Anne Carter Lee

Anne Carter Lee (June 18, 1839 – October 20, 1862) was the fourth child and second daughter of General Robert E. Lee and Mary Anna Custis Lee. She grew up at Arlington House on her family's plantation. During the American Civil War, she stayed with relatives at Ravensworth Plantation and White House Plantation. She and her mother and sisters were placed under house arrest by Union troops in 1861 before being allowed to cross over Confederate lines to join her father in Richmond. Lee suffered from various health conditions throughout her life and died of typhoid fever at the age of twenty-three. She was buried in Warren County, North Carolina, where she died. In 1994, her body was interred at University Chapel of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. The Anne Carter Lee Monument stands at her original gravesite in Warrenton. Biography Anne Carter Lee was born on June 18, 1839, at Arlington Plantation in Virginia. She was the fourth child and second daughter of Robert E. Lee and Mary Anna Custis Lee. Lee was named after her grandmother, Anne Hill Carter Lee, and was a member of the prominent Lee family. She was a descendant of the colonist Richard Lee I, and her paternal grandfather, Henry Lee III, served as Governor of Virginia and as a U.S. congressman. On her mother's side, Lee was a descendant of Martha Washington, Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, and Charles II of England. She was a sister of Mary Custis Lee, Mildred Childe Lee, George Washington Custis Lee, William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, Eleanor Agnes Lee, and Robert E. Lee Jr. Lee had a privileged upbringing typical of the planter class. A member of the American gentry, her family were one of the First Families of Virginia. She was a sickly child, often travelling around to various natural springs in Virginia with her mother in search of healing benefits. When she was seven years old, Lee suffered from an eye injury. While away at boarding school in 1857, she was sent home with an intestinal problem. Lee helped educate her younger sister, Mildred, and prepared her for life at boarding school. She also taught some of the enslaved children on her family's plantation to read and write, even though this was illegal in Virginia.