Photograph by Thomas M. Easterly, 1852, Missouri History Museum
Lynch's Slave Pens
The legacy of slavery in St. Louis has recently come back into the news with word that state representatives Rasheen Aldridge and Trish Gunby have written to the St. Louis Cardinals, requesting the commemoration of Lynch’s Slave Pens, which were located in the area of the current Busch Stadium. Reached via email, Gunby told me:
“After touring Rep. Rasheen Aldridge's 78th District last summer, I realized Busch Stadium was in it and together we talked about what I had learned and how we could build on the racial justice work he's done in the St. Louis region. Those conversations culminated with our press release asking the Cardinals to erect a monument.”
Bernard M. Lynch built those pens—where enslaved people were either kept before sale or after capture—and operated them in at least two locations in St. Louis. He also ran a fugitive slave capture operation at the same time. When the Union Army seized St. Louis in the opening chapter of the Civil War, he fled south, disappearing from history.
Recently, the enslaved people owned by Henry Shaw, the founder of the Missouri Botanical Garden and Tower Grove Park, have received renewed attention. A receipt actually shows Lynch held two of Shaw’s escaped slaves, Sarah and Esther, at 100 Locust. They were both sold to Henry Fondren of Vicksburg, Mississippi, for $350.
Despite the attention Lynch’s Slave Pens near Busch Stadium has been garnering lately, for the majority of his career in St. Louis, his business was located at 100 Locust, where he also lived. Due to a different street numbering system before the Civil War, the slave pens were located between Fourth and Broadway, on the same block as the Federal Reserve is today. The infamous photograph of a group of men lounging out front of Lynch’s business was taken at this location. This is also where the Reverend Galusha Anderson—whose famous recounting of the horrid conditions of the slave pens in his book The Story of a Border City During the Civil War—visited with several ministers from the East Coast in 1859. While some sources claim the slave trader had moved out in the late 1850s, Kennedy’s City Directory from 1860 still lists Lynch’s Slave Pens as located at 100 Locust in that year.
Lynch took out an advertisement in the pro-slavery Daily Missouri Republican on July 19, 1861, announcing the opening of his new slave pens:
“B.M. Lynch—Has removed to his large, airy, new quarters. No. 57 South Fifth street [modern-day Broadway], corner of Myrtle [modern-day Clark]. He will pay the highest price known to the trade for all descriptions of negroes suited to the Southern markets. Will also board and sell on commission. Thankful for past favors he solicits a continuance of public patronage. Negroes on hand and for sale at all times.”
He did not have much time to use his new slave pens; the Camp Jackson Affair, which resulted in the Union Army’s securing of St. Louis and its arsenal had already occurred in May—only two months before. One must question Lynch’s business acumen and his obvious inability to see which way the political and military winds were blowing in the city. According to the Daily Missouri Republican, Lynch’s Slave Pens had been seized by September 2, 1861, and renamed the Myrtle Street Prison. It served as a prison before another Confederate sympathizer’s property, the McDowell Medical College, was seized for the confinement of disloyal citizens. Twenty-seven men had already been imprisoned by the Union Army shortly after the former’s inauguration. McDowell, which became the Gratiot Street Prison then became so crowded they reopened the Myrtle Street Prison, packing in 150 inmates.
The Liberator newspaper of Boston printed a report from St. Louis on February 28, 1862, stating that the city was quickly becoming pro-Union and abolitionist. The Union Army presence had made those formerly in the slave trade persona non grata “and not a few slaveholders have been confined in the very dungeons built to keep slaves.” As I’ve written about before, Galusha Anderson had found a certain Biblical justice in the tables being turned on the former slave masters and their allies being held in the same cells as their former slaves.
The buildings were largely forgotten until 1963, when a Post-Dispatch article covered the demolition of the Meyers Drug Store at Fourth and Elm streets (Elm was between Clark and Walnut). The owners showed the reporter rooms in the basement of their store, which was being razed for the construction of the new Busch Stadium, or we should say, the Stadium East Garage, as the Meyers Brothers Drugs buildings stretched across the entire north side of Clark Street between Fourth Street and Broadway. That is across the street from the stadium, but still very much in the heart of the Cardinals’ baseball orbit.
Compton and Dry's Pictorial St. Louis, 1876, Library of Congress
The intersection of 5th and Myrtle streets, what is now Broadway and Clark
The 1870 Whipple Fire Insurance Maps show a rapidly changing city that had moved on from the trials of the Civil War. I suspect the building aboveground holding slave pens was demolished and replaced with new buildings shortly after the war due to their overuse and retrofitting as a detention facility making them unusable—and also to hide that ugly chapter from St. Louis history. However, the underground structures survived intact as the basement of the new buildings. The Compton and Dry’s Pictorial St. Louis—published in 1876 but capturing the city in 1875—shows two large new buildings on the west side of the corner, and two smaller buildings on the east side of the intersection. The northeast corner, which would eventually be demolished for the Meyer Brothers Drug warehouse, does seem to be the location of the old Lynch’s Slave Pens, though some scholars still question the exact location.
Regardless, the act of commemorating the human suffering in Lynch’s Slave Pens that occurred at the intersection of Broadway and Clark Street is necessary. The first location of Lynch’s business also deserves recognition and commemoration. It also turns out, as Nicholas Hoffman writes, there was already a plaque at the Clark and Broadway location that was lost and destroyed. The simple act of placing two pieces of bronze, detailing what terrible acts once occurred in these twin places is surely an easy way to begin to atone for the past. The words of Aldridge and Gunby summarize it best:
“We believe this acknowledgement will start healing those divisions, bring our history to light for many and spark conversations that need to occur.”
