Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

A quick warning before we begin. If you're listening with children, you might want to listen to this episode by yourself first.

While we're not explicit, exactly we do feature some mature subjects. We will leave you to decide for yourselves just wanted to give you a heads up.

Secondly, as Mrs. Keckley's story intertwines in the latter years, especially with that of Mary Lincoln's, you might get more out of this episode by listening to our episodes on Mary Todd Lincoln before going ahead with this one.

That's episodes 69 and 70. We'll give you a link. And now on with the show.

And here's your 30-second summary.

In 1818, one stayed apart. Two women gave birth to daughters. Although Mary Todd and Elizabeth Keckley were born under very different circumstances, their lives were converged at a big white house in Washington many years later.

T.M.

Elizabeth Hobbes was born in the month of February 1818, the daughter of an enslaved woman named Aggie Hobbes and her owner, Armistead Burl, in Dinwitty County, Virginia.

Yes, already in that first sentence we encounter some uncomfortable truths. Here's another.

Mama herself was a mixed race and had likely been the product of another such union. Now, willing or not consent or not with such power in one of the hands, there could never really be consent. That is another dark layer of the peculiar institution of slavery that we're going to unfortunately have to get into a little bit later also.

Mama, known to the family as Manny Aggie, had the responsibility of being the nanny for Armistead and his wife Mary's ultimately 11 children.

She was certainly beloved by the children of the family and she was considered one of the family's most valuable slaves.

Doesn't that make you feel kind of skivey to think about like she's the most valuable one.

Well, she kept everybody dressed, you know, in the family and every slave she made all their clothes as well as doing her daily work.

Her sister Charlotte was Mrs. Burl's, I guess you call it ladies made, but you're right. Manny Aggie made all the rest of everyone else's clothes.

Her father of record was a George pleasant hogs who was also a slave but was owned by somebody down the street.

They didn't live in the same house.

This marriage, because it was a marriage, but it wasn't illegal when I mean like paperwork wise, it didn't hold the owners to do or not do anything at all.

And the very fact that the Burls allowed what was called an abroad marriage for Manny Aggie was considered pretty lenient of them because it would divide your servant that word again, your servants loyalties against you to have ties to another house, I guess, but I think it was really true love.

Oh, I agree totally George and Aggie could both write and read so there were letters between the two of them he gushed over Lizzie very, very rare they could both read and write still illegal, but yeah both of them were literate.

No, I will tell you it's probably self-serving on the rural part because if you could have the Nanny teach the littles their letters that goes firmly into the one less thing department, so I imagine it was a little self-serving.

...