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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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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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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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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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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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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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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…
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Took a final leave of all my fathers family and turned our faces toward the West. We found the roads very bad and of course traveled slowly. Crossed the North Mountain and at noon ate a harty meal of bread, beef and cheese at a spring on the side of Mill Mountain.
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“I started from Lexington, Virginia on a journey to the state of Missouri. My own object in going to that remote section of the Union was to seek a place where I might obtain an honest livelihood by the practice of law. I travel in company with four families containing about fifty individuals, white and…
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Now over 150 years later we will honor the life of this hero with two important events, on Saturday, September 24, 2022. Saint Charles City and County will recognize this hero Archer Alexander at 10 am in the morning in front of the OPO Startups at 119 South Main, where the courthouse stood in 1863.…
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His early years in St. Louis would soon find him caught between the two forces of the rising conflict regarding the issues of enslavement…
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Imagine yourself enslaved in a state that is caught between two hostile forces. On a cold winter’s night in Missouri in January 1863, Archer Alexander overheard his enslaver Richard Pitman holding a secret meeting in the back room of the local Postmaster and storeowner James Naylor, in his mercantile on the Boone’s Lick Road in…
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As one of our nation’s most awarded institutions, it is committed to sharing the stories, giving us a greater understanding, of our community, the people who live here, and those who have enriched our history.
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Juneteenth or Freedom Day, is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery. It was on June 19, 1865 that Union soldiers, led by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, landed in Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that all slaves were free. Seventy-five years later, Archer Alexander is the second…
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Heroes are made, not born. Archer Alexander was a hero for important services to the U.S. military forces…Read more
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German-born Lt. Col. Arnold Krekel’s troops had built a wooden blockhouse at the bridge, where hundreds of black men and their families had established a contraband camp. As fugitives, their safety and lives depended on the Union troops’ protection.
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After a life of enslavement, on September 24th, 1863, Archer Alexander was free at last! Nine months earlier, the freedom seeker had made a run for freedom that had nearly cost him his life. In January, Archer was visiting his wife Louisa at Naylor’s Store, where she was enslaved, when he overheard his owner and…
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On March 30, 1863, Eliot would address a letter to Archer’s owner Richard H. Pitman asking to purchase him, as he wanted to see Archer Alexander emancipated. In his book, The Story of Archer Alexander, Eliot would later write …
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Archer was a hero in his own right, an unknown American hero, whose untold story is difficult to share yet needs to be told. Don’t you think the time is right? For more about Archer visit https://archeralexander.wordpress.com/ online anytime.
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A recent entry in the Virginia Humanities’ Website Encyclopedia Virginia shares the story of Archer Alexander. The contributor is Dorris Keeven-Franke who is an award-winning author of books on Missouri history
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For Archer Alexander, Christmas of 1862 would be the same. For hundreds of thousands of slaves across the United States. President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was a new pathway to freedom beginning January 1st, 1863. But not for Archer Alexander and his wife Louisa…
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This is the story of two men named James Alexander, one white, one black. One was the owner of Archer Alexander, one was his son. This son lived and died in St. Charles County.
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Today, we commemorate the 158th Anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. As we do this, we can also take another look at the Emancipation Monument, a memorial by all of the former enslaved, to the man who made this infamous speech, the 16th President of the U.S., Abraham Lincoln.
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Our purpose is to share the story of these people, both white and black, who made this trek of over 800 miles, and not only the mountains and the plains that they crossed, but the rivers they followed. In 1829, they would all walk the same pathway, climb the same hillsides, and follow the same…
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Over 600,000 heroic lives, both black and white, would be lost to bring this country to that moment. Today thousands will celebrate that moment now nationally recognized as Juneteenth.
ARCHER ALEXANDER
The Last Fugitive Slave
ARCHER ALEXANDER 