Discover the Past: Archer Alexander and the Underground Railroad

Historian and writer Dorris Keeven-Franke shares the story of Archer Alexander, a freedom seeker enslaved in St.Charles County who was first captured in February 1863 when sixteen men made their attempt for freedom at Howell’s Ferry on the Missouri River. Running for his life, as he had overheard his enslaver Richard Pitman, and other area men, plotting to destroy a vital railroad bridge nearby he had informed the Union Troops. Escaping, he made his way to St. Louis and the home of an abolitionist named William Greenleaf Eliot, where his enslaver once again attempted to recapture him. As Missouri was under Martial law, following a military investigation he was granted freedom, by September 24, 1863, through the provisions of Lincoln’s Second Confiscation Act. 

In 1865, when President Lincoln was assassinated, a fund for a memorial to Lincoln was initiated by Charlotte Scott and the Western Sanitary Commission assisted the formerly enslaved with this and requested the image of the enslaved man be that of Archer Alexander. The Emancipation Memorial was dedicated on April 14, 1876, in Washington, DC’s Lincoln Park. Alexander was buried in an unmarked grave in St. Peters United Church of Christ Cemetery in 1880 which is listed on the National Park Services National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.