Our Favorite Victorian Photographs

[L Verge]

I cannot admit to having deeply researched photos of Elizabeth Keckly. Sandra Walia, the former research librarian at Surratt House is more of an authority on Elizabeth than I, and she is the one who urged us to mark her grave after Richard Smyth of this forum found her reburial records in New Harmony. From the 1950s on, everyone had thought that her remains were either lost or scattered in a mass grave when her first burial cemetery was sold to developers. Richard proved them wrong, and New Harmony was very helpful in pulling everything together for a re-marking of her grave.

That said, Sandra and I worked in tandem getting the project started and completed. I depended heavily on Sandra's knowledge of Mrs. Keckly, and this included opinions on which photographs were spurious and which ones were good possibilities. Sandra had a special qualification because she volunteered at Ford's Theatre for years and also portrayed Mrs. Keckly in a special, first-person presentation that the NPS produced as part of their special events.for a good number of years. She had done a great deal of research in order to portray accurate history.

When we started thinking about appropriate photos to use, the discussion turned to which ones were correct and which ones were not. Beginning with her birth year of 1818, we decided to concentrate on ones that appeared to show a woman in her 40s - basing that decision on the fact that she would have been at least 42 when she was employed by Mrs. Lincoln. We also added a few years, suspecting that she was not in a financial or social position to have a formal photo taken much before 1863 - if then. She had also lost her son in the Union army early in the war, so she would have been in mourning for at least one year. Note that her son passed for white in order to enlist before colored troops were admitted into the service. Mourning would surely have stopped her from being photographed for one or two years at least.

The photo that Ford's chose to display shows a woman in typical dress of the mid-1860s with skirt fullness tending to be more in the back than earlier. European fashions (which Elizabeth should have been privy too) led American fashions by several years, and the wide hoops all-round were already going out of fashion there. The experts' photos also showed her in much more fashionable and decorative garb, something to be expected in an extremely talented designer and seamstress. Ford's Elizabeth's dress is just basic "stuff."

The Ford's photo also shows a face with extremely full cheekbones set in a rounder and smaller face than the ones Lincoln experts were pointing to. The experts pointed to a woman of greater stature, elongated facial structure, and an authoritative poise about her - a woman who had fought hard for everything that she gained.

I can't quote you chapter and verse or cite indisputable sources. Instinct and common deductions seemed to point us on the path we chose as to which Lizzie to show on the reburial program's cover.