Arlington (Plantation : Va.)

Time Line
1802 - George Washington Parke Custis begins construction of Arlington House on an 1,100-acre property inherited from his father, John Parke Custis. Custis initially calls the estate Mount Washington.
December 1803 - Contemporary observers note that George Washington Parke Custis has finished one wing of what will become Arlington House.
July 7, 1804 - George Washington Parke Custis and Mary Lee Fitzhugh, of Chatham, marry in Alexandria.
1818 - Construction of Arlington House, which began in 1802, is completed.
June 30, 1831 - Robert E. Lee marries Mary Anna Randolph Custis, Martha Washington's great-granddaughter, at Arlington, the Custis family seat.
April 23, 1853 - Mary Fitzhugh Custis dies and is buried near Arlington House.

<p>Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial, formerly named the Custis-Lee Mansion, is a Greek revival style mansion located in Arlington, Virginia, United States that was once the home of Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee. It overlooks the Potomac River and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. During the American Civil War, the grounds of the mansion were selected as the site of Arlington National Cemetery, in part to ensure that Lee would never again be able to return to his home. The United States has since designated the mansion as a National Memorial. Although the United States Department of the Army controls Arlington National Cemetery, the National Park Service, a component of the United States Department of the Interior, administers Arlington House.</p>

<p>The mansion was built on the orders of George Washington Parke Custis, the step-grandson and adopted son of George Washington and only grandson of Martha Custis Washington. Custis became a prominent resident of an area that was then known as Alexandria County, at the time a part of the District of Columbia.</p>

<p>Arlington House was built at a high point on a 1,100-acre (445 ha) estate that Custis's father, John Parke Custis, had purchased in 1778 and named "Mount Washington" ("Jacky" Custis died in 1781 at Yorktown after the British surrender). The younger Custis decided to build his home on the property in 1802 following the death of Martha Washington and three years after the death of George Washington. After acquiring the property, Custis renamed it "Arlington" after the Custis family's homestead on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.</p>

<p>Almost immediately, Custis began constructing Arlington House on his land. Hiring George Hadfield as architect, he constructed a mansion exhibiting the first example of Greek Revival architecture in America. Custis intended the mansion to serve as a living memorial to George Washington and a place for his collection of George Washington artifacts. Its design included elements similar to those of George Washington's house, Mount Vernon.</p>

<p>Construction began in 1803, eleven years after L'Enfant's Plan for the future "Federal City" (later called "Washington City", then Washington D.C.) had designated an area directly across the Potomac River to be the site of the "President's House" (later called the "Executive Mansion", now the White House) and the "Congress House" (now the United States Capitol). Custis located the building on a prominent hill overlooking the Georgetown-Alexandria Turnpike (at the approximate location of the present Eisenhower Drive in Arlington National Cemetery), the Potomac River and the growing Washington City on the opposite side of the river. The mansion was built using materials on site, though the building was interrupted by the War of 1812 (and material shortages after the British burned the American capital city). The Custis mansion's exterior was completed in 1818.</p>

<p>Custis married Mary Lee Fitzhugh. Their only child to survive to adulthood was Mary Anna Randolph Custis. Robert E. Lee, whose mother was a cousin of Mrs. Custis, frequently visited Arlington and knew Mary Anna as they grew up. Two years after graduating from West Point, Lieutenant Lee married Mary Anna Custis at Arlington on June 30, 1831. For 30 years Arlington House was home to the Lees. They spent much of their married life traveling between United States Army duty stations and Arlington, where six of their seven children were born. They shared this home with Mary's parents. After their deaths, Mary's parents were buried not far from the house on land that is now part of Arlington National Cemetery.</p>

<p>The Custises extensively developed the Arlington estate. Much of the steep slope to the east of the house became a cultivated English landscape park, while a large flower garden with an arbor was constructed and planted south of the house. To the west of Arlington House, tall grass and low native plants led down a slope into a natural area of close-growing trees the Custises called "the Grove." About 60 feet (18 m) to the west of the flower garden, "the Grove" contained tall elm and oak trees which formed a canopy. An informal flower garden was planted beneath the trees and maintained by the Custis daughters. It is not clear when "the Grove" began to be developed, but it was under way by at least 1853.</p>

<p>Upon George Washington Parke Custis's death in 1857, he left the Arlington estate to Mary Custis Lee for her lifetime and thence to the Lees' eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee. The estate needed much repair and reorganization, and Robert E. Lee, as executor of Custis's will, took a three-year leave of absence from the Army to begin the necessary agricultural and financial improvements.</p>

<p>In April 1861, Virginia seceded from the United States. Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army on April 20, 1861, and joined the Confederate States Army. With Arlington House on high ground overlooking the capital, the government of the United States knew it must occupy the mansion or be left in an untenable military position. Although unwilling to leave Arlington House, Mary Lee believed her estate would soon be occupied by federal soldiers and left to stay with relatives on May 14, having been warned by her young cousin William Orton Williams, then serving as aide to General Winfield Scott. Union Army troops seized and occupied Arlington without opposition on May 24.</p>

George Washington Parke Custis (April 30, 1781 – October 10, 1857) was an American plantation owner, antiquarian, author, and playwright. His father John Parke Custis was the step-son of George Washington. He and his sister Eleanor grew up at Mount Vernon and in the Washington presidential household.

Upon reaching age 21, Custis inherited a large fortune from his late father, John Parke Custis, including a plantation in what is now Arlington, Virginia. High atop a hill overlooking the Potomac River and Washington, D.C., he built the Greek Revival mansion Arlington House (1803–18), as a shrine to George Washington. There he preserved and displayed many of Washington's belongings. Custis wrote historical plays about Virginia, delivered a number of patriotic addresses, and was the author of the posthumously-published Recollections and Private Memoirs of George Washington (1860).

His daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, married Robert E. Lee. They inherited Arlington House and the plantation surrounding it, but the property was soon confiscated by the federal government during the Civil War. After the Civil War, the property was deemed to have been illegally confiscated by the US Supreme Court and was ordered returned to Lee's heirs. After regaining Arlington Custis Lee immediately sold it back to the federal government for its market value. Arlington House is now a museum, interpreted by the National Park Service as the Robert E. Lee Memorial. The remainder of Arlington plantation is now Fort Myer and Arlington National Cemetery.