Discover the Past - "The True Story of Archer Alexander"

This presentation will share the unknown facts on a Nationally known local freedom seeker, Archer Alexander. He spent more than 30 years living in the Cottleville and Dardenne Prairie Community. 

In 1863, Archer Alexander would overhear his enslaver (in Cottleville) plotting with area men (Dardenne Prairie) to take down the Peruque Creek Bridge (Lake St. Louis). With this information he risked his life to inform the Union Troops at Fort Peruque. He fled to St. Louis by the way of the Underground Railroad, and was later granted his freedom for his heroism. After the Civil War, the enslaved people would raise a monument to Lincoln in Washington, D.C. with Archer Alexander rising beneath the President, on the Emancipation Memorial.

About the presenter:

Public historian, Dorris Keeven-Franke, is an award-winning author that has been writing Missouri history for over thirty years. She is currently working on the biography of Archer Alexander. Awarded the German American Friendship Award by the Federal Republic of Germany in 2016, she is the Executive Director of Missouri Germans Consortium. She is an Archivist at Bellefontaine Cemetery and Arboretum.