Lee Family Digital Archive

Home | About | Documentary Legacy | Digital Legacy | Friends | FAQs

Richard Henry Lee
Click for larger view (opens new window)

Richard Henry Lee belonged to the famous Revolutionary generation of Virginia Lees that included brothers Thomas Ludwell, Francis Lightfoot, William, and Arthur.

Richard Henry Lee was born on 20 January 1732 at Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County, Virginia.

Richard Henry Lee’s parents were Thomas Lee, president of the Virginia Council of State and the builder of Stratford Hall, and his wife Hannah Harrison Ludwell (1701–1750), the daughter of Hannah Harrison and Philip Ludwell, Jr., of Green Spring. Perhaps the most wealthy and powerful individual in Virginia, Thomas Lee was the principal founder of the Ohio Company and the father of a Revolutionary dynasty that included not only Richard Henry but his brothers Arthur, Francis Lightfoot, and William Lee.

Not much is know about Richard Henry Lee’s early schooling other than that he was tutored along with brothers Thomas and Francis, and sister Alice by Alexander White, an Anglican In 1748 his father sent him to England, where he attended Wakefield Academy in Yorkshire. There he became fluent in Latin and Greek. His formal education ended at age 20, followed by a lengthy tour of northern Europe, and he returned to Virginia in 1753. Back at Stratford Hall he supplemented his education by studying law, government, history, and the classics.

Yes, Richard Henry Lee was severely wounded during a hunting accident in 1768. While hunting geese his gun exploded and took off the fingers of his left hand. His wound was cauterized with a white-hot iron and healed over a period of months. Subsequently, he wore a black silk cloth or glove to hide the scarred hand, which he used to great effect when giving public speeches. In addition, Lee suffered from gout and arthritis.

On 3 December 1757 Richard Henry Lee married Anne Aylett (d. 1768), a daughter of William and Anne Aylett of King William County, Virginia. Their children included Thomas (1758–1805), Ludwell (1760–1836), Mary (1764–1795), Hannah (1766–1801), and Marybelle (b. and d. 1768). Anne Aylett Lee of pluerisy in December 1768, at age thirty. In the spring or summer of 1769 Lee married widow Anne Gaskins Pinckard, with whom he had another seven children: Anne (1770–1804), Henrietta (Harriotte; 1773–1803), Sarah Caldwell (Sally; 1775–1837), Cassius (1779–1850), Francis Lightfoot (1782–1850), and two who died in infancy, born in 1784 and 1786.

Richard Henry Lee and his family lived at Stratford Hall until 1763 when they moved to Chantilly-on-the-Potomac, a three-and-a-half story house he had constructed on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River as it flowed into Currioman Bay. Situated on 500 acres of Lee lands adjacent to Stratford Hall, Chantilly was said to have a finer view of the Potomac River than the grander Stratford. At Chantilly Lee grew tobacco, corn, and wheat and raised livestock. Chantilly’s outbuildings included a kitchen, a barn, a dairy, a blacksmith shop, and various stables. A boat dock constructed at nearby creeks was christened Chantilly Landing.

Yes, as did most of his family. Richard Henry Lee inherited forty slaves at the death of father Thomas Lee in 1750. By his own death in 1794 that number had increased to sixty-three. Lee’s slaves consisted of laborers and house workers and a few skilled craftsmen. Lee opposed the slave system, however, and his first motion in the Virginia House of Burgesses, in 1758, was one protesting slavery and the slave trade.

Silas Deane
Click for larger view (opens new window)

Yes, his father Thomas Lee had been an original founder of the Ohio Company, and his shares had devolved to his children. In 1759 he became one of the founders of the town of Warrenton; the county seat of Faquier was situated on his lands. In 1763 Richard Henry Lee and four of his brother joined George Washington in organizing the Mississippi Adventure, a land company that hoped to secure a Royal grant of two and a half million acres along the Mississippi River. The Proclamation of 1763 squelched both the Ohio Company and the Mississippi Adventure, however.

Richard Henry Lee raised a volunteer militia company during the French and Indian War. He offered his company’s service to British General Edward Braddock in March 1755 but was turned down. He later served as captain of a volunteer company of light horse and as a colonel of the militia. Most of his early work in the House of Burgesses revolved around supplying the Virginia militia, and in 1779 and 1781 he took an active part in organizing the defense of the Potomac against British incursions.

Richard Henry Lee’s political career began in 1755 when he was appointed a justice of the peace in Westmoreland County. Three years later he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, and served in that body until its disbandment during the Revolutionary War. Afterwards he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1777, 1780, 1785.

Lee served in the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1779, 1784 to 1785, and in 1787. He served as president pro tempore during the Second Congress and as president of Congress from 1784 to 1785. He served in the United States Senate from 1789 to 1792.

Richard Henry Lee often found himself serving on important committees, some of which thrust him into the center of political controversary. In 1757 he joined forces with Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie in opposing the powerful speaker and treasurer of Virginia, John Robinson, who was misappropriating colonial funds to the advantage of his political cronies. Lee introduced the motion in the House of Burgesses to appoint a committee to inquire into the state of the treasury, leading to the separation of the two offices.

In 1764 Lee led Virginia resistance to the Declaratory Act and was the leading member of the special committee charged with drafting addresses to the king and the House of Lords protesting the Act.

The following year, 1765, Lee opposed the Stamp Act, and drafted the Westmoreland Articles of Association formed to oppose it.

Lee opposed the Townshend duties of 1767 that placed a tax on tea, and introduced a motion in the House of Burgesses calling for a petition to the king outlining the colonies’ grievances.

In 1768 Lee suggested that the American colonies organize committees of correspondence as a way of facilitating colonial communication and coordinating colonial resistance against Great Britain.

Lee wrote a report for the House of Burgesses on the subject of opening up navigation of the Potomac River to Fort Cumberland, Maryland, in 1769.

When the first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1774, Richard Henry Lee attended as one of the seven-man Virginia delegation. In congress he served on dozens of committees and earned a reputation as a fine orator and writer.

In 1776 Lee was appointed to the committee designated to draft a Declaration of Rights of the Colonies. Lee introduced the resulting bill, the Declaration of Independence, on 7 June 1776. The bill was adopted on 2 July and ratified on 4 July 1776.

At the same time that the declaration committee was considering its important work, Lee was with George Wythe drafting a new state constitution for Virginia. Immediately after the signing of the Declaration Lee departed for Virginia to lobby for their plan, and the Virginia Convention ultimately ratified a similar proposal.

The following year, Lee led the effort in Congress to recall and investigate the American commissioner in Paris, Silas Deane, entering a controversary that lasted for years.

That same year, Lee wrote the first national Thanksgiving Day proclamation, issued on 31 October 1777.

In 1777 and 1778 Lee was drawn into the controversary surrounding the so-called Conway Cabal, an effort to remove George Washington as commander of the Continental Army. Although Lee was a friend and avid supporter of Washington, Lee had to defend himself against charges that he was taking part in the plot when a series of forged letters was circulated purporting to show Lee’s involvement.

Richard Henry Lee was an antifederalist who tended to support the proposed Constitution, provided it could be amended before being voted upon. To that end he proposed amendments and supported the Bill of Rights, but he did not attend the Constitutional Convention. He did accept, however, the office of Senator under the new government, and in fact gained more votes than any other contender. In the Senate Lee guarded the antifederalist positions but was known as a moderate with whom one could compromise.

The above is a bare-boned outline Richard Henry Lee’s political career. He was an energetic and important member of every body that he served in, and his oratory skills earned him the title of Cicero of the American Revolution.

Richard Henry Lee died at Chantilly, his estate in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on 19 June 1794. The last two years of his life he was greatly enfeebled, and for the last six months of his life he mostly was confined to his home.

In the so-called Burnt House Field Graveyard at the Lee Family estate, Mount Pleasant, in Westmoreland County, along with his parents and grandparents, and between his two wives.

Richard Henry Lee has been the subject of several biographies. They include Oliver Chitwood’s Richard Henry Lee: Statesman of the Revolution (Morgantown, West Virginia, 1967), and more recently, J. Kent McGaughy’s Richard Henry Lee of Virginia: A Portrait of an American Revolutionary (Lanham, Maryland, 2004). Cazenove Gardner Lee, Jr.'s Lee Chronicle: Studies of the Early Generations of the Lees of Virginia (edited by Dorthy Mills Parker; New York, 1957) includes an extended treatment of Richard Henry Lee. John Carter Matthews’s Richard Henry Lee (edited by Edward M. Riley, Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission, 1976) is a good short overview of Richard Henry Lee’s life and political career. Earlier works include Richard Henry Lee’s Memoir of the Life of Richard Henry Lee (2 vols.; Philadelphia, 1825) and James Ballagh’s The Letters of Richard Henry Lee (2 vols.; New York, 1911–1914).

Unpublished scholarly work on Lee include Paul Chadwick Bowers, Jr., Richard Henry Lee and the Continental Congress: 1774–1779 (Ph.D. thesis, Duke University, 1965), and Mary Elizabeth Virginia, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia: A Biography (Ph.D. thesis, State Univesity of New York, Buffalo, 1992).