Louisa Alexander
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Here are three well-known African American couples in St. Louis, Missouri, whose perseverance and lives as freedom seekers are well-documented, yet the history of their burials has become obscured or tangled. Sadly, none of these couples are buried with their spouses, and only by carefully examining each story are we even able to begin to…
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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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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…
ARCHER ALEXANDER 