Mary and the African American church

[Steve]

I found these documents that describes Gabriel and Mary Coakley's family when he applied for compensation for the emancipation of his family. Gabriel had bought his wife as a slave and it seems that he didn't emancipate them for legal protection.

http://civilwardc.org/texts/petitions/cww.00332.html

Gabriel's description of Mary is more of a housewife than a professional seamstress, but then again the petition is 2 years prior to the church celebration on the White House lawn.

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This book has an in-depth description of what happened:

https://books.google.com/books?id=CeUrc-...pg=PA3&dq=

According to the book, while Gabriel Coakley's story and documents about the picnic first appeared in print in 1883, the part about Mary Coakley being a seamstress for Mary Lincoln didn't appear until an oral history interview with Coakley descendants in 1974. That along with the similarity in names of Keckley and Coakley leading to possible confusion would seem to me a good reason to try and see if any contemporary sources back that part of the story up.