In 1836, Frank McWorter did the unthinkable. He platted a town. McWorter had spent his early life enslaved in Kentucky, but he saved money by mining saltpeter at night. He bought his wife's freedom first. Then his own. To buy another fourteen family members out of bondage, he needed cash, so he bought land in Pike County and laid out 144 lots on a grid. He called it New Philadelphia. It became the first town in the United States founded and officially registered by a Black man.
The town actually thrived for decades. Black and white children shared a classroom, while local merchants ran bustling blacksmith shops, dry goods stores, and a shoemaker's workshop. It was a busy, integrated hub in a deeply divided country. Then, the railroad killed it. In 1869, the Hannibal and Naples Railroad bypassed the town, laying tracks just moments to the north instead. Businesses packed up. By the 1920s, the town site had reverted entirely to open agricultural fields.
Walk the site today and you will see only grass and crops. But the soil holds secrets. Excavations revealed thousands of tiny clues, like brass thimbles, English ironstone plates, and slate pencils used by schoolkids. These fragments tell a story of daily survival and quiet defiance against a racist system. Congress finally made it a National Historical Park in 2022. A huge victory. It honors a former slave who used capitalism to purchase his family's liberty, one lot at a time.
