Ramsey County History – Winter 2016: “The Slaveholders of Payne-Phalen”

The Slaveholders of Payne-Phalen
Author: Christopher P. Lehman

The year 2016 is the 160th anniversary of the purchase of the eastern part of St. Paul’s Payne-Phalen neighborhood by three southerners from Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Two of them—William Sprigg Hall and Harwood Iglehart—owned slaves in Maryland, and the latter kept one there while residing in St. Paul. The third buyer—Charles N. MacKubin—did not own slaves, but he pushed for slavery’s legalization in Minnesota during his term as a state senator in the late 1850s. The Payne-Phalen neighborhood of today, therefore, partly owes its existence to wealth derived from the ownership of African Americans.
PDF of Lehman article