By: Shaivya Singh
Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born in 1818 as the child of a forced relationship between her enslaved mother, Agnes, and her mother’s owner, Colonel Burwell. Although Elizabeth’s father was white, she was treated as a slave like her mother. She worked as a slave for the Burwell family, and was forced to learn how to care for a newborn baby at the tender age of four. Her owners punished her and the other slaves for minor mistakes, beating her for errors, leaving her scarred throughout her childhood.
At fourteen, her owner sent her to live with his eldest son who was equally as cruel. When the son eventually sent her to work for a white neighbor, Elizabeth, like her mother, became pregnant with her new owner’s child, giving birth to a son named George in 1839.
In 1847, Elizabeth, George, and Agnes moved to St. Louis, Missouri with their new owners. Out of fear of her mother working at such an old age, Elizabeth convinced her owners to let her find another way of making money for the family.
One of the skills Elizabeth learned from her mother was sewing. Elizabeth soon began using this skill to make dresses for wealthy white women and free black women. It did not take long for her to earn a reputation as one of the best dressmakers in the city and was soon taking orders from St. Louis’s wealthiest women. She used the money she earned to support her owner’s family of eighteen people.
In the early 1850s, Elizabeth asked her owners what it would cost to buy her freedom. In 1852, they set a price of $1,200, which would be about $40,000 today. Elizabeth was fortunate to have many of her loyal clientele loan her the $1200 she needed to buy her freedom. She worked as a dressmaker in St. Louis for the next five years in order to pay back every person who loaned her money and then moved to Washington, D.C.
the first lady’s seamstress
With the help of her St. Louis network and connections of wealthy and powerful clients, Elizabeth quickly built a reputation in Washington, D.C. One of her clients introduced her to a senator’s wife who eventually hired her as a personal stylist and dressmaker. During her time there, she met the wives of some of the most powerful and wealthy men in the country. When the Lincoln family entered the White House, another one of Elizabeth’s clients recommended her to the First Lady who was very impressed with her work. Keckley was hired by the First Lady to design most of Mary Lincoln’s gowns during her time in the White House. The dress Ms. Lincoln wore at the second inauguration is now on display at the Smithsonian.
With the First Lady’s support, Elizabeth’s business thrived. She was able to open her own dress shop and hired twenty assistants to help her with her work. Elizabeth used her success to start a charity that helped recently freed people begin a new life.
Elizabeth Keckley is best known as one of the most talented seamstresses of her time, a good friend of Mary Lincoln, and one of few, if not the first, female African American entrepreneur(s) of the time.
Shaivya Singh, at the time of this post, is a third-year law student at Penn State Dickinson Law. She is from Hillsborough, New Jersey and is a graduate of Rutgers University. Shaivya is the current Recruitment Chair of Dickinson Law’s Moot Court Board and a LexisNexis Representative. Upon graduation, Shaivya will be working for an insurance defense litigation firm in Harrisburg.
Sources
https://wams.nyhistory.org/a-nation-divided/reconstruction/elizabeth-keckley/
https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/elizabeth-keckley-businesswoman-and-philanthropist
http://scrc.blogs.wm.edu/2014/11/24/from-slavery-to-freedom-via-entrepreneurship/
