Visiting Robert E. Lee Sites in Northern Virginia

I just finished reading a biography of Robert E. Lee, so on my recent trip to Washington, D.C., I had to check out some Lee-related sites. Arlington is most closely associated with Lee, but the general spent much of his adolescence within the District of Columbia in Alexandria. Of course, Alexandria belongs to Virginia now (it was retroceded from the District to the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1847), but Lee’s boyhood home still stands on Oronoco Street in Old Town.

Robert Lee and his family moved to Alexandria from his birthplace at Stratford Hall in 1811, after his father— Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee—experienced financial trouble. Shortly after the family settled into their townhouse on Oronoco Street, Light Horse Harry left for the West Indies, never to return to his family. It was here in Alexandria that Lee grew up fatherless.

It was also in Alexandria that Lee likely first met his wife, Mary Anna Randolph Custis. Robert Lee and Mary Custis shared many of the same relatives (Lee’s mother and Custis’s mother were second cousins) and shared the same social circles in antebellum Alexandria. The couple courted and married in 1831 at the Custis estate, Arlington—located five miles north along the Potomac River from Lee’s boyhood home.

Arlington belonged to Mary’s father, George Washington Parke Custis, and not to Robert E. Lee. In fact, Lee never legally owned the estate despite its everlasting connection to him in the public zeitgeist. When George Washington Parke Custis died in 1857, he willed Arlington to Mary. In the event of her death, the mansion was to be passed to Custis Lee, the couple’s oldest son. Not only did Custis effectively cut his son-in-law out of his will, but he also entrusted Lee with the thankless job of executing it.

Nonetheless, Arlington represents an important place in the life of the future Confederate general. Lee resided at the estate with his wife, children, and in-laws in between his postings with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It’s also where Lee returned after his fateful meeting with Francis Preston Blair in April 1861 and where he later made the series of decisions that led to his resignation from the U.S. Army and pledging his service to the Confederacy.

Back in Alexandria, the belfry of Christ Church towers over the surrounding town. This is where Lee worshiped during both his childhood and adulthood, and the church where his father had belonged before his disappearance to the West Indies. Although Lee attended services alongside his family, he was not confirmed in the Episcopal Church until he turned 46. Decades before Lee, George Washington regularly attended Christ Church. The pews of both families (the Washingtons and the Lees) are marked today.

Lee’s shadow looms large over Northern Virginia, from Alexandria to Arlington. From his boyhood home to his wife’s beloved Arlington to his storied place of worship, the southern banks of the Potomac are rich with the history of the Confederacy’s greatest general.