1. Archer Alexander was a formerly enslaved American man who served as the model for the "emancipated slave" in the Emancipation Memorial 1876 located in Lincoln Park in Washington, DC He was the subject of an 1885 biography, The Story of Archer Alexander, from Slavery to Freedom, March 30,1863 by William Greenleaf Eliot, published in 1885.
Archer Alexander was born enslaved by the Archer Alexander family near Lexington, Virginia, about 1816.
James and Nancy Alexander had died by 1835, and their property and their enslaved were 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 was leased out as a carpenter, stonemason, and bricklayer.
Louisa became enslaved by James Naylor, a merchant, postmaster, and former Presbyterian elder living in Missouri on the Boone's Lick Road; Archer Alexander became enslaved by Richard H Pitman, near Cottleville, Missouri.
In February 1863, Archer Alexander covertly notified a group of US Army soldiers under the command of Lt.
Archer Alexander was shortly thereafter suspected of being the source of this information and fled the Pitman farm.
Archer Alexander was captured by local slave catchers once but broke free.
Archer Alexander continued on the Underground Railroad and found refuge in the home of William Greenleaf Eliot in St Louis.
Eliot rescued Archer Alexander and contacted Pitman to purchase the man to emancipate him.
However, on September 24,1863, the St Louis newspapers announced that Archer Alexander had been liberated by the Confiscation Act of 1862 because of his service to the US military and Pitman's disloyalty to the United States.
That fall, Archer Alexander paid a German farmer to help Louisa and his daughters escape from Naylor and join him in St Louis, where she was granted emancipation.
Archer Alexander later learned that Louisa had died two days after her arrival of an unidentified cause.
Archer Alexander died in St Louis, Missouri, on December 8,1880.