William Greenleaf Eliot
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On September 24, 1863, a St. Louis newspaper announced “Archer Alexander, a negro … whose last master was Richard Hickman Pitman of the County of St. Charles…is hereby declared to be an emancipated slave and a free man!
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Originally called the Freedom Memorial, the Emancipation Memorial, still stands today in Lincoln Park, in Washington, D.C. The Memorial to President Abraham Lincoln, dedicated on April 14, 1876, was the first memorial to Lincoln erected by the formerly enslaved in grateful appreciation for the Emancipation Proclamation. The enslaved man seen with Lincoln was a real…
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On this date, abolitionist William Greenleaf Eliot would make his final attempt to contact Archer Alexander’s enslaver Richard Hickman Pitman, of Cottleville, asking to purchase him, in order to see him emancipated.
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This spring, a new exhibit at the museum, titled “COLLECTED” will share Archer Alexander’s Gold Watch helping to bring his story to life once again… Read More
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This is the journey of Archer, the enslaved property of James Alexander of Lexington, Virginia. Alexander is a member of a caravan of families moving from Rockbridge County, Virginia to Saint Charles County Missouri. If we listen closely to this journal of William Campbell, we might hear the voices of the enslaved… after all this…
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Passed by Greenupsburg, KY, a handsome little village on a bottom of the Ohio River. The beautiful new steamboat Virginia cam sailing majestically down the Ohio River. My brother, [Charles Fenelon Campbell] took passage on her for Ripley, Ohio.
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In January of 1863, Archer Alexander had overheard the area men, plotting to destroy the Peruque Creek railroad bridge, a vital link for the Union troops. Risking his life, he would make his way to warn the troops of what was about to happen. By February, the identity of the informant was known, and his
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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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He thought to himself “Go for your freedom, ef you dies for it!'” So he held on his way right southward,.. he fell in with a party of … negro men, who, like himself, were making for freedom; [on February 17, 1863] but … they were overtaken by a band of mounted pursuers, who compelled…
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On April 14, 1876, a 70-year-old black man named Archer Alexander, would be immortalized as the man that represented the former enslaved on the Freedom Memorial in our Nation’s Capital. President Lincoln was the very man who had given him freedom …
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Within two years, he would take in a Fugitive Slave from St. Charles County, and under that law, could have been jailed himself. However, he would instead assist that slave in achieving that freedom, an act that he said President Lincoln himself (who was a personal friend) helped in.
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Archer was emancipated for “his important services to the U.S. Military forces.” He was freed by the Order of Brig. Gen. Strong, which was announced on September 24, 1863.
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Isn’t it time we tell the whole story? There is so much more to this man’s life than we knew. Recent research has uncovered so much more…
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Now over 150 years later we will honor the life of this hero with two important events, on Saturday, September 24, 2022. Saint Charles City and County will recognize this hero Archer Alexander at 10 am in the morning in front of the OPO Startups at 119 South Main, where the courthouse stood in 1863.…
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His early years in St. Louis would soon find him caught between the two forces of the rising conflict regarding the issues of enslavement…
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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…
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Heroes are made, not born. Archer Alexander was a hero for important services to the U.S. military forces…Read more
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German-born Lt. Col. Arnold Krekel’s troops had built a wooden blockhouse at the bridge, where hundreds of black men and their families had established a contraband camp. As fugitives, their safety and lives depended on the Union troops’ protection.
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After a life of enslavement, on September 24th, 1863, Archer Alexander was free at last! Nine months earlier, the freedom seeker had made a run for freedom that had nearly cost him his life. In January, Archer was visiting his wife Louisa at Naylor’s Store, where she was enslaved, when he overheard his owner and…
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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.
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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.
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“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…
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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.
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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”.
ARCHER ALEXANDER 