page_title: Elizabeth Keckley
section_title: Adulthood
hierarchical_section_title: Elizabeth Keckley / Slavery / Adulthood
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Hugh Alfred Garland, from Livingston, John. Portraits of Eminent Americans Now Living: With Biographical And Historical Memoirs of Their Lives And Actions. New York: Cornish, Lamport &amp; Co., 1853-54.
context_page_description: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was a former slave who became a successful seamstress, civil activist, and author in Washington, DC. She was best known as the personal modiste and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady.
  As an enslaved woman, she was owned by her father, Armistead Burwell, and later his daughter who was her half-sister, Anne Burwell Garland. She became a nursemaid to an infant when she was four years old. She received brutal treatment—including being raped and whipped to the point of bleeding welts—from Burwell's family members and a family friend. When she became a seamstress, the Garland family found that it was financially advantageous to have her make clothes for others. The money that she made helped to support the Garland family of seventeen family members.
  In November 1855, she purchased her and her son's freedom in St. Louis, Missouri. Keckley moved to Washington, D.C. in 1860. She established a dressmaking business that grew to include a staff of 20 seamstresses. Her clients were the wives of elite politicians, including Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis, and Mary Anna Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee.
context_section_description: She was returned to Virginia where she served Mary and Armistead Burwell's daughter, Ann Burwell Garland and her husband, Hugh A. Garland. (She was Ann's half-sister.) The Garlands moved several times and ended up in St. Louis, Missouri in 1847. Aggy, Elizabeth, and George were brought with them for their child care and sewing skills. Keckley became an accomplished seamstress and, by working long hours, all of the money earned from her labor supported the seventeen-member Garland family, who suffered significant financial reverses by that time. Nearly 12 years of living and working in St. Louis gave Keckley the chance to mingle with its large free black population. She also established connections with women in the white community, which she later drew on as a free dressmaker.
caption: Hugh Alfred Garland (1805 – 1854)
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