Historical interpretive essay by Ray Breun, December 1981. Original terminology, historical figures and causal claims are preserved as the author’s account and require independent verification before factual reuse.
The notion of slavery, indentured lives or mortgaged children is so foreign to present day people as to be without understanding.
A grab-bag of emotions surfaces when discussing the history of the African races in the Western Hemisphere which makes much of that, discussion cloudy.
The simplest way to learn about that African ethnic groups is to keep individual people in focus—people who can represent what otherwise is a purposefully overlooked group. Cyprian Clamorgan, grandson of the famous Jacques Clamorgan, wrote a marvelous and gossipy little book called The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis in 1858.
The offspring of old Jacques, a French fur trader and judge, were also descendants of three black women who had been his slaves.
He fathered four children by these three women, bought or arranged for their freedom, and saw to their education as best he could. Other less famous fur traders, such as Jean Baptiste Aillotte, also had children by black women.
By the time Cyprian wrote his book, there were many tales to be told about this rather rich and successful group of St. Louis citizens. Individuals like Louis Rutgers and his wife, Pelagie, come readily to mind if only because Rutgers Street in Lafayette Square is named for them Since that is where their mansion stood.
All of these people had their freedom and managed to build fortunes in addition. Pelagie Aillotte and Louis Rutgers joined not only their own fortunes but also those of the Clamorgans since Pelagie’s first husband, St. Eutrope Clamorgan, had died [damaged word in source] a tidy sum to his widow which she joined to the most desirable young mulatto in St. Louis. Like the French before them, the “colored aristocracy” represented a closely knit circle.
All the river cities along the Ohio and Mississippi had large free black populations along side their slave populations.
When owners of land moved to the city, they were often termed “slave poor.” Their field hands could not be kept profitably busy but still had to be taken care of, and this often meant the slaves were leased to others for their work. Peter Blow brought his family to St. Louis after his third plantation went into a combine in Mississippi. Among his slaves was Dred Scott, and Blow leased his men to a number of St. Louis residents. Scott, of course, is best known as the person in the center of the Dred Scott case which is sometimes called the start of the Civil War. Peter Blow is remembered as the grandfather of Susan Blow, the woman who started the first public school kindergarten in the United States.
One of Scott’s attorneys during the 11-year process was Roswell Field, the father of Eugene Field whose house is now a museum on South Broadway.
Another attorney was Montgomery Blair, son of Francis Blair, whose house in Washington, D.C., is the famous Blair House.
The other Blair house is on Benton Place in Lafayette Square, for as it happens the Blairs came from St. Louis and only went to Washington to work for Lincoln.
In the mid-nineteenth century, a horticulturist named Charles Elleards settled in the northwest suburbs of St. Louis, then extending only to Grand Avenue. First called Elleardsville, the little village that grew up along the Rock Road became part of St. Louis in 1876. Due to restrictive covenants in many other areas of the city, Elleardsville became a predominantly black neighborhood known as The Ville. Bounded by Taylor Avenue, St. Louis Avenue, Sarah Street and King Drive, The Ville is the cultural center of the older black community.
When Sumner High School moved to The Ville in 1910, it brought the major intellectual center of the blacks of St. Louis to its residential center. Sumner was the first high school for black students west of the Mississippi.
It was originally established at Eleventh and Spruce Streets in 1875.
It moved to Fifteenth and Walnut Streets in 1895 and to its present location in 1910. Homer G. Phillips Hospital is the other major institution of The Ville. Construction for it had been started in 1932 and it took six years to finish. Phillips, a lawyer, had been a major force in city politics and secured the bond issue for the hospital in 1922—ten years before construction started. Phillips never saw the hospital however because he was shot to death in 1931.
With the removal of restrictive covenants after World War II, the black population left its central area in The Ville and moved throughout the city and county.
Many say waning support for Phillips Hospital among blacks is due to the movement of the population away from The Ville. Several groups and institutions, notably the University of Missouri at St. Louis, have begun to document and preserve the history of blacks in St. Louis.
Originally published in The Paper, December 1981.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Historical dates, genealogies, hospital chronology and causal interpretations are the author’s1981account and require independent verification before factual reuse. Original racial terminology is preserved and attributed.
Original source: SD_Times1981_12.pdf, printed page(s) 7; PDF page(s) 7.
