Big Muddy Speaker Series presents:

Presentation by Dorris Keeven-Franke

Wednesday, August 12th at 7PM

• 7 pm presentation (6 pm social hour)
• Bike Stop Cafe in St. Charles – 701 S Riverside Dr, St Charles, MO 63301
• Google Maps 

Hosted by the Greenway Network

In 1863, Archer Alexander overheard St. Charles County Confederates plotting to destroy a local railroad bridge that was a vital link for the Union Army. He risked his life to inform the soldiers and saved hundreds of lives. He fled to St. Louis by the Underground Railroad with sixteen other freedom seekers at the Howell’s Ferry Crossing and was later taken in by abolitionist Rev. William G. Eliot.

He was given his freedom for his important services to the military on September 24,1863. When President Lincoln was assassinated, in 1865, a drive for a memorial to Lincoln was begun by the formerly enslaved, called the Emancipation Memorial. That monument was dedicated on April 14, 1876, in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C. Archer Alexander became a nationally recognized icon as the freedom seeker with Lincoln.

When Archer Alexander died, he was buried in an unmarked grave in St. Peter’s U.C.C. Cemetery in St. Louis and his burial site is listed on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. He is the great-great-great grandfather of Muhammad Ali. On June 28, 2018, Tributary B in Cottleville and O’Fallon was named Archer Alexander Creek, which runs under Highway 364 and into Dardenne Creek. (Greenway Network has water quality monitoring weekends of the Dardenne every spring and fall.)