Freedom's Frontier

Visitors to the Battle of Lexington State Historic Site in Lexington, Missouri, can explore battlefield remnants and the Anderson House, used as a field hospital during the Battle of Lexington in 1861.

The Anderson house is important not only for its role in the Battle of Lexington but also because it is a fine example of the large mansion houses that prosperous slave holding southerners were building in Missouri in the 1840s and 1850s.

It was once called “the largest and best arranged dwelling house west of St. Louis.” Today Oliver Anderson’s mansion is best known for the three bloody days in 1861 when it was a fiercely contested prize in a Civil War battle between the Union army and the Missouri State Guard.

Today it is restored and furnished in mid-19th century fashion, but it still displays damage from the shot and shell that hammered it during the Battle of Lexington. Union entrenchments can still be seen on the battlefield.