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Courtesy of the Missouri History Museum
Harriet Scott.
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via Wikipedia.com
Dred Scott.
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Via Documenting the American South, ©University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Portrait of Elizabeth Keckley, from her autobiography, "Behind the Scenes"
I thought it would be interesting, for the Fourth of July holiday, to look at some of the African Americans who once walked the streets where the Gateway Arch is now. St. Louis, before the Civil War, was one of the most bustling and thriving cities in the world, and some of the most famous people in America walked up the granite blocks of the levee from steamboats moored along the Mississippi. And this holds true no less true for important African Americans, both free and enslaved, both long time and short-term residents of the city.
Perhaps no better place to start would be Jacques Clamorgan, a Frenchman who hailed back to the earliest epoch of St. Louis history, the colonial era. Jacques would be the father of many other Clamorgans in the Gateway City, coming to St. Louis in 1780 when the territory was still part of the Spanish Empire. Those children were with his slaves, and they were considered black by law, and free. There were actually many free blacks in Spanish territory at the time, and many of them were successful businessmen, contributing in the rise of St. Louis as an important trade and commercial center. One of Jacques’s children with his slaves, Cyprian, wrote a book entitled The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis, which gives us a window into the lives of what would be otherwise forgotten African American residents of St. Louis. Many of them were women, in fact, such as Mrs. Pelagie Nash, or Mrs. Sarah Hazlett. A street in Laclede’s Landing, Clamorgan Alley, memorializes this fascinating family.
Moving up to the era of Missouri statehood, there was a man named York who lived both a life of adventure and of tragedy. York has only one name because he was the slave of William Clark. He accompanied his lifelong owner in the Corps of Discovery (he didn’t have any say in it, by the way), as the band of men explored the Missouri River Basin, eventually making it to the Pacific Ocean. York can boast a whole host of firsts: the first African American to see the Pacific Ocean north of Mexico, the first to vote (he and Sacajawea are recorded as having cast votes at one point in the voyage over what course to take), and the first of his race that many Native Americans had ever seen. It is possible that many of his descendants might very well live in the upper Midwest and West to this day.
It also seems likely that York bailed out his white companions on more than one occasion; he was a master hunter, and on multiple instances he brought home more than his fair share of wild game to feed his less talented Corps of Discovery members. He also seemed to have been more talented in medicine, as he was at the side of the only man to die on the entire journey. I wish I could report there was a happy end to York’s story after he and his fellow explorers were greeted as heroes by the citizens of St. Louis after returning from the great journey, but his entreaties to Clark to be liberated and reunited with his wife fell on deaf ears. When York was finally manumitted, he was given a horse team and wagon and tried to operate a livery company. It failed, and he died of cholera soon after.
Dred and Harriet Scott, who everyone in this city claims to be familiar with—but really aren’t—are participants in what I describe as world history that happened in St. Louis. They worked in the laundry at the Barnum Hotel on the levee. Something that needs to be more well-known is that Harriet was also a plaintiff in the case, not just her husband, Dred. Their case? It was simple. Their master had taken them to a free state, and the argument was that they had been emancipated by being taken into a non-slave state or territory. It all began here, and ended at the Supreme Court. Dred Scott is buried in Calvary Cemetery, but his wife ended up in Greenwood Cemetery in Hillsdale, which has undergone a remarkable transformation due to the hard work of volunteers. Keep an eye out for the opportunity to help them clear more brush and trees in the future.
And finally, one of the most amazing women to have ever lived in St. Louis in the years before the Civil War in my opinion is Elizabeth Keckley. Like many slaves, she followed a circuitous route to St. Louis from Virginia, arrived in St. Louis in 1847, and lived in the city for 12 years. After establishing a reputation as one of the best dressmakers in St. Louis, she finally bought freedom for herself and her son for $1200, and married James Keckley. She left for the East Coast and Baltimore and established herself in the social circles of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, but her marriage soon ended, her husband not being what she had expected. But what came next was even more remarkable: Mary Todd Lincoln hired her to make her dresses while in the White House—in fact, several of the gowns captured for posterity by Matthew Brady are in fact Keckley’s creations. She even wrote a book about her life, available in its entirety online, entitled Behind the Scenes, including her time in the White House. And to think, those skills were learned right here in St. Louis.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at naffziger@gmail.com.
