Elizabeth Keckly, Marker G-115 - North Carolina Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

“I consider you my best living friend,” Mary Lincoln wrote to Elizabeth Keckly in 1867, and indeed theirs was a close, if tumultuous, relationship. Born into slavery, mulatto Elizabeth Keckly was Mary Lincoln’s dressmaker, confidante, and mainstay during the difficult years that the Lincolns occupied the White House and the early years of Mary’s widowhood.

But she was a fascinating woman in her own right, independent and already well-established as the dressmaker to the Washington elite when she was first hired by Mary Lincoln upon her arrival in the nation’s capital. Lizzy had bought her freedom in 1855 and come to Washington determined to make a life for herself as a free black, and she soon had Washington correspondents reporting that “stately carriages stand before her door, whose haughty owners sit before Lizzy docile as lambs while she tells them what to wear.”

Mary Lincoln had hired Lizzy in part because she was considered a “high society” seamstress and Mary, an outsider in Washington’s social circles, was desperate for social cachet. With her husband struggling to keep the nation together, Mary turned increasingly to her seamstress for companionship, support, and advice—and over the course of those trying years, Lizzy Keckly became her confidante and closest friend.

To record your own visit to this waymark, take and post your own photo of the waymark with your log. Logs must contain an original photo as proof of your visit, please.

Photos of your visit to the marker are required, but PLEASE, no old vacation photos taken just because it was there!

Comments about your visit, interesting nearby areas and any significant information you may have on this waymark are encouraged.

Most of all, enjoy the History that North Carolina has to offer! From the Mountains to the Ocean .. it's all here!