Lynch's slave pen

[2] The facility was located at the corner of Fifth and Myrtle Streets in Saint Louis, which placed it in the same area as many of the city's commercial enterprises and governmental buildings.

After moving to Saint Louis, Lynch amassed wealth from his involvement in multiple enterprises related to the domestic slave trade in the United States.

[4] The slave schedule from the 1860 census also recorded that Lynch owned three enslaved people: a thirty-five-year-old woman, a sixteen-year-old girl, and a nine-year-old boy.

In his interactions with Henry Shaw, the founder of the Missouri Botanical Garden, Lynch served in all three of his vocations: slave jailer, trader, and catcher.

[8] After Lynch purchased the building at Fifth and Myrtle Streets, he installed bars on the windows in addition to other security measures like locks so that he could use it as another one of his slave pens.

[10] One extant document pertaining to the conditions inside of the slave pen from the time of its existence is a list of rules that Lynch wrote.

[7] Another account describing the conditions in the slave pens is found in "The Story of a Border City During the Civil War", a book written by theologian Galusha Anderson.

"[12] Anderson also reported on a sale of a boy that he witnessed at the slave pen shortly after he visited with his colleagues from the Young Men's Christian Association.

[13] During the American Civil War, the U.S. Army, empowered by the Confiscation Act of 1861, took over the building that once held Lynch's slave pen.

[14][15] The Young Men's Division of the Chamber of Commerce installed the first recorded public commemoration of Lynch's slave pen and the Myrtle Street Prison.

The marker meant to signal the site where Lynch's slave pen once existed was shaped like a shield and featured black text on a white background.

[18][19] When construction began on Busch Stadium, some historians and other scholars expressed concern about the lack of investigation and commemoration of the slave pen at the site.

"[20] Some historians argue that the persistent lack of acknowledgment of the slave pen at the site is "leaving a wound in the commemoration and recognition of injustices that built the city and continue to shape it.