Early life and ancestry Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee was the only surviving child of
George Washington Parke Custis (the grandson of
Martha Washington and the step-grandson of
George Washington) and
Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, daughter of
William Fitzhugh and Ann Bolling Randolph Fitzhugh. Her godmother,
Mary Randolph, was the first person buried at Arlington Estate. She wrote a book on housekeeping and cooking. Lee's birth year is usually shown as 1808, but it recorded as 1807 in the Custis family Bible, her mother's papers, and is referred to in a letter her mother wrote in the autumn of 1807. She was born at
Annefield in
Clarke County, Virginia when her mother's coach stopped there during a journey. Lee was descended from several prominent southern colonial families, including those of Parke Custis, Fitzhugh, Dandrige,
Randolph, Rolfe, and Gerard. Through her paternal grandmother,
Eleanor Calvert, she descended from
Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, making her a descendant of
Charles II of England and Scotland. Through her mother,
Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, she was a descendant of
William Fitzhugh.
Marriage and later life Mary had known her third cousin Robert E. Lee since their childhood. Her mother and Robert Lee's mother were second cousins. Lee's father,
"Light-Horse Harry" Lee, a hero of the
American Revolutionary War, delivered the eulogy at George Washington's funeral. She married Robert E. Lee in 1831 at her parents' home, Arlington House. At the time, Robert E. Lee was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Engineers. Among Mary Lee's other suitors was
Sam Houston. Lee was a well educated woman, having learned both Latin and Greek. She enjoyed discussing politics with her father, and later with her husband. She kept current with the new literature. After her father's death, she edited and published his writings as
Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, by his Adopted Son George Washington Parke Custis, with a Memoir of this Author by his Daughter in 1859. Deeply religious, Lee attended
Episcopal services when there was one near the army post. From
Arlington, Virginia, the Lees attended
Christ Church in
Alexandria, which she and Robert had both attended in childhood. Lee taught her female slaves to read and write and was an advocate of eventual
emancipation. However, she did not work to support abolition or racial equality and did not free any of her slaves before the abolition of slavery in 1865. Lee and her daughters initially moved among the several family plantations. In May 1862, she was caught at her son Rooney's
White House plantation in
New Kent County behind the
Federal lines, as Union forces moved up the
York and the
Pamunkey rivers toward Richmond. The Union commander,
George B. McClellan, allowed her passage through the lines in order to take up residence in Richmond—the city which was also McClellan's campaign goal. Lee and her daughters settled at 707 East Franklin Street in
Richmond for a time. The family next moved to the plantation estate of the Cocke family at
Bremo Bluff, where they sought refuge until after the end of the war in November 1865. After the war, the Lees lived in
Powhatan County for a short time before moving to
Lexington. Robert E. Lee became president of the Washington College, later renamed
Washington and Lee University. Arlington House was seized by the United States federal government after the war to allow for the creation of
Arlington National Cemetery. Lee attempted to regain ownership of her family home by writing to "friends, relatives, newspaper editors, and politicians," to no avail. Similarly, she was never able to regain ownership of family heirlooms that had once belonged to George Washington. Mary Anna Custis Lee died at the age of 66 in 1873, surviving her husband by three years. She was buried next to him in the Lee family crypt at
University Chapel on the campus of
Washington and Lee University. ==Marriage and family==