A historic site in Hillsborough has changed its public-facing name.
As of Aug. 27, the Burwell School is now known as “The Elizabeth Keckley Center at the Burwell School.” The name is in honor of Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a nationally-renowned seamstress and writer who was enslaved at the site.
In a release from the newly-christened Elizabeth Keckley Center, site director Elizabeth Hays said the new name is intended to provide a title that better encapsulates the differing historical perspectives central to the Burwell School’s story.
“The goal is not to exchange one history for another, but to hold these histories together,” said Hays. “The Burwell School is the place. Elizabeth Keckley’s life gives that place a remarkable connection to the national story. Our responsibility is to tell the whole history — including where those stories inspire us, where they challenge us, and where they contradict one another.”
Elizabeth Keckley, 1861, dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln (Image via the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University).
At age 14, Keckley was brought to Hillsborough alongside Rev. Robert Burwell and his wife Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell, know to most as Anna Burwell. She moved into the family’s new home at 319 North Churton Street, where she lived from 1835 until 1841. She faced “brutal treatment and sexual abuse” during her time in Hillsborough, and was made to do “the work of ten” Mrs. Burwell.
Anna Burwell was the founder of the Burwell School alongside her husband. While it started with one local student, she would go on to teach more than 200 young women from 1837 until 1857. According to the Elizabeth Keckley Center’s website, a catalog likely written by Burwell herself defined the school’s mission as “to seek to cultivate in every pupil a sense of her responsibility for time and eternity,” through a philosophy of “not how much but how well.”
Anna Burwell (Image via burwellschool.org).
Keckley was eventually able to purchase her freedom before moving to Washington, D.C. and creating the dressmaking business that would put her in contact with then First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, for whom she became a close friend, confidant and dressmaker. Those experiences were the subject of her 1868 book “Behind the Scenes,” which told her story of slavery, freedom and her experiences with the Lincoln family.
The release said the name change is also aimed at getting new groups interested and involved with the site’s operation.
“The Commission sees opportunities to build relationships with scholars and universities, HBCUs, women’s-history organizations, Black history and genealogy networks, museums, and researchers studying Keckley’s life and work,” the release read. “The site’s existing interpretation of the house, academy, gardens, architecture, historic foodways, and history of dress and fashion will continue and grow alongside this expanded focus.”
The original brick classroom building of Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell’s school (Image via burwellschool.org).
And since the Historic Hillsborough Commission is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization which does not receive state or federal funds, Hays said she hopes the new name will make people not just interested in the Burwell School’s history, but also make them willing to help fund its future.
“This is both an act of preservation and an investment in the future,” she said. “Generations of people have worked to save the Burwell School. We now have the opportunity to build on that stewardship by making sure the remarkable history held within these walls reaches the audiences it deserves.”
Featured image via The Elizabeth Keckley Center at the Burwell School.
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