Archer Alexander

  • REFRAMING HISTORY

    REFRAMING HISTORY

    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 …

    Read more →

  • The Untold Story

    The Untold Story

    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.

    Read more →

  • Encyclopedia Virginia

    Encyclopedia Virginia

    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

    Read more →

  • Christmas 1862

    Christmas 1862

    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…

    Read more →

  • A son named James

    A son named James

    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.

    Read more →

  • From Virginia to Missouri

    From Virginia to Missouri

    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…

    Read more →

  • JUNETEENTH

    JUNETEENTH

    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.

    Read more →

  • The Fever

    The Fever

    It started in New Orleans and crept upriver to St. Louis. Then spilled out along the Missouri River until it flowed up the Dardenne. In 1833, Cholera fever took Nancy Alexander, who left behind four small children, two girls and two boys, between the ages of five and eleven…

    Read more →

  • Community

    Community

    Missouri was a slave state that the great orator Henry Clay had compromised with over 10,000 enslaved people when it reached statehood.

    Read more →

  • Sunday visits

    Sunday visits

    Archer’s wife was Louisa, property of Nancy McCluer, James Alexander’s wife. James and Nancy Alexander lived together with their four children in their cabin which was on the Boone’s Lick Road.

    Read more →

  • Missouri

    Missouri

    In 1829, a young enslaved man named Archer Alexander was brought to Missouri by his owner…

    Read more →

  • Muhammad Ali’s Ancestor was once in St. Louis Slave Pen

    In March of 1863, Muhammad Ali’s ancestor Archer Alexander was brutally beaten and thrown in the St. Louis slave pens, to be sold south.

    Read more →

  • The Emancipation Monument

    The Emancipation Monument

    The Emancipation Monument “Freedom’s Memorial” was paid for entirely by funds from the formerly enslaved. It sits in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C. today. It was dedicated by Frederick Douglass on April 14, 1876.

    Read more →

  • 20 August 1829 – First entry

    In 1829, over fifty people from Virginia, both black and white would fill a caravan from Lexington, in Rockbridge County and head for Dardenne Township in St. Charles County Missouri. This is their story, as taken from the Journal of William Campbell, who first settled on the Boone’s Lick Road. If you look closely and…

    Read more →

  • From Slavery to Freedom

    From Slavery to Freedom

    Free program via Zoom about Archer Alexander’s journey from Rockbridge County Virginia to Missouri in 1829. Details below…

    Read more →

  • Stop removing our history

    Stop Congress from removing the Emancipation Monument from our Nation’s Capitol. Add your name to the Petition today. This is the only memorial entirely paid for by thousands of formerly enslaved and U.S. Colored Troops in our Nation’s capitol. https://www.change.org/EmancipationMonumentDC Freedom’s Memorial, also known as the Emancipation Monument in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C. has

    Read more →

  • Freedom

    Freedom

    “Now I’m free! I thank the good Lord that he has delivered me from all my troubles, and I’ve lived to see this.” Such were the words of Archer Alexander when he saw the photograph of himself on the Emancipation Monument, which was to be dedicated in 1876 by the great orator Frederick Douglass in…

    Read more →

  • An American Hero

    An American Hero

    Archer can still be seen today, rising from his knees, his shackles broken, looking up towards Lincoln. Archer Alexander is no longer just a local boy, as he rises next to Lincoln on the Emancipation Memorial today, in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C.. Please sign the Petition to save the monument .

    Read more →

  • Save the Emancipation Memorial in DC

    It is said that those that do not know their history, are doomed to repeat it. Let us all rise up, by learning the truth of our history. Our ancestors, fought side by side to put an end to slavery. There are those of us that are willing to stand side by side, to once…

    Read more →

  • The Emancipation Monument

    In Lincoln Park, in Washington, D.C. sits the Emancipation monument.Freedom Memorial with Abraham Lincoln and Archer Alexander.

    Read more →

  • Keep the Emancipation Memorial Statue

    Who was Keith Winstead’s ancestor Archer Alexander? In 1863, he was a man who chose to do the right thing. When he overheard his master plotting to sabotage the local railroad bridge, he risked being lynched and reported it. He fled from St Charles County to St. Louis, where he was taken into the home…

    Read more →

  • Eyes of the Time

    It would take years, but in 1876, with the help of the Western Sanitary Commission, that monument would become a reality. That simple bronze monument, with two figures, a tall white man, and a black man rising on one knee, alongside him. The first ever to include a black person in our Nation’s Capital.

    Read more →

  • Looking for descendants

    Looking for descendants

    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

    Read more →

  • St. Louis

    St. Louis

    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”.

    Read more →

  • A journey into the past

    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…

    Read more →