Mary Custis Lee
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Mary Custis Lee | |
|---|---|
 Lee in 1914 | |
| Born | July 12, 1835 |
| Died | November 22, 1918 (aged 83) Hot Springs, Virginia, U.S. |
| Resting place | University Chapel |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | Lee family |
Mary Custis Lee (July 12, 1835 – November 22, 1918) was an American heiress and the eldest daughter of Confederate States Army General Robert E. Lee and Mary Anna Custis Lee. Throughout the American Civil War and Reconstruction era, she remained distant from her family. Spending much of her time traveling, she did not attend the funerals for her sisters nor those for her parents. Somewhat eccentric, she used her inheritance from the sale of Arlington House to fund trips abroad. She spent time in the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Russia, Monaco, Ottoman Empire, Ceylon, the Dutch East Indies, Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, Australia, China, India, Japan, Mexico, and Venezuela. During her travels, she used her social status as the daughter of Robert E. Lee to obtain audiences with foreign royalty, nobility, and political leaders including Queen Victoria, Pope Leo XIII, and an Indian maharaja.
In 1902, while in Alexandria, Virginia, she was arrested for refusing to sit in the whites-only section of a segregated streetcar, opting instead to sit with her black maid. Her arrest was controversial, and used by some as a symbol for desegregation, although historians debate what her intentions were for refusing to change seats. Afterward, she left for France, where she lived until the outbreak of World War I.
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Lee was born on July 12, 1835, the second child and first daughter of Robert E. Lee and Mary Anna Custis Lee, at Arlington Plantation in Arlington County, Virginia.[1][2] She was named after her mother.[3][4] She was one of seven children, and was the sister of George Washington Custis Lee, William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, Anne Carter Lee, Eleanor Agnes Lee, Robert E. Lee Jr., and Mildred Childe Lee.[5] A member of the prominent Lee family of Virginia, she descended from American colonist Richard Lee I. Through her mother, Lee was a descendant of Martha Washington through her first marriage to Daniel Parke Custis, and also descended from Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore and Charles II of England.[6]
As an infant, Lee was nicknamed "Mee" by her father, and was later called "Daughter" by her family after she turned thirteen.[1][2] Her childhood bedroom at Arlington had been used by Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette when he visited the home in 1824.[1] When she was five years old, her parents and brothers moved to St. Louis, and Lee stayed behind at Arlington with her grandparents, George Washington Parke Custis and Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis.[1][4] She did not spend much time at home in her youth, instead traveling to visit family friends and extended family members.[1]
