The National Park Service Adds Three St. Louis Locations to the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom

Mary Meachum and her husband, Reverend John Berry Meachum, were staunch abolitionists who dedicated their lives to educating and freeing enslaved people. On the night of May 21, 1855, Mary attempted to help a small group cross the Mississippi River into Illinois, where slavery was outlawed. In the end, four enslaved people escaped and five were caught; Mary was arrested, charged in criminal court for assisting the “fugitives” and put under house arrest.

The Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing is the most well-documented escape in Missouri, and in 2001, the National Park Service recognized the site as part of the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Every year, Great Rivers Greenway celebrates the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing with a reenactment at the site as a unique and dynamic way to immerse both residents and visitors in this little-known history. In 2024, the event will take place on Oct. 19.

Designed by St. Louis architect George I. Barnett in the Italianate style in 1849, Tower Grove House was the country home of Henry Shaw, who founded the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1859. Today, the historic house museum sits in the garden’s Victorian District and offers a glimpse into its beginnings.

In the basement, visitors are invited to learn about the enslaved people who worked on Shaw’s estate. Existing records show that Shaw owned an unknown number of enslaved people from 1828 until 1860. In 1839, he freed an enslaved woman named Juliette, but in 1855, he hired a bounty hunter to track down four enslaved people who attempted to escape to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Those four people, including a woman named Esther and her two children, were captured at a site now commemorated as the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing. Tower Grove House is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Established in 1874 as the first commercial nonsectarian cemetery for African Americans in St. Louis, Greenwood Cemetery is the burial site of more than 50,000 people. Notable burials include Harriet Robinson Scott, an enslaved woman whose determination to free herself and her family made history; Lucy Ann Delaney, a freed woman of color whose memoir, From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom, gives the only first-person account of a freedom suit; and Charlton Hunt Tandy, an attorney and Civil Rights activist. Buffalo Soldiers, teachers and musicians are also buried at Greenwood Cemetery, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004 and joined the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing as an official site of the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom in 2023.

Although the cemetery has experienced severe neglect and vandalism since the 1980s, its importance to historians, anthropologists and other students and scholars of African American history and culture endures. Today, the Greenwood Cemetery Preservation Association aims to restore the cemetery to its former glory, as it offers enormous promise as an educational and tourist resource.

St. Peter’s Cemetery in Normandy is the burial site of Archer Alexander, a nonliterate enslaved man who eventually earned his freedom because of his courageous act at the Peruque Creek Bridge in St. Charles County during the American Civil War. When Alexander learned of his enslaver’s plot to destroy the vital railroad bridge, he rushed to inform the Union troops stationed at the guardhouse. His bravery saved hundreds of lives and precious military supplies; however, he was forced to flee for his life via the Underground Railroad. Alexander found safety in the home of William Greenleaf Eliot, who founded Washington University in St. Louis in 1853. Following a subsequent military hearing, Alexander was granted freedom on Sept. 24, 1863.

Alexander is buried in an unmarked grave, but St. Peter’s Cemetery, which became an official site of the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom in 2023, is in the process of building a memorial to him. The Emancipation Memorial, dedicated on April 14, 1876, in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Park, also features Alexander. After President Lincoln was assassinated, Eliot assisted Charlotte Scott, a formerly enslaved women, with the memorial’s creation, and he requested that the image of the enslaved man be that of Alexander – who, interestingly, is the great-great-great-grandfather of Muhammad Ali.