Glamour and Innovation: Elizabeth Keckley
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About this Gallery
Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born enslaved in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. She is the child of an enslaved woman, Agnes Hobbs, and the plantation owner, Colonel Armistead Burwell. Keckley learned to sew from her mother, who often created garments for the Burwell family. Rather than allow her ageing mother to be rented out as a worker to other families for extra income, Keckley offered her services as a seamstress. It was shortly after that Keckley began creating dresses for high society families in St. Louis, Missouri. Keckley’s business was a success, and through her dressmaking skills and loans from wealthy society patrons, she was able to purchase freedom for herself and her son, George. Keckley’s reputation and skills for dressmaking put her on the radar of Mary Lincoln, who was a friend of one of Keckley’s patrons. During the spring of 1863, Keckley sewed between 15 – 16 dresses for Mrs. Lincoln, and the two developed a business partnership that eventually became a friendship. Towards the end of her life, Keckley published a memoir, Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House.
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Gallery Glamour and Innovation: Elizabeth Keckley
Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born enslaved in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. She is the child of an enslaved woman, Agnes Hobbs,...
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2022
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