Barton Bates
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After Archer Alexander reported what he had overheard to the Union Troops at the Peruque Fort, the entire county was in an uproar. He had risked his life to let them know that the Confederates were about to destroy the most important railroad crossing in Missouri. If captured, he would be tortured, whipped and probably…
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The discovery that Archer Alexander had been the informant who had passed information to the Union Troops about the Confederate’s plans, sent the whole area around Dardenne Prairie into turmoil! While the trains were halted, and the bridge repaired, everyone from Flint Hill to Naylor’s Store to Cottleville was looking for Pitman’s enslaved man….
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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…
