Robert E. Lee's Patrick County Land

Robert E. Lee’s Patrick County Land

On November 24, 1836, Archibald Stuart received a letter from Robert E. Lee, an officer in the United States Army with a deed that Lee’s brother C. C. Lee wished passed on to Stuart, who acted as the Lee’s attorney in Patrick County. This is the first time the names of Stuart and Lee come together. Archibald Stuart’s son James would make a name for himself as R. E. Lee’s cavalry commander during the War Between the States better known as James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart.

The story of the Lee’s land in Patrick County is an interesting sidelight. After the Revolutionary War, Buffalo Mountain was a part of a 16,000-acre tract of land known as Lee’s Order. This tract was a grant made to General Henry Lee (1756-1818) by the United States for his service in the Revolutionary War. Henry Lee attended Princeton with future president, James Madison, and served as a cavalry commander under George Washington during the American Revolution. Known for his swift movements and lightning attacks he earned the moniker of “Light Horse Harry.” After the war Lee served as Governor of Virginia, but land speculation led to a term in debtors’ prison and a very unhappy end for the man who said Washington was “First in War, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

Robert Edward Lee (1807-1870) known to history as the “Gray Fox,” commanded the Army of Northern Virginia during the War Between the States, but his brothers are lesser known. Sydney Smith Lee (1802-1869) married the granddaughter of “Founding Father” George Mason, the “Father of the Bill of Rights.” He was the father of “Jeb” Stuart’s subordinate Fitzhugh Lee. Sydney Lee served in the navies of the United States and Confederate States of America. Beginning in 1820 with a midshipman’s commission in the United States Navy, he rose in rank serving as Commandant of the Naval Academy, commanding the Philadelphia Naval Yard and accompanying Mathew Perry on his expedition to Japan. He commanded the Norfolk Navy Yard and the Confederate Naval Academy at Drewry’s Bluff during the war. Considered very handsome, his brothers nicknamed him “Rose.” After the war, he farmed in Stafford County, Virginia, before dying suddenly in July 1869. 

Charles Carter Lee was born in 1798 and received a degree from Harvard in 1819. He lived a disjointed life as a New York City lawyer, land speculator and plantation owner in Mississippi until his marriage at age 49 to Lucy Penn Taylor. He lived on his wife’s inheritance, Windsor Forest, in Powhatan County, Virginia, prospering as a husband, father, farmer and writer, especially of poetry.

After the death of their mother, Ann Hill Carter Lee, in 1829, the three Lee brothers inherited the property. There were unpaid taxes and bills against the property, but the brothers kept the land. In 1846, the brothers sold 16,300 acres in the three counties to Nathaniel Burwell of Roanoke County (Patrick County Deed Book #12 page 425) for $5,000. Originally surveyed as over 20,000 acres the Patrick portion was 6,268 near Hog Mountain crossing branches of the south fork of Rock Castle Creek, the Conner Spur Road and a fork of the Dan River. The Floyd portion was 7,143 and Carroll was 5,797 acres.

Of the three Lee brothers, only Carter lived on the land in Floyd County. Papers supplied from the courthouse indicate that Carter tried to establish a gristmill on the land and that he was involved in legal dealings with Archibald Stuart. Tradition states he lived on the Buffalo Mountain property at one time in a home called Spring Camp and that he had a law office. Carter was the last of Henry and Ann Lee’s children to die, but Robert may have summed up the ownership of the land in southwest Virginia and the plight of the three brothers after the war when he said speaking of their poverty, “It’s a hard case that out of so much land, none should be good for anything.”

From “The Dear Old Hills of Patrick: J. E. B. Stuart and Patrick County Virginia.” By Thomas D. Perry available online at www.freestateofpatrick.com