Custis, Mary Lee Fitzhugh, 1788-1853

Mary Lee "Molly" Fitzhugh Custis (April 22, 1788 – April 23, 1853) was an Episcopal lay leader in Alexandria County (now Arlington County, Virginia, United States). She was the mother of Mary Anna Randolph Custis who was the wife of Robert E. Lee. Early in the 1820s, Molly Custis helped form a coalition of women who hoped to eradicate slavery.[1] The daughter of William Fitzhugh (1741–1809) a member of the Continental Congress, and Ann Bolling Randolph Fitzhugh, Molly Custis was most likely born at Chatham Manor, in Stafford County, Virginia.[2] On July 7, 1804, she married George Washington Parke Custis, an orator, playwright, writer, and the grandson of Martha Custis Washington through her first marriage to Daniel Parke Custis. Molly Custis thus became George Washington's step-granddaughter-in-law. The Custises lived at Arlington House, an 1,100-acre (4.5 km2) plantation in Alexandria County, Virginia. Of their four daughters, only Mary Anna Randolph Custis, who later married Robert E. Lee, survived childhood; She died at Arlington on April 23, 1853, a day after her 65th birthday and was buried on the estate. Her husband survived her by four years, at which point Arlington House and the grounds were inherited by their daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis, Mrs. Robert E. Lee.