Charioteer of Main Street

"The creaking and jolting of the drays" lingered in Clara Rider Hayden's mind's-eye, as she wrote essay recollections of late-1800s, Cape Girardeau hometown memories. "The Roman citizen never stood his chariot with more grace than the negro driver stood his dray," wrote Hayden, naming three drivers as Jake, Will and Dennis. "People from inland towns would stand and stare after them as if they had been a relic out of the middle ages ... poised [standing] on their drays with such ease and assurance," greeting and conversing with folks along the street as they passed.

Dennis Jackson was drayman for the firm of J & S Albert, wholesale grocers and commission merchants, first at 212 N. Main St., and then 101 Water St. The French-born brothers, John and Sebastian, depended on dray drivers to move goods delivered by steamboat throughout outlying communities and return with locally produced goods for shipment to markets in New Orleans, Memphis and St. Louis. Profit or loss hinged on skilled, efficient, dependable draymen.

Born enslaved in Alexandria, Virginia, and relocated by his master to Kentucky when he was 20, Dennis was purchased by Jack Painter, who brought hi8m to Cape Girardeau about 1841. In 1857, Sebastian rented Dennis' labor from Painter. This relationship lasted many years, until Dennis decided to seek freedom during the disruptions of the Civil War. In Champaign, Illinois, Dennis was hired as a wood chopper. In February 1865, Dennis (age 35) was drafted into the Union Army at the Danville Draft Rendezvous. His service in the 118th and 22nd U. S. Colored Infantries took him far and wide: transported by steamboat to Quincy, Cairo, Louisville and New Orleans. Then, aboard what Dennis described as a "tug," he cruised the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida, and up the eastern seaboard to Alexandria (his birthplace), docking at Baltimore. Then, by "big ship," the regiment sailed south again, to what is now Brownsville, Texas, serving there until his February, 1866, discharge.

Dennis returned to Champaign after the war. But persuaded by a letter from Sebastian Albert, he returned, as a freedman, to Cape Girardeau as Albert's waged-employee -- a relationship which lasted for decades. In 1889, testifying for Dennis' military pension, Albert said, "I have implicit confidence in his honesty and truthfulness," [and Dennis is] "the strongest, heartiest, [most] honorable man ... handling more freight and goods than most any a man I ever saw."

Into his 80s, Dennis drove drays and tended mules for Albert's. Sebastian's son, Lee, recollected a conversation between Dennis and a veterinarian as they evaluated Albert's 19-year-old mule: "You know my bossman said to me just the other day, 'I'm thinking of putting Julie on the pasture and you on a pension so you can sit in your rocking chair and think of the many nice storekeepers you and that little mule delivered boat freight to.'" Dennis lived until 1902, a widower, father, grandfather and friend to many. A military headstone marks his grave at Fairmount Cemetery, Section C.