Elizabeth Keckley - Road To Freedom

Road To Freedom

Due to financial difficulties in the Garland family, they sold some slave children and "hired out" others, collecting the fees of their wages. Keckley and her mother remained with their mistress Anne Garland and her husband. Keckley's sewing helped support the family.

After many moves, in 1847 the Garlands moved to St. Louis, taking Aggie and Elizabeth with them. They cared for the children and did all the family sewing. Living and working for nearly twelve years in St. Louis enabled Keckley the chance to mingle with its large free black population. She also established connections with women in the white community which she drew on as a free dressmaker.

Keckley met her future husband, James, in St. Louis, but refused to marry him until she and her son were free. She asked Hugh Garland if he would free her and her son, but he refused. Persistent, she worked for two years to persuade him to free them. In 1852, Garland agreed to release them for the price of $1,200.

Keckley considered going to New York to try to "appeal to the benevolence of the people." According to Keckley, her patroness, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Le Bourgeois, said, "it would be a shame to allow you to go North to beg for what we should give you." With the help of her patrons, Keckley collected the money to buy her and her son's freedom, and was manumitted in November 1855. Keckley had promised to repay her patrons, and stayed in St. Louis until she had earned enough to do so.

Keckley worked hard in her business as well as personal life. Looking beyond life in St. Louis, she enrolled her son in the newly established Wilberforce University. She also made plans to leave St. Louis and James Keckley.

In early 1860 she and her son moved to Baltimore, Maryland. She intended to run classes for young "colored women" to teach her system of cutting and fitting dresses. She was not successful; after six weeks had hardly enough money to get to Washington, DC, which she thought might offer better chances for work." At the time, Maryland was passing many repressive laws against free blacks.