John Berry Meachum

John Berry Meachum was born on May 3, 1789, in Goochland County, Virginia. His owner, who Meachum described as a kind man, allowed the young man to be hired out to work at a saltpeter cave. According to Wonning, Paul and Susannah Mitchem were an elderly couple when they chose to move to Indiana in 1814 with about 100 enslaved people. Meachum traveled with them. Most of the former slaves settled around the town of Corydon in Harrison County. When Meachum returned to Kentucky, he learned that his wife's owners had taken her and their children to St. Louis, Missouri. He made a good living in the city as a cooper. ==John==

Minister In St. Louis, Meachum met white Baptist missionaries John Mason Peck and James Welch who established the Sabbath School for Negroes in 1817. Meachum began preaching and assisting the missionaries in 1821. By that time, there were 220 congregants, 200 of whom were slaves, who required the permission of their owners to attend church. Classes were held secretly in the basement of the church. This allowed Meachum to resume his educational practices to people of color, free and enslaved, eluding limitations of the then established Southern state laws. Among Meachum's students was James Milton Turner, who was at the school when Meachum was arrested. He was the consul to Liberia under President Ulysses S. Grant. By 1835, Meachum was worth $25,000 (). He built a riverboat with a library and operated it as a temperance boat. ==Life with Mary==

Meachum married Mary, who was born about 1805 in Kentucky. They had two children, John and William. In 1840, his household consisted of 10 free colored people and six slaves. In 1850, they had eight black people living with them, two of whom were boatsmen. He owned two riverboats and operated a barrel-making factory, which was staffed by escaped slaves, Nearly every person that the Meachum's freed paid them back, which provided the money to free others. He punctuated his arguments with Biblical references like Proverbs 22:6: "Train up a child the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it." The Missouri Republican reported on July 19, 1855, that Mary was tried by a jury and acquitted of at least one charge, and the remaining charges were dropped. The Colored Ladies Soldiers' Aid Society Mary Meachum was president of the Colored Ladies Soldiers' Aid Society in St. Louis. Because Black people were not allowed to ride streetcars at that time, the women negotiated with the streetcar company to ride the streetcar one day a week, on Saturdays, to allow the members of the ladies' aid society to visit wounded soldiers at the segregated wing of the Hospital at Benton Barracks in St. Louis. Death Meachum died in his pulpit on February 26, 1854. He is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis. She is memorialized with her husband in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis. ==Legacy==

• The Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing, part of the National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, was dedicated, Nov 1, 2001, in a special ceremony on the Riverfront Trail. Since then, it has hosted the annual Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing Celebration, an event which includes re-enactments of Mary Meachum's river crossing and arrest. The site is located just north of the Merchants Bridge in St. Louis. • The John Berry Meachum Scholarship was established at the Saint Louis University to recognize Meachum's work as a minister, founder of the oldest black church in Missouri, educator, and businessman. The scholarship is awarded to medical students at the university. • The Meachum School of Haymanot is a theological school named after John Berry and Mary Meachum. ==Notes==