANDER 