Missouri Slave Market

[Robert Gray]

In this scratched 1852 daguerreotype, a group of white men stand in front of Lynch's Slave Market at 104 Locust Street in St. Louis, Missouri. Two men hold what appear to be ledgers; another man, at bottom right, holds a few wrapped packages and some rolled up papers. Bernard Lynch's slave-trading business had a slave pen—referred to by locals as the "Hotel de Lynch"—to incarcerate enslaved men, women, and children prior to their being sold. Busch Stadium, used by the professional baseball team St. Louis Cardinals, is on the site where the slave pen once stood.

Encyclopedia Virginia
Credit: Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis
Photographer: Thomas M. Easterly