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REBEL GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE WAS MARRIED TO THE
GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER OF MARTHA WASHINGTON. |
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"Founding Father"
George Washington was sterile and had no children so he could not assume the crown of the new "Holy Roman" Empire States of America!
George Washington
(1731–1799)
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Martha—spouse
of George—was the widow of Daniel Parke Custis, and the mother of 5 children.
Martha Custis, aged 27, and George Washington, aged almost 27, married on January 6, 1759, at the White House plantation.
Martha
had no children by George because he was sterile. |
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George Washington as
Zeus, by Horatio Greenough.
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George claimed to be sterile from smallpox contacted during a visit to Barbados. However, his great-grandfather King Charles II almost died from smallpox, but he recovered, and fathered dozens of children!
Martha Washington
had 5 children by her former husband, Daniel Parke Custis. One of them, John
Parke "Jacky" Custis, married into the rich Maryland Calvert
clan.
The Calverts and the Carrolls
were the richest Catholics in the colonies. They were always screaming
about religious discrimination, but that did not stop them from amassing
a vast fortune.
General Andrew Jackson was the
Hero of the Battle of New Orleans. |
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Jacobite British
preparations for the Civil War began immediately after the Battle
of New Orleans.
Their base
in Canada was ideally suited for infiltrating the newborn Republic
with despicable spies!!
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The Battle of New Orleans on
January 8, 1815. |
George Washington
had his clothes and his custom made carriage imported from England. All during
the Revolution, his wife Martha received usury from a small fortune
in the Bank of England. Trading with the "enemy" was not considered
a crime back then!
John Parke Custis
(1754–1781). |
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Martha's
son "Jacky" married "Nelly" Calvert in 1774.
This
combined the Washington and Calvert fortunes, and made them one
of the richest families in Virginia.
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Eleanor Calvert
(1758–1811). |
John Park Custis died
shortly after the "surrender" of Lord Cornwallis during the Siege
of Yorktown in 1781. In 1783, Eleanor married Dr. David Stuart, an Alexandria
physician and a business associate of George Washington. Eleanor and David had
16 children.
George Washington Park
Custis
(1781–1857).
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George
Washington Park Custis was the grandson of Martha and the step-grandson
of George.
Many
of the rich Virginia slave-owning families were kissin' cousins
as they tried to keep the family fortune from falling into the
hands of outsiders. |
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Mary Lee Fitzhugh
(1788–1853).
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George and
Mary had 3 children who died in infancy. Their only surviving daughter, Mary
Anna Randolph Custis, married the arch-rebel Robert E. Lee.
Young Robert E. Lee
(1807–1870).
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Mary
Anna married Robert E. Lee on June 30, 1831.
The
wedding was held at the huge mansion on the Potomac known as Arlington
House.
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Mary Anna Custis Lee
(1808–1873).
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Mary was always quoting
the Bible to her husband and she conducted Sabbath-day classes for the
black slaves. Obviously, she overlooked the story of the Exodus from Egyptian
bondage!
General
Lee commanded the rebel army during the Civil War!!
On June 1,
1862, Jefferson Davis appointed West Point graduate Robert E. Lee commander
of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee had no real previous military experience,
but it was his family connections that secured him the appointment.
General Lee commanding
the rebel army.
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Lee
knew all about the upcoming assassination of President Lincoln
because he timed his surrender just a few days before the planned
assassination.
He was confident that it would succeed because Mary Lincoln was a zealous rebel.
Lee
never faced a court martial because his friends occupied
the White House after the assassination.
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Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.
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The only penalties
Robert and Mary suffered after the Civil War was the loss of Arlington House,
also known as the Custis-Lee Mansion. Arlington House was built by Mary's grandfather,
George Washington Park Custis, and contained all kinds of mementos of the life
of George Washington.
Union troops in
front of the Custis-Lee Mansion in 1864.
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Mary
Custis Lee did not believe the words of her Saviour that "it
is better to give than to receive."
She
fought a ferocious battle to reclaim Arlingon House and have
the soldiers disinterred.
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The Custis-Lee estate is now called Arlington National Cemetery. |
During the
Civil War, the vast grounds were turned into a cemetery for fallen Union soldiers.
Mary Custis Lee fought a ferocious battle to have the property returned to her.
In 1882, the Supreme Court ruled in her favor and the property was returned
to the Custis estate. Mary's son, Custis, promptly sold the property back to
the United States government:
Custis had
no interest in living in the middle of a cemetery and immediately sold the
estate to the United States Government for $150,000, half of what his mother
had thought it was worth a decade earlier. He gave his sisters Mary and Mildred
$7,000 each, the balance of the $10,000 legacies their Grandpa Custis had
left them. (Perry, Lady of Arlington, p. 342).
High treason really
paid off in this life for the Washington-Custis-Lee family.
Vital Links
References
Perry, John.
Lady of Arlington: The Life of Mrs. Robert E. Lee. Multnomah Publishers,
Inc., Sisters, Oregon.
Nagel, Paul
C. The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family.
Oxford University Press, New York, 1990.
Copyright
© 2016 by Patrick
Scrivener
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