Elizabeth "Eliza" Lee

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Elizabeth "Eliza" Lee (Collins)

Also Known As: "Eliza"
Birthdate:
Birthplace: Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, Colonial America
Death: June 24, 1858 (89-90)
Alexandria, Virginia, United States
Place of Burial: Washington, D.C., United States
Immediate Family:

Daughter of Stephen Collins and Mary Collins
Wife of U.S. Congress Richard Bland Lee
Mother of Ann Matilda Washington; Richard Bland Lee, II; Cornelia Marcrae; Zaccheus Collins Lee and Mary Collins Lee
Sister of Zaccheus Collins

Managed by: Tina Marie Brown
Last Updated:

About Elizabeth "Eliza" Lee

In "The Virginia Herald, and Fredericksburg Advertiser", Thursday, July 3, 1794, page 3, column 3: "Married- At Germantown (Pa.) on June 19, Richard Bland Lee, member of Congress from Virginia, to Miss Elizabeth Collins, daughter of Mr. Stephen Collins, merchant of Philadelphia."

http://leearchive.wlu.edu/papers/books/fringe/01.html

While serving in the "City of Brotherly Love" where the Third Congress was held, the thirty-three-year-old Congressman fell in love with twenty-seven-year-old Elizabeth Collins. The daughter of Stephen and Mary Parrish Collins was as proud of her Quaker-New England background as the Lees were of their Cavalier past. The Collins family had produced a gunsmith, yeomen, and merchants in Lynn, Duxbury, and Newbury. Stephen Collins had abandoned his native Massachusetts, moving to New Jersey and then to Philadelphia. There, he soon became a merchant and importer of wealth and prestige.

and further down in same text. . .

Elizabeth Collins and Richard Bland Lee were married on June 30, 1794, by Bishop White, who was well known in Episcopal circles for his revision of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: after the Declaration of Independence, he had deleted all references to the Crown from the liturgy. To be married by an Episcopal priest was a forbidden rite for a Quaker, and three months after their wedding, Elizabeth was "read out of meeting" by a Philadelphia Meeting for "Marrying contrary to discipline." A few months later, her close friend, Dolley Payne Todd,, suffered the same humiliation upon marrying James Madison.



Added per DAR's "Lineage Book of the Charter Members" by Mary S Lockwood, published 1895

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Elizabeth "Eliza" Lee's Timeline

1768
1768
Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, Colonial America
1790
1790
1797
July 20, 1797
Sully Plantation, Fairfax, Virginia
1804
1804
1805
December 5, 1805
1858
June 24, 1858
Age 90
Alexandria, Virginia, United States
????
Sully Plantation, Fairfax, Virginia
????
Washington, D.C., United States