Missouri
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On September 24, 1863, St. Louis newspapers announced that the formerly enslaved man Archer Alexander was free. The Last Fugitive Slave was given his freedom by President Abraham Lincoln and the Union Army for his services to the Military. Earlier that same year, he had reported to Union troops stationed at Fort Peruque in St.…
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During the Civil War, after overhearing the area Confederates plotting, he risked his life to inform the Union soldiers at Fort Peruque of a plan to destroy the vital railroad bridge…
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The enslaved person called Archey, was named for William Campbell’s maternal grandfather, Archibald Alexander, who was also an ancestor of the Alexander and McCluer families also in the caravan. All Presbyterian elders, and farmers in Virginia, they had served in the Revolutionary War and all owned slaves. Archer, who was born in 1806, also had…
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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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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.
