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Mary Anna Randolph Custis

Mary Anna Randolph Custis[1]

Female 1808 - 1873  (65 years)

Personal Information    |    Media    |    Sources    |    All    |    PDF

  • Name Mary Anna Randolph Custis 
    Born 1 Oct 1808  Arlington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Gender Female 
    Died 5 Nov 1873  Lexington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Buried Lee Chapel Museum Lexington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location  [2
    Person ID I19166  My Reynolds Line
    Last Modified 19 Jun 2021 

    Father George Washington Parke Custis,   b. 30 Apr 1781, Colonial Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 10 Oct 1857, Alexandria County, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 76 years) 
    Mother Molly, Mary Lee Fitzhugh,   b. 22 Apr 1788, Chatham Manor, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 23 Apr 1853, Arlington County, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 65 years) 
    Married 1804  Arlington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Family ID F8736  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family Robert Edward Lee,   b. 19 Jan 1807, WestMoreland County, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 12 Oct 1870, Lexington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 63 years) 
    Married 30 Jun 1831 
    Children 
     1. George Washington Custis Lee,   b. 16 Sep 1832, Fort Monroe, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 18 Feb 1913, Annandale, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 80 years)
     2. Mary Custis Lee,   b. 12 Jul 1835, Arlington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 22 Nov 1918, Hot Springs, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 83 years)
     3. General 'Rooney' William Henry Fitzhugh Lee,   b. 31 May 1837, Arlington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 15 Oct 1891, Ravensworth, Fairfax County, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 54 years)
     4. Anne Carter "Annie" Lee,   b. 18 Jun 1839, Arlington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 20 Oct 1862, Warrenton, North Carolina Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 23 years)
     5. Eleanor Agnes Lee,   b. 27 Feb 1841, Arlington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 15 Oct 1873, Lexington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 32 years)
    +6. Robert Edward Lee, Jr.,   b. 27 Oct 1843, Arlington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 19 Oct 1914, Upperville, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 70 years)
     7. 'Precious Life' Mildred Childe Lee,   b. 10 Feb 1845, Arlington, Virginia Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 27 Mar 1905, New Orleans, Louisiana Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 60 years)
    Last Modified 10 Sep 2021 
    Family ID F7115  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Photos
    Photo Mary Lee (nee Custis)
    Photo Mary Lee (nee Custis)
    p19166MaryLee(neeCustis).jpg
    Mary Anna Randolph CUSTIS
    Mary Anna Randolph CUSTIS
    p19166MaryAnnaRandolphCUSTIS.jpg
    Maria Carter Syphax (nee Custis)
    Maria Carter Syphax (nee Custis)
    pmariaCarterSyphax(neeCustis).jpg

    Documents
    Mary Custis Lee-Obit
    Mary Custis Lee-Obit
    Staunton Spectator
    Nov 11, 1873
    General Robert E Lee-Obit
    General Robert E Lee-Obit
    Staunton Spectator
    Oct 18, 1870
    Anne Carter Lee-Death Notice
    Anne Carter Lee-Death Notice
    Fayetteville Semi Weekly Observer
    Oct 30, 1862
    General Robert E Lee-Funeral Services
    General Robert E Lee-Funeral Services
    The Baltimore Sun
    Oct 15, 1870
    George Washington Custis Lee-Obit
    George Washington Custis Lee-Obit
    Evening Star
    Feb 18, 1913
    George Washington Custis Lee-Obit
    George Washington Custis Lee-Obit
    The Baltimore Sun
    Feb 19, 1913
    Mary Custis Lee-Obit
    Mary Custis Lee-Obit
    Evening Star
    Nov 18, 1918
    Eleanor Agnes Lee-Death Notice
    Eleanor Agnes Lee-Death Notice
    Staunton Spectator and Vindicator
    Oct 21, 1873
    Eleanor Agnes Lee-Funeral Services
    Eleanor Agnes Lee-Funeral Services
    The Times Picayune
    Oct 28, 1873
    Mildred Childe Lee-Obit
    Mildred Childe Lee-Obit
    The Times Dispatch
    Mar 28, 1905
    Obituary for Maria Carter Custis Syphax
    Obituary for Maria Carter Custis Syphax
    obitMariaCarterCustisSyphax.jpg

    Histories
    General Robert E Lee-Bio
    General Robert E Lee-Bio
    The Star Press
    Jul 29, 1928
    General Robert E Lee-Biography
    General Robert E Lee-Biography
    The Troy (ALA) Messenger
    Dec 8, 1887
    General Robert E Lee-Biography Con't
    General Robert E Lee-Biography Con't
    The Troy(ALA) Messenger
    Dec 8, 1887

  • Sources 
    1. [S100] Internet Source, https://www.nps.gov/arho/learn/historyculture/mary-lee.htm.
      Mary Anna Randolph Custis was born on October 1, 1807. She was the only surviving child of George Washington Parke Custis and Mary Fitzhugh Custis. Growing up, Mary?s personal maid was her enslaved older half-sister, Maria Carter Syphax, who was the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis and an enslaved woman named Ariana Carter. It is not known if Mary knew of or ever acknowledged the familial relationship she shared with Maria.

      Mary Custis Lee grew up pampered by her parents and steeped in the lore of her Washington ancestry. She was well-educated and frequently discussed politics with both her father and husband. She also kept abreast of new literature and learned both Greek and Latin. An artist like her father, she painted delicate landscapes that are still on view at Arlington House. Like her mother, Mary loved roses and gardening. Enslaved laborers grew 11 varieties of roses in the flower garden at Arlington House, and as a young girl Mary selected the second-floor bedroom which overlooked the garden. Mary later shared this bedroom with her husband Robert.

      On June 30, 1831, Mary married Lt. Robert Lee of the U.S. Army Engineers. The ceremony took place in the family parlor at Arlington House. Mary left her beloved Arlington to move into officers? quarters at Lee?s first assignment after their marriage at Fort Monroe, but she did not adjust well to the life of an officer?s wife. She returned to Arlington House shortly after the birth of their first child. From then on, Mary frequently chose life at Arlington with her parents and her children over living wherever her husband was stationed. The Lees? next six children were all born at Arlington House in the small dressing room adjoining the Lee?s bedroom, and the couple made Arlington their home for the next thirty years.

      Closely following her mother's example, Mary Lee was a devout Episcopalian. Mary followed the Custis family tradition of holding family prayers every morning after breakfast and each evening in the family parlor. The Custises and Lees usually attended Christ Church in Alexandria, but when they were unable to make the journey they would attend services at the Arlington Chapel alongside the people enslaved at Arlington. In part due to their religious beliefs, the Custis and Lee women held Sunday School lessons for enslaved children after church. Three generations of Custis and Lee women taught reading and writing to children enslaved at Arlington, in part with an eye towards gradual emancipation, but primarily to assuage their religious concerns about Arlington?s enslaved community: the women wanted to ensure that people enslaved at Arlington would be able to read the Bible. The Sunday School and reading lessons took place on Sundays, the only day of rest people enslaved at Arlington had.

      Again following the example of her mother, Mary Lee and her daughters taught enslaved workers at Arlington to read and write. Mary and her parents were supporters of the American Colonization Society, which advocated the idea of gradual emancipation for enslaved people by teaching them a trade and how to read before paying for their eventual passage to Liberia. Mary Lee, like her parents and other members of the Virginia planter class, professed to abhor slavery while daily benefitting from it. She supported gradual emancipation through the American Colonization Society but did not support the abolition of slavery or racial equality. Even after the Civil War, Mary wrote letters to friends and relatives complaining about ?ungrateful? former enslaved workers at Arlington who freed themselves after the arrival of the U.S. Army to Arlington and professed a desire to see all freedmen and women forced to move out of the south?either to the north or to Africa, ?as it is hard that we at the South who have already done so much for them than their labor has ever repayed [sic] should be tormented with them for the rest of our lives?"

      Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee later in life

      During her adulthood, Mary developed severe rheumatoid arthritis and became increasingly debilitated as she grew older. To help with the pain, Mary and her family visited many spas and springs that were reputed to improve health. In letters to her husband, she tried to downplay her illness, but it took its toll as the years passed. By the 1850s, Mary organized her daily routine so that she navigated the stairs only twice each day, spending most of her waking hours in the Morning Room. An enslaved person carried her downstairs every morning and back upstairs at night. Walking became increasingly difficult for Mary and by the end of the Civil War, she was primarily confined to a wheelchair.

      In April 1861, Robert E. Lee resigned from the U.S. Army and traveled to Richmond to take command of Virginia?s military forces. After his departure, Lee wrote letters to Mary urging her to pack up and leave Arlington. He recognized the strategic importance of the home?s hilltop location overlooking the nation?s capital and was concerned for Mary?s safety. Mary delayed for weeks until she finally relented. She ordered the enslaved workers to pack up the family?s belongings and many of the ?Washington Treasury? heirlooms from Mount Vernon. The rest of the family valuables were locked away in closets, the attic, and the cellar. Mary left Arlington on May 15, 1861 to join her daughters at Ravensworth, a nearby home owned by Custis relatives. Upon their departure, Mary left the keys to the house and the responsibility of caring for the family heirlooms in the hands of enslaved housekeeper Selina Gray. Arlington?s enslaved workers were left behind and expected to continue working as usual. Mary Lee anticipated her return home would be within a few weeks, but it would be more than a decade before she saw Arlington again.

      Mary and her daughters lived a nomadic life during the Civil War, moving from house to house of friends and relatives throughout Virginia before settling in Richmond. The Lee women supported the Confederate war effort by knitting socks and gloves and sewing shirts for Confederate soldiers, as well as visiting wounded soldiers in Richmond hospitals.

      After the Civil War, the Lees moved to Lexington, Virginia, where Robert E. Lee became the president of Washington College, later named Washington & Lee University. While Robert had given up on ever returning to Arlington, Mary seethed at the loss of her home. She wrote angry, pleading letters to friends, relatives, newspaper editors, and politicians to complain of the loss of Arlington and the creation of Arlington Cemetery. Many items from the Washington Treasury had gone on display at the Patent Office in Washington, D.C. due to their connection to George Washington, and Mary bitterly attempted to have these items returned to her. She even wrote to formerly enslaved workers such as Selina Gray, attempting to locate specific pieces of furniture.

      Mary never got over losing Arlington. She carried her resentment against the United States Government for the rest of her life. Additionally, Mary and Robert Lee were both angered by the process of postwar Reconstruction, including new laws enfranchising African American men and federal money spent on the education of freed men and women.

      Mary Lee returned to Arlington only once, in 1873, just a few months before her death. Unable to get out of the carriage, a formerly enslaved person brought her a drink of water from the well. ?I rode out to my dear old home but so changed it seemed but a dream of the past?I could not have realised [sic] it was Arlington but for the few old oaks they had spared & the trees planted by the Genl and myself which are raising their tall branches to the Heaven which seems to smile on the desecration around them.?

      Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee died on November 5, 1873, at the age of 66. She is buried next to her husband on the Washington & Lee campus in Lexington, Virginia.

      George Washington Parke Custis
      George Washington Parke Custis stands at the left next to his adopted father, George Washington.
      National Gallery of Art
      Born in 1781, George Washington Parke Custis was the grandson of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington through her first marriage. After his natural father, John Parke Custis, died in 1781, G.W.P. Custis went to live at Mount Vernon where George and Martha Washington raised him as their own son. During his childhood, Custis became very attached to his stepfather, George Washington. In 1802, Custis started the construction of Arlington House on land that he had inherited from his natural father. When completed in 1818, he intended the house to serve as not only a home but also a memorial to his stepfather, George Washington. In 1804, Custis married Mary Lee Fitzhugh. The two had four children, but only one, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, survived.

    2. [S32] Find-A-Grave.com, https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7416695.
      Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee
      Birth 1 Oct 1808, Arlington County, Virginia
      Death 5 Nov 1873 (aged 65), Alexandria, Virginia
      Burial: Lee Chapel Museum, Lexington, Virginia

    3. [S100] Internet Source.
      158 YEARS AGO - Gettysburg Campaign

      Lee and Longstreet bivouac outside Berryville, Virginia - June 18-19, 1863

      Part of the Army of Northern Virginia marched north toward Winchester, while Lt. Gen. James Longstreet?s corps camped here with Lee. On June 13, a Union force under Col. Andrew T. McReynolds had evacuated Berryville and marched to Winchester to join Maj. Gen. Richard S. Milroy?s division there. Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell?s corps attacked and defeated Milroy in the Second Battle of Winchester on June 13-15, thereby clearing the northern Shenandoah Valley in Virginia of Federal forces.

    4. [S89] Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/Historyofthesouth.pd814/photos/a.1404511263118649/3063369510566141/.
      Southern Historical Society
      Poster based in the United Kingdom
      · 2d ·
      "I have met with many of the great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed me with the feeling that I was in the presence of a man who was cast in a grander mold, and made of metal different and finer, than that of other men. I believe that all will admit that Lee towers far above all men on either side of that struggle. I believe Lee will be regarded as not only the most prominent figure of the Confederacy, but as the greatest American of the 19th century whose statue is well worthy to stand upon an equal pedestal with that of Washington, and whose memory is equally worthy to be enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen."

      ?Lord Garnet Wolseley
      (Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of Great Britain)

    5. [S257] Bassett Historical Center , Joan Frith on Facebook.
      Robert E Lee was married to George Washington's granddaughter. He worked with Grant during the Mexican-American war and became a decorated war hero defending this country. He believed slavery was a great evil and his wife broke the law by teaching slaves to read and write. After the civil war, he worked with Andrew Johnson's program of reconstruction. He became very popular with the northern states and the Barracks at West Point were named in his honor in 1962. He was a great man who served this country his entire life in some form or other. His memorial is now being called a blight. No American military veteran should be treated as such. People keep yelling, "You can't change history." Sadly you can. This is no better than book burnings. ISIS tried rewriting history by destroying historical artifacts. Is that really who we want to emulate? As they tear down this "blight," keep these few historical facts in your mind. No military veteran and highly decorated war hero should ever be treated as such. This is not Iraq and that is not a statue of Sadam.
      IN ADDITION: Lee was also very torn about the prospect of the South leaving the Union. His wife's grandfather, George Washington, was a huge influence on him. He believed that ultimately, states' rights trumped the federal government and chose to lead the Southern army. His estate, Arlington, near Washington DC, was his home and while away fighting the war, the federal government demanded that Lee himself pay his taxes in person. He sent his wife but the money was not accepted from a woman. When he could not pay the taxes, the government began burying dead Union soldiers on his land. The government is still burying people there today. It is now called Arlington National Cemetery . DO THEY WANT TO TEAR THAT UP ALSO??

    6. [S89] Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=4294689593980846&set=a.347883275328184.
      As our state officials continue to show their ignorance of history:
      From my friend Teresa Roane, a tireless researcher and historian.
      Thank you.

      I watched and listened to the arrogance of ignorance about the Lee memorial today. It made me so sad.
      "Those People" have no clue about who Robert E. Lee was. They do not know that when he graduated from West Point, Lee is the only cadet to complete the Academy with no demerits, a record which still stands to this day. They don't know that he was a brilliant Engineer and that he changed the course of the Mississippi River to save St. Louis. They don't know that he was Superintendent of West Point. They don't know that Lee was asked to be in charge of the U.S. Army between March and April of 1861. They don't know that he signed a document on December 29, 1862 that freed the slaves at Arlington, Romancoke and White House plantations. It had force of law unlike the Emancipation Proclamation which freed not one slave. They don't know that his army was ethnically diverse. They don't know that he told his soldiers to go home and be good citizens after the war. They don't know that he saved a small college in Lexington, Virginia when he accepted the position as President. They don't know that Lee was admired by People from the North and South. They don't know that President Gerald Ford signed the document that gave Lee back his citizenship. They don't know that the reason why only the name Lee appears on the memorial was because everyone knew him. They don't know that People of Color actually attended the unveiling of the memorial. For decades historians have lied and said that only White people were in attendance.
      They don't know that military schools around the world studied Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.