Although they were never reunited, Agnes and George corresponded for many years. When Hobbs' owner moved far away, Hobbs was separated from Agnes. 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. The nature of the relationship between Agnes and Burwell is unknown. Keckley learned that her father was Armistead Burwell from her mother just before she died. She made clothes for 82 people: 12 members of the Burwell family and the 70 people they enslaved. Her mother, nicknamed "Aggy", was a " house slave" who had learned to read and write even though it was illegal for enslaved people. She was the only child of her mother Agnes, a light-skinned Black woman whose white ancestors were members of the planter class.
Ladies' Freedmen and Soldier's Relief AssociationĮlizabeth Keckley (occasionally spelt "Keckly") was born into slavery in February 1818, in Dinwiddie County Court House, Dinwiddie, Virginia, just south of Petersburg.It was both a slave narrative and a portrait of the first family, especially Mary Todd Lincoln, and it was controversial because of information it disclosed about the Lincolns' private lives. Lee.Īfter the American Civil War, Keckley wrote and published an autobiography, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, in 1868. Her clients were the wives of elite politicians, including Varina Davis, the wife of Jefferson Davis, and Mary Anna Custis Lee, the wife of Robert E. She established a dressmaking business that grew to include a staff of 20 seamstresses. In November 1855, she purchased her and her son's freedom in St. The money that she made helped to support the Garland family of seventeen family members. When she became a seamstress, the Garland family found that it was financially advantageous to have her make clothes for others.
She received brutal treatment from Burwell's family members and a family friend. She became a nursemaid to an infant when she was four years old. She was best known as the personal dressmaker and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln.īorn into slavery, she was owned by her father, Armistead Burwell, and later his daughter who was her half-sister, Anne Burwell Garland. Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (February 1818 – May 1907) was an American seamstress, activist, and writer who lived in Washington, D.C.
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