Education | Preservation | Stewardship

In winning the women’s tennis singles title at Paris 1900, Charlotte Cooper became the first female athlete to win Olympic gold in an individual event. A record breaker Charlotte Cooper was one of the great women’s tennis champions of the late 19th-century, a time when the ladies’ game was played in long dresses. A member of the Ealing Lawn Tennis Club, Cooper won her first Wimbledon singles title in 1895, aged 25, and would go on to repeat the feat on four further occasions.

Elizabeth Keckley was a well-known modiste or dressmaker, a confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, a philanthropist, and an author. She was born a slave in Dinwiddie Court-House, Virginia around 1818. In 1855, Keckley purchased her and her son’s freedom for $1,200 by using the seamstress skills that her mother had taught her and by gaining the support of her well-connected clients. In 1860, Keckley moved to Washington D.C. Although she was required to have a license from the mayor