Scott, William C.

Born: 1803-XX-XX Pennsylvania

Died: 1873-09-27 Saint Louis, Missouri

Flourished: Saint Louis, Missouri

William C. Scott was a businessman, hotel proprietor, and commission merchant in St. Louis, Missouri. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Scott operated the Scott's Hotel, a historic hotel where Abraham Lincoln and his family stayed in 1846 when Lincoln was on his way to take his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1850, he was living and working in the Third Ward; in addition to his hotel, Scott owned five enslaved people. In the mid 1850s, he became a partner in Scott & Brother, a commission merchant house. In 1860, he was living in the Fifth Ward and had a personal estate of $1,000.

Death Notice, The Missouri Republican (St. Louis), 29 September 1873, 5:4; Stacy Pratt McDermott, Mary Lincoln: Southern Girl, Northern Woman (New York: Routledge, 2015), 65; Green's St. Louis Directory, for 1847 (St. Louis: James Green, 1847), 168; Green's St. Louis Directory, for 1851 (St. Louis: Charles & Hammond, 1850), 312; The St. Louis Directory, for the Years 1854-5 (St. Louis: Chambers & Knapp, 1854), 173, 223; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward 3, St. Louis, MO, 283; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Slave Schedules, Ward 3, St. Louis, MO, 577; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 5, St. Louis, MO, 199; Gravestone, Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, MO.