Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley: Dressmaker

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, born February, 1818. From indentured slave to dressmaker and confidante of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, Elizabeth Keckley led an extraordinary life.

The spring of 1861 was a turning point in the life of Elizabeth Keckley, a 43 -year -old African American former slave who had arrived in Washington D.C. only a year earlier. In that short time, she had started a dressmaking business aimed at serving the elite and famous and it had taken off. Jefferson Davis had just become President of the Confederacy and Robert E. Lee would eventually become the General of the Confederate Army. As the country teetered on the brink of civil war, Varina Davis and Mary Randolph Lee became two of Keckley’s most devoted client while their husbands debated the fate of the Union.

That spring, Mrs. Lee’s dress, created by Keckley, was the talk of a glamorous party. Based on the positive buzz, Keckley’s business boomed and she had to turn away clients, including a last-minute request by one of her best patrons, Margaret McClean, who refused to take no for an answer.

Mrs. McClean told Keckley that First Lady Mary Lincoln was looking for a dressmaker. “I often heard you say that you would like to work for the ladies of the White House. Well, I have it in my power to obtain you this privilege. I know Mrs. Lincoln well, and you shall make a dress for her provided you finish mine in time to wear at dinner on Sunday.”

Keckley knew this was an opportunity of a lifetime and she agreed, quickly hiring assistants to help complete the dress for Mrs. McClean in time for the Sunday dinner. And so on Tuesday, March 5, 1861, the day after Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Keckley arrived at the White House. She found herself with three other dressmakers waiting to be interviewed by Mrs. Lincoln. Discouraged, Keckley later wrote in her book, “I regarded my chances for success as extremely doubtful.” But the new First Lady was very familiar with Keckley’s reputation and talent. She was only concerned about the cost. “I cannot afford to be extravagant,” Lincoln said. “We are just from the West and are poor. If you do not charge too much, I shall be able to give you all my work.”

After agreeing on the fees, Lincoln first asked her to alter a silk moire rose-colored gown to wear to the Inaugural parties. She loved the gown and hired Keckley on the spot. Elizabeth Keckley walked into the White House as a seamstress and walked out a “modiste” (the French term for dressmaker and stylist) to the FLOTUS - a coup no one could have imagined given her race and status at such a tumultuous moment in history.

Keckley learned how to sew from her mother, Agnes. She began mending and then making clothes for family members of her slaveowners. Her mother was a maid on a Virginia plantation and her father was the plantation owner, although he was never officially acknowledged as her father until her mother was on her deathbed. Despite being a half sibling to her father’s children, she was treated as a slave, loaned or given away to work for other members of their extended family. She endured long hours of hard manual labor, physical beatings, and abuse. As a young woman, she was raped and gave birth to a son, George Kirkland. Because she was so well liked, her slaveowner father allowed her to learn to read and write.

In 1847, the family she was working for had fallen on hard times so Keckley was allowed take in sewing to help make ends meet. It wasn’t long before she was taking orders for dresses from the “best ladies in St. Louis.” As a slave, she was not allowed to keep any of the money, but the income was enough to support all seventeen members of her slaveowner’s family. Eight years later, Keckley wanted to buy her freedom. Her most devoted patrons loaned her $1,200, so she could pay for her freedom and her son’s freedom at last. An emancipated Keckley opened her own dressmaking business in St. Louis to begin paying off her debt. By 1860, free of debt, she enrolled her son at college in Ohio and headed East in search of a better life.

In 1861, with Mrs. Lincoln now her star customer, Keckley’s shop on Twelfth Street expanded to twenty seamstresses. The first year Keckley worked for Mary Lincoln, she created fifteen new dresses, changing Lincoln’s entire look. A Keckley dress was known for its beautiful fit and drape, with simple lines and occasional tastefully placed trim and ribbons. Her dresses were a sophisticated departure from the florals and bright colors that Lincoln had been wearing for years. Because labels were not sewed into clothes at the time and clothes were often taken apart and re-purposed into new designs, there are few examples of Keckley’s work today. The purple gown Mrs. Lincoln wore to her husband’s second inaugural is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. A black and white buffalo plaid dress with a cape is at the Chicago History Museum. There is a Matthew Brady photo of Mary Lincoln wearing a Keckley creation.

Helping Lincoln dress for special events and parties, Keckley spent a lot of time at the White House and gradually became a close friend of the First Lady. Two women who could have not been more different bonded. Not only were they the same age, but both would lose sons fighting in the Civil War. After President Lincoln’s assassination, Keckley spent six weeks in the White House, helping the First Lady while she was grieving.

Mary Lincoln left Washington depressed and heavily in debt, despite her original comment to Keckley about needing to be frugal. Keckley helped her stage an auction of her jewelry and clothing, but the sale was seen as an embarrassment to her husband and failed to generate much income. Two years later, Keckley wrote a memoir, Behind the Scenes or: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. It included recollections of private conversations between the President and First Lady, including copies of Mary Lincoln’s letters to Keckley. Intended to provide a sympathetic picture of Lincoln, it had the opposite effect. Critics were scandalized that an African American woman would write a tell-all book about life in the White House. Mary Lincoln called it a “betrayal” of their friendship and the two never spoke again. Keckley’s business also was never the same again, when she lost some of her clients after the book was published.

Keckley became the head of the Department at Sewing at Wilburforce College in Ohio in her later years. She lived her final years at the National Home for Destitute Women and Children in Washington, D.C. where she died of a stroke in 1907.

©2023 Alice Look
Co-founder, Remarkable Women Project.org
Executive Producer, Remarkable Women Project