Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (February 1818 – May 1907)[1] was an African-American seamstress, activist, and writer who lived in Washington, D.C. She was the personal dressmaker and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln.
[9][10][a] He permitted Agnes to marry George Pleasant Hobbs, a literate enslaved man who lived and worked at a neighbor's house during Keckley's early childhood.
As an adult, Elizabeth Keckley noted "the most precious mementos of my existence are the faded old letters that he wrote, full of love, and always hoping that the future would bring brighter days.
[8] At the age of 14, in 1832, Keckley was sent "on generous loan" to live with and serve the eldest Burwell son Robert in Chesterfield County, Virginia, near Petersburg, when he married Margaret Anna Robertson.
[24] Keckley became an accomplished seamstress and, by working long hours, all of the money earned from her labor supported the 17-member Garland family,[20] who suffered significant financial reverses by that time.
[24] Keckley met her future husband James in St. Louis, but refused to marry him until she and her son were free, because she did not want to have another child born into slavery.
[20][b] Elizabeth "Lizzie" Le Bourgeois, her patron, took up a collection among her friends to loan to Keckley, who was then able to buy her and her son's freedom and was manumitted on November 15, 1855.
[8][32] She intended to teach young "colored women" her method of cutting and fitting dresses, but found that she would not be able to earn a sufficient living for herself and her son.
[33][34] Keckley planned to work as a seamstress in Washington, but she could not afford the required license for a free black to remain in the city for more than 10[35] or 30 days.
One of her patrons, a woman by the name of Miss Ringold, petitioned Mayor James G. Berret for a license for Keckley, which he granted to her free of charge.
[36] Ringold, a member of General John Mason's family from Virginia, also vouched that Keckley was a free woman, another requirement for residence.
[38] Keckley made clothing in a simplified style of Victorian fashion, which was sophisticated, with clean lines, and without a lot of ribbon or lace.
[39] There are few extant examples of Keckley's work, partly because people took material from existing dresses to create new ones, and also because there was no labeling or other means to definitively identify clothes as having been made by her.
There is a purple velvet gown that Lincoln wore to her husband's second inauguration that is held in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.
Although Keckley had much earlier purchased her own freedom in St. Louis, she was featured in a syndicated newspaper article about previously enslaved people who had made a success of their lives.
She acquired Mary Lincoln's dress from the second inauguration, the blood-spattered cloak and bonnet from the night of the assassination, as well as some of the President's personal items.
Essentially she "veiled" her own past but, using alternating chapters, contrasted her life with that of Mary Todd Lincoln and "unveiled" the former First Lady, as she noted her debts.
The book portrayed Lincoln as a "loving wife and mother and an ambitious, strong willed, and loyal first lady, while also revealing her to be high tempered, full of fear and anxiety, self-centered and often self-pitying".
[25] Advertisements labeled the book as a "literary thunderbolt" and the publisher, Carleton & Company, joined in by declaring it as a "great sensational disclosure".
Her relationship with Lincoln was ambiguous, as it drew both from her work as an employee and from the friendship they developed, which did not meet the rules of gentility and the social separation of races.
People felt as if Keckley, an African American and formerly enslaved person, had transgressed the boundaries that the middle class tried to maintain between public and private life.
[35] First read for background information about the Lincolns, the book is now primarily appreciated for the narrative of Keckley's life as an enslaved girl and woman.
[25][44] Keckley founded the Contraband Relief Association in August 1862, receiving donations from both Lincolns, as well as other white patrons and well-to-do free blacks.
[57] The organization changed its name in July 1864 to the Ladies' Freedmen and Soldier's Relief Association, to "reflect its expanded mission" after blacks started serving in the United States Colored Troops.
She said that formerly enslaved people were not going to find "flowery paths, days of perpetual sunshine, and bowers hanging with golden fruit" in Washington, D.C., but that "the road was rugged and full of thorns.
"[63] It affirmed in its first annual report that "every effort made by us to obtain funds to alleviate in any way the distresses of our afflicted brethren has been crowned with success.
[68] The entire community had recognized, valued, and thanked "the officers and the members of the Association for their kindness and attentive duties to the sick and wounded;" but it was overlooked in later histories.
[69] The association became lost to history, but it set the standards and showed the need for relief organizations to provide aid to the poor and displaced black community.
[70] After difficulties in establishing her son's racial identity, Keckley gained a pension as his survivor; it was $8 monthly and was later raised to $12 (equivalent to $306 in 2024) for the remainder of her life.
[72] In May 1907, Keckley died as a resident of the National Home, located on Euclid St. NW, in Washington, D.C.[77] She was interred at Columbian Harmony Cemetery.