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Boston’s copy was placed there as a tribute to the people of Boston who were the nation’s largest contributors to the Western Sanitary Commission. That is what people of America saw when they visited your statue in the 1870s.
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Originally posted on Dorris Keeven-Franke: I thought I was familiar with the story of Archer Alexander, the slave that portrays the gratitude the African Americans felt for President Abraham Lincoln. On the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C. erected in 1876, Alexander is the image of the enslaved. ?After writing about the history…
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In 1829, a small group of four families, Campbell, McCluer, Wilson and Alexander, all wealthy and well educated . planters from Virginia, came with their enslaved, about two dozen of them. They settled in “Dardenne” along the Booneslick Road, south of the Zumwalt place, (O’Fallon) in St. Charles County, Missouri. They were all members of…
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When Lincoln, a personal friend to Eliot, was assassinated, the formerly enslaved wanted a monument to Lincoln, and St. Louis’ former slave, Archer Alexander would be the one, to represent them, rising up and as Eliot says “breaking his own chains”.
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In an effort to trace Alexander’s early roots Keith Winstead and I will begin in Virginia. Join us as we take a journey along the same route, footstep by footstep, laid out in Campbell’s diary that brought these people to Missouri. Winstead, who shares the DNA of his cousin Muhammad Ali, has been researching his…
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Archer Alexander descendant Keith Winstead and I will make that journey again and share that story on the Archer Alexander blog. Starting in July, you too can follow the Archer Alexander blog and join in the journey. To truly know an ancestor, we sometimes have to take a walk in their shoes. What better way…
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The search for that special slave known as Archer Alexander has begun and needs to be found. Only then can that “true” story, as Keith Alexander calls it, be really known. Not easy when you are trying to find the genealogy of a slave. This is what is known as thorough and exhaustive research, for…
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Beginning on July 15, 2019, we will once again make a Journey to Missouri and share the story from Virginia, through Kentucky, and visit all of the places in their journal. Join us in our journey as we share the past and the present, and the untold story of Archer Alexander.
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The untold story of Archer Alexander is the life of an enslaved Virginian born in 1806, and brought to Missouri in 1829. An intelligent man, considered uppity, he wanted freedom. He would work with his fellow slaves in 1836 to build the home of William Campbell on the Boone’s Lick Road. By 1844, he was…
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Using DNA the family is looking for other descendants of Archer Alexander. They are planning a reunion in St. Charles County in August 2019.
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When his friend William Greenleaf Eliot shared a photograph of the Emancipation Memorial with Archer Alexander, he emotionally exclaimed I’se free![i] The bronze monument features Alexander, an enslaved African-American on one knee and wearing a slave’s cuff and rising before President Abraham Lincoln. It was dedicated April 14th, 1876, marking the 11thAnniversary of Lincoln’s assassination,…
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Modern science is giving family historians everywhere a big boost. Keith Winstead has been working on his ancestor Wesley Alexander for nearly 30 years, and tried the new technology. The amazing results revealed all kinds of surprises. He knew his family’s connections to Cassius Clay. But it was not until he did further DNA tests,…
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The final resting place of Archer Alexander, who was famously immortalized in the Emancipation Memorial, in Washington, D.C. in 1876 has been found. The location was unknown, and searched for by his descendant Keith Winstead for years.
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The funding drive for the Emancipation Memorial began, according to much-publicized newspaper accounts from the era, with $5 given by former slave Charlotte Scott of Virginia, for the purpose of creating a memorial honoring Lincoln. The monument features Abraham Lincoln with Archer Alexander rising before him and boldly breaking his own chains. The Western Sanitary…
ARCHER ALEXANDER
The Last Fugitive Slave
ARCHER ALEXANDER 