By the end of the 1820s, St. Charles County’s population had grown to 4,320 white Americans living here, primarily from the states of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. They had brought their enslaved with them, amounting to a total of 476 males, and 475 females for a total of 951 African-Americans, approximately 18% of the total population. There were also twenty seven free blacks living in the county. Its 470 Square miles encompassed forests, creeks, rivers, and prairie land. The principal crops were tobacco and hemp, which required large enslaved labor forces. But a huge wave of new settlers were on their way. In the next decade, the population would nearly double. Things were about to change…
On August 20, 1829, a group of three families, the Alexanders, the McCluers, and the Wilsons, would be joined by a large family named Icenhaur, would depart from Rockbridge County, in the Shenandoah Valley. Their cousin William Campbell, would keep a journal of that trek to Missouri, giving accounts of where they stopped, and what kinds of inns and innkeepers they would encounter. In reading this account and following their journey, we learn what such a journey is like for families coming here to St. Charles County. There are over fifty people in this caravan, half of them are white, and half of them are black. One of them, is an enslaved man named Archer Alexander, with his wife Louisa, and a son named Wesley.
ST. CHARLES COUNTY HISTORY 