ST. CHARLES COUNTY HISTORY

In October of 1829, four families from Rockbridge County Virginia, would come to settle on Dardenne Prairie with over two dozen enslaved people. They had left in August, and would be led by a young attorney named William Campbell (1805-1849) whose journal stated

My own object in going to that remote section of the Union was to seek a place where I might obtain an honest livelihood by the practice of law.

In his journal, he tells the story

The first family is that of Dr. McCluer, his wife (my sister) and five children from six months to thirteen years old and fourteen negro servants. Two young men, McNutt and Cummings, and myself form a part of the traveling family of Dr. McCluer. Dr. McCluer leaves a lucrative practice and proposes settling himself in St. Charles County Missouri on a fine farm which he has purchased about 36 miles from St. Louis. The second family is that of James H. Alexander, who married a sister of Dr. McCluer, with five children and seven negro slaves. Intends farming in Missouri. Third family, James Wilson, a young man who is to be married this night to a pretty young girl and start off in four days to live one thousand miles from her parents. He has four or five negroes. Fourth family, Jacob Icenhoward, an honest, poor, industrious Dutchman with several children and a very aged father in law whom he is taking at great trouble to Missouri, to keep him from becoming a county charge. He has labored his life time here and made nothing more than a subsistence and has determined to go to a country where the substantial comforts of life are more abundant.

William Campbell’s cousin, James H. Alexander (1789-1835), purchases land in St. Charles County, near today’s intersection of Hwy K and Hwy N – which is the Boone’s Lick Road. He chose this location on purpose because of the road, and it being a major thouroughfare. His enslaved are put to work following the instructions of professional stone masons that have come from Ireland. When the house is complete, James Alexander applies to be postmaster and establishes his house as a stagecoach stop on the Boone’s Lick Road! Here is a list of the distances between stops on the road, so you could plan your trip. A good day’s journey was about 25-30 miles if you were travelling by coach. If you had several livestock, family, and enslaved walking with you it would slow you down considerably.

However, as fate would have it, Cholera is sweeping the countryside, and on the 4th of September, 1835 James Alexander dies leaving four children, ages 13, 11, 9 and seven years old behind. They are sent back to Virginia to live with relatives who will be their Guardians. Alexander’s will states that his plantation and his enslaved are not to be sold, and to be leased out and all the profits used for the benefits of his children. His enslaved include Archer Alexander (1806-1880) Louisa his wife (1810-1865) , her sister, her mother, and their children. In the Probate files Louisa’s seven children and their values are listed as 1) Eliza $325, 2) Mary Ann $300, 3) Archer $225, 4) James $200, 5) Alexander $175, 6) Lucinda $150, and 7) John $125. The estate would continue to be administered by William Campbell until his death, and the children reached maturity. At that point, the enslaved were sold, with Archer Alexander going to David Hickman Pitman, and Louisa and what was left of her children becoming the property of James Naylor, further west on the Boone’s Lick Road.

At that time, William Campbell’s uncle from Kentucky Captain James Campbell has also arrived in the area and built this house on several hundred acres across the road from James Alexander (dec’d). An enslaver, they would be the ones to do the actual manual labor of building these great stone mansions, located on huge tobacco plantations. This house has now been documented to have been completed in 1838.

In 1863, Archer Alexander was visiting his wife Louisa at Naylor’s Store where he heard a regularly held meeting of the area Confederates plotting to take down the North Missouri Railroad Bridge over Peruque Creek. They had stored guns and ammunition in the ice house on the old Alexander place, which was now owned by Captain Campbell. Knowing what this meant, Archer would make his way to the Peruque Creek Fort manned by the Union Army’s Home Guards, to warn them. When suspicion fell on Archer as the informant, he had to flee via the Underground Railroad, to St. Louis. He and 16 other men from the Dardenne Prairie, including some who were owned by the McCluer and Bates family, fled south and crossed the Missouri River at Howell’s Ferry. Today the site is listed as the Howell’s Ferry Freedom Crossing on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

For more about Archer Alexander see the archeralexander.blog

Sources: The Campbell Journal from the Rockbridge Historical Society, and the Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

St. Charles County Probate, St. Charles County Recorder’s Office

Library of Congress

Photo Collection of Dorris Keeven-Franke

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