Archer Alexander

Alexander was born enslaved by the Alexander family near Lexington, Virginia, about 1806. He and his wife were brought to Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, in St. Charles County, Missouri by his enslaver James H. Alexander in 1829. His wife Louisa, who was formerly enslaved by Dr. Robert McCluer was inherited by his daughter, Nancy McCluer, who was James H. Alexander's wife. When both James and Nancy (McCluer) died by 1835, all of their property was managed by their executor, William M. Campbell, providing the funds to care for their four orphaned children who had returned to Virginia to live with relatives. Besides working for Campbell, Archer Alexander would be leased out to work as a carpenter, stone mason and bricklayer. When James Alexander's orphans grew up, the property was dispersed; Archer, Louisa, and seven of their children would be split up. Those seven were: Eliza ($325), Mary Ann ($300), Archer ($225), James ($200), Alexander ($175), Lucinda ($150) and John ($125). Three of their children, Nellie, William, and Wesley, had already been sold by this time. Louisa would become the enslaved property of James Naylor, a merchant and postmaster on the Boone's Lick Road, and a former Presbyterian elder. Archer Alexander would become the enslaved property of Richard H. Pitman, near Cottleville, Missouri.

During the American Civil War, Alexander overheard a meeting of local slave owners discussing a plot to sabotage a nearby railroad bride and use arms and ammunition they had stored in Captain James Campbell's icehouse. In February 1863, Alexander covertly notified a group of Union troops under the command of Lt. Col. Arnold Krekel, that the Peruque Creek railroad bridge had been sabotaged by Confederate sympathizers.[1] Archer was shortly thereafter suspected of being the source of this information and had to flee the Pitman farm. He was captured by the local slave catchers once, but he broke free. He continued on the Network to Freedom and made it to St. Louis, and the home of William Greenleaf Eliot. There he obtained employment in Eliot's home and was put under the protection of the Federal provost-marshal. Pitman would send slave catcher's to Eliot's home, to recapture what they considered their property, and put Archer Alexander in the City Jail to be sold. Eliot would rescue Alexander, and contact Pitman wanting to purchase the man in order to emancipate him. However by September 24, 1863 the St. Louis newspapers announced that Archer Alexander had been emancipated by the Second Confiscation Act of 1862, because of Alexander's service to the military and Pitman's Disloyalty to the Union. That fall Alexander would pay a German farmer to help Louisa and his daughters to escape Naylor and join him in St. Louis, where she was granted emancipation as well.In 1865, it is said in Eliot's book that Louisa decided to return to Naylor's house for some things she had left there. Alexander would find out that Louisa had died, two days after her arrival, of an unidentified cause. The location of her grave is unknown.

Thomas Ball's Emancipation Memorial depicting Abraham Lincoln emancipating a slave. Archer Alexander was the model for the slave.

In 1865, Eliot was working with the Western Sanitary Commission to build a statue of Lincoln. The funding for an Emancipation Memorial, featuring a statue of Lincoln, had begun with a $5 donation from a former slave, Charlotte Scott, from Virginia. All of the initial funds raised were donations from formerly enslaved people, U.S. Colored Troops (Union) and Freedmen, and held in trust for them by the Western Sanitary Commission, a St. Louis-based volunteer war-relief agency. Thomas Ball had made an acceptable model in 1865, but Eliot's group wanted to have a real freedman pose for it. In 1869, Eliot gave Ball a photo of Alexander, and he was chosen as the model.

In 1876, the statue was unveiled, with a number of notable people in attendance, including President Ulysses S. Grant, members of his cabinet, Supreme Court justices, other government figures, and Frederick Douglass, another former slave. However, neither Alexander nor Eliot was present.

Archer Alexander died in St. Louis, Missouri, on December 8, 1880. His funeral was held in his church, which was across from his home, Washington Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion on Morgan Street. Archer Alexander was buried in a common lot and unmarked grave at St. Peters U.C.C. Cemetery on Lucas and Hunt in Normandy, Missouri.

According to DNA research, boxer Muhammad Ali was a descendant of Archer Alexander through his son Wesley Alexander.[2]

• Archer Alexander - the Untold Story of an American Hero URL:https://archeralexander.blog/
• Encyclopedia Virginia- Virgiinia Humanities URL entry: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/archer-alexander-d-december-8-1880/
• Alexander, Errol D. "Rattling of the Chains", a descendant and researcher-biographer of Archer Alexander.
• Christensen, Lawrence O. Dictionary of Missouri Biography. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8262-1222-0

• Eliot, William Greenleaf (1885). The Story of Archer Alexander: From Slavery to Freedom, March 30, 1863. Boston, Mass.: Cupples, Upham and Company: Old Corner Bookstore. Retrieved November 15, 2020 – via Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).
• Griffith, Susan J. (2011). "Alexander, Archer (ca. 1810–1879)". The Online Encyclopedia of Significant People and Places in African American History. Retrieved October 5, 2013 – via BlackPast.org.
• Strauss, Ben (October 2, 2018). "DNA evidence links Muhammad Ali to heroic slave, family says". Washington Post.
• Johnson, Rossiter, ed. (1906). "Alexander, Archer". The Biographical Dictionary of America. Vol. 1. Boston, Mass.: American Biographical Society. p. 74. Retrieved November 15, 2020 – via en.wikisource.org.

Attribution

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Johnson, Rossiter, ed. (1906). "Alexander, Archer". The Biographical Dictionary of America. Vol. 1. Boston: American Biographical Society. p. 74.