Lee, Robert E. (Robert Edward), 1843-1914

Robert E. Lee, Jr., was born 27 October 1843 at Arlington to Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) and Mary Randolph Custis Lee (1808-1873). He attended the University of Virginia. During the Civil War, Lee served as a private in the Rockbridge Artillery and later was a captain in the Confederate Army. He married first Charlotte Taylor Haxall (1848-1872) 16 November 1871, and they had no children. He married second Juliet Carter (1860-1915) 18 March 1894, and they had two children. Lee died 19 October 1913 in Fauquier County, Virginia, and was buried in the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

Robert Edward Lee Jr. (October 27, 1843 – October 19, 1914) was the sixth of seven children of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Mary Anna Randolph Custis. He became a soldier during the American Civil War, and later was a planter, businessman, and author. Rob Lee was born and raised at Arlington House Unlike his father and two older brothers, Rob apparently never envisioned a military career, never serving in the United States Army. In 1860, he enrolled at the University of Virginia.[1] he was promoted to lieutenant and assigned as an aide to his older brother General William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, rising to the rank of captain before the end of the war.[ All four Lees survived the Civil War. After the war, Lee lived and farmed Romancoke Plantation on the north bank of the Pamunkey River in King William County, which he inherited from his maternal grandfather George Washington Parke Custis. Romancoke was located approximately four miles from the Town of West Point.

Lee also became a writer, gathering his memories of his family and life in Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (1904). The first-hand account provides a valuable source of information on day-to-day life at Arlington House during his youth, and includes many items of interest regarding his father's entire life.

Robert E. Lee Jr. died in 1914. He was interred with his parents and siblings in the college chapel, now known as University Chapel in Lexington, Virginia, where his father and brother Custis each had served as a president of the college now known as Washington and Lee University. Robert Lee married twice. On November 16, 1871, he married Charlotte Haxall (October 23, 1848 – September 22, 1872). No children survived her.

On March 8, 1894, in Washington D.C., he married Juliet Case (April 6, 1860 – November 17, 1915), who was 16 years younger than he. They had two daughters, Anne Carter Lee (July 21, 1897 - November 8, 1978) and Mary Custis Lee (December 23, 1900 - December 26, 1994).[5]

Lee's mother, Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee, was the only surviving child of George Washington Parke Custis and Mary Lee Fitzhugh. George Washington Parke Custis was the grandson of Martha Dandridge and adopted grandson (although not legally) of George Washington.

Born in 1843, “Rob” was the Lees' youngest son and the sixth child. Like his brothers, Rob was taught to skate, sled, swim, and ride. He seems to have been a typical boy who liked to play. His tastes for food and other habits were relatively simple. When he was a younger child he liked to get into bed with his father in the mornings and talk to him. He and Mildred, the two youngest children and childhood companions, were close to throughout their lives.

Rob was away from Arlington at various boarding schools during for much of the 1850s and entered the University of Virginia and the fall of 1860. He seems to have been the only one of the Lee boys who did not seriously consider a military career before the Civil War.

However, when the war came, in spite of his mother's understandable concern, he enlisted in the “Rockbridge Artillery” as a private in 1862. Before very long he was appointed a Captain and served as aide to his brother Custis.

After the war he returned to Romancock, his inheritance from his grandfather George Washington Parke Custis, and eventually started a private business. He married twice: to Charlotte Haxall (November 1871) and, after her death, to Juliet Carter (1894).

Rob died in 1916. The room most closely associated with him at Arlington was no doubt the boys' chamber, which he may have occupied as a single room much of the time when his older brothers were away and when there were no male guests at Arlington.

In his own memory, perhaps the larger hall (after 1855, the white parlor) stood out. There, the whole family assembled to greet Robert E. Lee, Sr. upon his safe return from the Mexican War in 1848. The junior Lee and his namesake had never seen one another. To his everlasting chagrin, Rob's father did not recognize him and mistakenly embraced his playmate, Armisted Lippit, instead.

Rob recorded his memories of his family and life at Arlington in Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, published in 1904. This first hand account remains a valuable source of information on day-to-day life at Arlington House. Through Rob and his older brother Rooney, there are over twenty direct descendants of Mary and Robert E. Lee alive today.