Mary Anna Custis Lee

Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee (October 1, 1807 – November 5, 1873) was the wife of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee and the last private owner of Arlington Estate. She was the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis who was the grandson of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, the wife of George Washington. Custis married Lee – who was at the time a U.S. Army officer – in 1831 at her parents' home, Arlington House in Virginia . Although she sometimes lived with Lee when he was assigned elsewhere, she preferred to live at Arlington House with her parents. (Lee's ancestral home, Stratford Hall, where he was born, was inherited by his half-brother, Henry; Lee himself never owned a permanent residence.) Lee was offered command of the combined forces of the U.S. Army as the American Civil War began, but instead decided to serve his home state of Virginia; he eventually commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. He survived the war, became the president of Washington College, and died in 1870, three years before she did in 1873. They had seven children, three boys and four girls.