"John-Berry-Meachum" (1790?-1854)

Craftsman,minister,and businessman,was born a slave in Virginia.The names of his daddy, a Baptist preacher,and his mama are unknown.A skilled carpenter and cooper,John was allowed  to save some of  earnings,and eventually he bought his freedom. Moving to Louisville,Kentucky,he married a slave, Mary,and then purchased her out of bondage; they had an unknown number of children.About 1815 he and Mary to St.Louis, reportedly with only three daughters in his pocket. There John used his carprntry skills to find a job as a cooper.He established his own cooper's shop a few years later and began buying St.Louis real estate.

During the 1830s,in order to help fellow African Americans become free,John started buying slaves,training them in barrel making and letting them earn money to pay him back for their liberity.By 1846 he had emancipated "twenty colored friends that I brought."Except for one,who was an alcoholic,they all were successful, as John boasts in An Address to All Colored Citizens of the United States (1846). In fact,one former slave not only acquired his own freedom, he purchased his wife, built a home for his family, and became a highly proficient blacksmith.John's Address does not include all of the facts.In 1834 Julia Logan petitioned the Circuit Court of St.Louis,claiming that she was entitled to her freedom that she was being "held as a slave by Berry Meachum a man of color in Saint Louis and [was]  bound and imprisioned in his house." Julia feared that she would soon be sold " ton some distant place." In 1836 the case went to the Missouri Supreme Court,which ruled against John.

By 1850 he owned two brick homes in St.Louis and an Illinois farm. According to the census that year,his eight thousand dollars in real estate holdings made him the third-richest free African American in Missouri.John conducted himself  modestly,even with his sizable wealth.An 1854 inventory  of John's estate listed a few basic chairs, carpet worth seven dollars, and about forty books,valued eight dollars.The 1850 census  showed twelve people living in his house,including his wife,their two grandchildren,various other adults and children,and two African American coopers who appeared to be working to reimburse John for their liberty.

John also organized and maintained two schools for African American youth,one even after a state law had been passed that prohibited the teaching of African American children.When the Englishman whom he hired to teach at the school was arrested,John got him out of jail and later reopened the school secretly on one of the steamboats that he built and owned.

As the of a Baptist preacher,John followed his daddy's lead.He joined the St.Louis Mission Church about 1816 and became its pastor about 1828,when it became an independent African American church,called the First African Baptist Church.By the late 1830s his congregation included two hundred slaves and twenty free African Americans. John's style as a preacher was so energetic and energetic and enthusiastic that in 1846 a small group led by John R.Anderson, a former slave describeded as "quiet" with " reserved power," left the church. Even the name of John's steamboat-Temperance-reflected his concerns as a minister and as a leader in his community .

John left a a lasying impact on St.Louis.His school educated hundreds of free African Americans and slaves including James Milton Turner who after the Civil War would found Lincoln Institute,the first schhol  of higher education for African Americans in Missouri.The work of John and Mary on the Underground Railroad is now commemorated at the Mary Meachum Crossing in St.Louis,where the two led slaves across the the Mississippi River to freedom in Illinois.The First African Church.(now the First Baptist Church) continues to operate in St.Louis.John died at his pulpit.