Eleanor Agnes Lee

Eleanor Agnes Lee

    Agnes or "Wig" was the third of the four Lee daughters and the fifth of seven children. She was born in 1841. Agnes spent much of her time in reading, studying, playing piano and in working in her garden. She did little housework beyond taking care of some of her own things or straightening up Annie's. Agnes kept a fascinating journal during her childhood years, later published and entitled Growing Up in the 1850s.

    Before going away to boarding school in 1855, she and Annie had a tutor, Miss Sue Poor, from whom they learned music, English composition, French, and probably arithmetic. For a time she helped to instruct the Arlington slaves by conducting a Sunday evening school for them and by instructing individual children before and after breakfast.

    Eleanor Agnes LeeAgnes took a lively interest in the changes made in the house especially the refurnishing of the large hall in 1855. She loved Arlington dearly, but admitted that, compared to West Point, it was hardly clean and neat. She was religious and was confirmed in the Episcopal Church in 1857. She was a charming and attractive young lady, and there is some evidence that she felt a romantic attachment to Orton A. Williams, her mother's young cousin and a frequent visitor at Arlington, just before the Civil War. Her father is said to have frowned upon the romance because he regarded young Williams as too unsettled to marry. See Col. William Orton Williams (CSA)

    People in Lexington after the war found her somewhat reserved and aloof. In part this may have been due to the tragic death of Orton Williams in 1862, and to her own serious illness in 1865, which according to her father, left her steady and regular but without "velocity." Considered her mother's favorite daughter, Agnes never married and died from typhoid fever in October 1873 at the age of 32. SOURCE: Arlington House  Online  @ http://www.nps.gov/archive/arho/tour/history/bios/agneslee.html 

• 'Eleanor Agnes Lee1
• 'F, #321898, b. 1841, d. 1873
• Last Edited=3 Dec 2008
• Consanguinity Index=0.0%
• ' Eleanor Agnes Lee was born in 1841.1 She was the daughter of General Robert Edward Lee and Mary Anna Randolph Custis.1 She died in 1873, unmarried.1
• Citations
• 1.[S130] Wikipedia, online http;//www.wikipedia.org. Hereinafter cited as Wikipedia.
• http://www.thepeerage.com/p32190.htm#i321898
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Birth: Feb. 27, 1841 Arlington Arlington County Virginia, USA Death: Oct. 15, 1873 Lexington Albemarle County Virginia, USA

Folk Figure, Author. Called simply "Agnes," she was the third daughter and fifth child of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his wife, Mary Anna Custis Lee. Like her three sisters, she never married chiefly because the General simply could not let go of his girls. However, there was one young soldier who was determined to make Agnes his bride - but he got nowhere since the General proclaimed him too "unsettled" to take a wife. Agnes attended the Virginia Female Institute in her youth and later on she did much traveling with her father as a companion and nurse. A deeply religious young woman, she is perhaps best remembered for her delightful journal (published in 1984) that detailed life in the South and the ups and downs of the Lee family. After her father's death in 1870, Agnes never fully recovered from her grief and, to her family's intense sorrow, she succumbed to typhoid fever. She is interred with her family members in the Lee Chapel and Museum in Lexington, Virginia. (bio by: Kathleen)

Family links:

Parents:

 Robert Edward Lee (1807 - 1870)

 Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee (1808 - 1873)

Siblings:

 George Washington Custis Lee (1832 - 1913)*

 Mary Custis Lee (1835 - 1918)*

 William Henry Fitzhugh Lee (1837 - 1891)*

 Anne Carter Lee (1839 - 1862)**

 Anne Carter Lee (1839 - 1862)*

 Eleanor Agnes Lee (1841 - 1873)

 Robert Edward Lee (1843 - 1914)*

 Mildred Childe Lee (1845 - 1905)*

*Calculated relationship

• *Half-sibling

Burial: Lee Chapel Museum Lexington Lexington City Virginia, USA

Maintained by: Find A Grave Originally Created by: Kathleen Record added: Nov 14, 2003 Find A Grave Memorial# 8087132