Black Civil War veteran and freedom seeker to be honored with Missouri park
Benjamin Oglesby and his family lived on the site following the end of slavery
A new park named after Benjamin Oglesby, a former enslaved person and war veteran will open this summer in St. Charles County in Missouri. The honor is a testament to the resilience of a man born into bondage but who eventually became a landowner.
“As St. Charles County continues to expand westward, this park is in an ideal location,” County Executive Steve Ehlmann told the St. Louis American. “The park will offer shelters, natural surface and paved trails, and a playground when it opens this summer.”
He also noted, “It will be a fitting tribute to the Oglesby family name and the history of St. Charles County.”
According to the St. Charles County website, Oglesby was born into slavery in Bedford, Virginia, in 1825. His enslaver, Marshall Bird, brought him to Missouri when he was 12-years-old and the young boy worked on a farm for the next 27 years. He had a wife and children along the way.
Oglesby escaped from slavery and fled the farm in 1864, at the age of 39, to enlist in the Union Army. He served until the end of the Civil War in 1865, receiving an honorable discharge.
By 1871, Oglesby purchased a 146-acre farm financed with a Deed of Property and paid off the $2,000 debt in six years, according to the county website. The act of a Black man owning property was significant at the time. A report by the USDA noted the obstacles recently freed people faced.
“For more than a century after the Civil War, deficient civil rights and various economic and social barriers were applied to maintaining a system where many blacks worked as farm operators with a limited and often total lack of opportunity to achieve ownership and operating independence,” the report said.
Oglesby farmed the land for 30 years. His wife died in 1900, and he passed away a year later.
The property was in his family through the mid-1900s. St. Louis County purchased the land in December 2021 for $6 million to maintain green space in a rapidly growing area.
“When I read about Benjamin’s story, he kept fighting. He wanted to do something, not just for him, but for family,” Barbara Love, his great-great-granddaughter, told KMOV-TV.
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