Longwood, later known as Hancock Place, was an estate in St. Louis County closely tied to Union Major General Winfield Scott Hancock through his wife Almira Russell Hancock and her family. In the 1820s, Jefferson Barracks was the largest military installation in the western United States, and many young officers stationed there married women from St. Louis, including Ulysses S. Grant and Julia Dent Grant; Hancock also married into a prominent local family when he wed Almira Russell on January 24, 1850, while serving as adjutant to the Sixth U.S. Infantry Regiment at Jefferson Barracks. Almira's parents, Samuel and Adeline Russell, acquired the property in 1855 and named it Longwood. When the Civil War began in 1861, Hancock was stationed in Los Angeles, then transferred to Washington, D.C., became a Union brigadier general in September 1861, and rose through commands at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and other battles. In July 1863, as a major general commanding the Second Army Corps of the Army of the Potomac, he and his corps bore the brunt of Pickett's Charge on the third day at Gettysburg, where he was seriously wounded and gained the nickname "Hancock the Superb" for helping repel the Confederate assault at the stone wall. His strongest connection to Longwood was that he recovered there from his Gettysburg wound, living there with Almira in the fall until December 1863 before returning to active duty in the Eastern theater. Hancock later became the Democratic Party nominee for president in 1880, lost to James Garfield by less than 10,000 popular votes, remained in the Army, and died in 1886 while commanding the Division of the Atlantic from headquarters on Governor Island, New York. Although the Hancocks never owned Longwood, its long association with the general led it to be called Hancock Place, a name that also gave rise to the local school district. The site also connects, through the Russell family, to the Dred and Harriet Scott freedom case: before the Russells established Longwood, the Scotts were hired out to them in 1846 by Irene Emerson, and Samuel Russell's testimony in the 1847 St. Louis Circuit Court trial became central to the initial verdict against the Scotts and to its reversal on appeal. The broader Scott v. Sanford case began in 1846, passed through Missouri and federal courts after alternating defeats and victories for the Scotts, and ended in the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court decision denying people of African descent the right even to sue for freedom, a ruling that intensified sectional conflict and hastened the coming of the Civil War.
