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Ludwell Lee (October 13, 1760March 23, 1836) was an American lawyer and planter who served in both houses of the
Virginia General Assembly The Virginia General Assembly is the legislative body of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the oldest continuous law-making body in the Western Hemisphere, and the first elected legislative assembly in the New World. It was established on July 30, ...
representing
Prince William William, Prince of Wales (William Arthur Philip Louis; born 21 June 1982), is the heir apparent to the British throne. He is the elder son of King Charles III and Diana, Princess of Wales. William was born during the reign of his p ...
and Fairfax Counties and rose to become the Speaker of the Virginia Senate. Beginning in 1799, following the death of his first wife, Lee built Belmont Manor, a planation house in
Loudoun County, Virginia Loudoun County () is in the northern part of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. In 2020, the census returned a population of 420,959, making it Virginia's third-most populous county. The county seat is Leesburg. Loudoun County ...
(created from Fairfax and Prince William Counties in 1757, his uncle
Francis Lightfoot Lee Francis Lightfoot Lee (October 14, 1734 – January 11, 1797) was a Founding Father of the United States and a member of the House of Burgesses in the Colony of Virginia. As an active protester regarding issues such as the Stamp Act of 1765, Le ...
having served as that county's first Burgess alongside James Hamilton), which today is on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
.


Early and family life

Ludwell Lee was the second son born to the former Anne Aylett (1738-1768), the first wife of prominent patriot, politician and planter
Richard Henry Lee Richard Henry Lee (January 20, 1732June 19, 1794) was an American statesman and Founding Father from Virginia, best known for the June 1776 Lee Resolution, the motion in the Second Continental Congress calling for the colonies' independence fr ...
. His Lee ancestors had founded one of the
First Families of Virginia The First Families of Virginia, or FFV, are a group of early settler families who became a socially and politically dominant group in the British Colony of Virginia and later the Commonwealth of Virginia. They descend from European colonists who ...
, as well as speculated in land further up the
Potomac River The Potomac River () is in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and flows from the Potomac Highlands in West Virginia to Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. It is long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography D ...
. His grandfather Thomas Lee (1690-1750) had considerable acreage in what was or became Prince William, Fairfax and Loudoun counties before Ludwell was born. Like his elder brother,
Thomas Jesse Lee Thomas Jesse Lee (October 20, 1758September 7, 1805) was an American lawyer, planter, and politician. He served as the 34th and 38th Sheriff of Prince William County. Early life and education Thomas Jesse Lee was born on October 20, 1758 at his f ...
(1758-1805), Ludwell Lee received a private education locally suitable to his class. However, their mother died after giving birth to three more daughters, Mary and Hannah (who would both marry members of the Washington family), and Marybelle (who did not reach adulthood). Their father remarried, to the former Anne Gaskins (1745-1796), who gave birth to another three daughters before bearing
Francis Lightfoot Lee Francis Lightfoot Lee (October 14, 1734 – January 11, 1797) was a Founding Father of the United States and a member of the House of Burgesses in the Colony of Virginia. As an active protester regarding issues such as the Stamp Act of 1765, Le ...
(1782-1850). Meanwhile, these two elder brothers were sent to London, England, where their merchant uncle William Lee lived with his wife and decade younger children. The Lee brothers first studied first at St. Bee's School in Lancastershire (their father reasoning that the annual tuition would be about a third of that charged by an American school), then their father decided that while Thomas should learn business with his uncle William orat Schweighhauser's countinghouse, Ludwell should study at the Middle Temple to become a lawyer. Tensions between the American colonies and the mother country were rising, which prompted Thomas Lee to return home early, but Ludwell Lee wanted to finish his five-year course of study, so defended his father's signing the
Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the territory of another state or failed state, or are breaka ...
, although his teacher and some schoolmates thought it treasonous. Upon returning to Virginia, Ludwell Lee spent time at
Williamsburg Williamsburg may refer to: Places *Colonial Williamsburg, a living-history museum and private foundation in Virginia *Williamsburg, Brooklyn, neighborhood in New York City *Williamsburg, former name of Kernville (former town), California *Williams ...
studying under the guidance of Professor
George Wythe George Wythe (; 1726 – June 8, 1806) was an American academic, scholar, and judge who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. The first of the seven Signing of the United States Declaration of Independence, signatories of the ...
. During what would be the final months of the American Revolutionary War, Ludlow Lee volunteered for military service in Westmoreland County, in a troop of dragoons recruited from among the First Families of Virginia for the Virginia Line by Col.
John Francis Mercer John Francis Mercer (May 17, 1759 – August 30, 1821) was a Founding Father of the United States, politician, lawyer, planter, and slave owner from Virginia and Maryland. An officer during the Revolutionary War, Mercer initially served in th ...
. Lee and schoolmate and soon-to-be brother-in-law
Bushrod Washington Bushrod Washington (June 5, 1762 – November 26, 1829) was an American attorney and politician who served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1798 to 1829. On the Supreme Court, he was a staunch ally of Chi ...
scouted as the company harassed British Banastre Tarleton, who was raiding Southern plantations as far away as Albemarle County. The company also saw action at the
Battle of Green Spring The Battle of Green Spring took place near Green Spring Plantation in James City County, Virginia during the American Revolutionary War. On July 6, 1781 United States Brigadier General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, leading the advance forces of the M ...
(at his cousin William Lee's plantation outside Williamsburg. Ludwell Lee at some point became an aide-de-camp to the
Marquis de Lafayette Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette (; 6 September 1757 – 20 May 1834), known in the United States as Lafayette (), was a French military officer and politician who volunteered to join the Conti ...
) and sometime during or after the war received the rank of colonel. In 1788, he married his cousin, Flora Lee (1770-1795, who also was descended from their common grandfather Thomas Lee, her father being Col. Philip Ludwell Lee). They had a daughter (Eliza) and a son (Rev. Richard Henry Lee 1794-1865) who survived their parents. Ludwell Lee's father died in 1794, burdened by debts such that two auctions were made of his property, and his namesake grandson would publish two volumes of his grandfather's memoirs to rescue his name and honor. Ludwell Lee's second wife was Elizabeth Armistead and they had six children.


Career

Ludwell Lee was admitted to the Virginia bar in Fairfax County on September 21, 1784 and was a gentleman justice of the peace by 1797. He practiced as an attorney in northern Virginia, as well as farmed using enslaved labor. During his marriage to his cousin Flora), Lee lived on Duke Street in Alexandria, Virginia and by 1790 acquired a mansion on "Shooters Hill" (a/k/a "Shuter's hill"), a bluff above the city, property that he sold to Benjamin Dulany in 1799 and which burned down on February 7, 1842. In 1787 he helped found the town of Newport in Prince William County, as did fellow planters Francis Peyton, William Bronaugh, William Heale, John Peyton Harrison, Burr Powell, Josias Clapham and Richard Bland Lee. Ludwell Lee was also a trustee for some of his cousins, since his uncle Henry Lee had married Flora's sister Matilda, then engaged in a number of questionable transactions with lands his wife had inherited from their father before fleeing the country (and dying in abroad), so she made a trust to protect that inheritance for her and their children. Voters in Prince William County elected him as a delegate, and later Lee won election as a delegate from Fairfax County. A determined Federalist, Lee concluded his legislative service with several terms as state senator representing Fairfax and Prince William Counties. George Mason's son
Thomson Mason Thomson Mason (14 August 173326 February 1785) was an American lawyer, planter and jurist. A younger brother of George Mason IV, United States patriot, statesman, and delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention, Thomson Mason w ...
succeeded him in the state senate, but failed to win re-election four years later. Upon moving to Loudoun County in 1800, Ludwell Lee ended his political career rather than challenge multi-term delegates William Noland and Joseph Lewis, or longtime senator Francis Peyton. He concentrated on operating his plantations (using enslaved labor) and providing for his children and grandchildren. He freed Henrietta and her two children in 1801. Lee won prizes for his sheep in 1806. In the 1810 census, Lee owned 69 enslaved persons. In the 1820 census, he owned 44 slaves, of whom 25 were engaged in agriculture. In the final census of his life, Lee owned 24 slaves, and like in the previous census, his wife did not live on the plantation. Lee was a member of the Loudoun Auxiliary of the
American Colonization Society The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn peop ...
, as were nearby large slaveholders Burr Powell, George Carter, William Noland, Charles Ball, William Ellzey and Asa Moore, as well as Quakers Israel Janney, Yardley Taylor and Mahlon Taylor. During the Marquis de Layfayette's American tour, the General visited Lee as his third stop in Loudoun County after he and president John Quincy Adams visited ex-President James Monroe at "Oak Hill", then were received by about 10,000 people including six militia companies at Leesburg, before Lafayette continued on to visit ex-Presidents Madison at "Montpelier" and Jefferson at "Monticello". In one of his last transactions, in 1825, Lee sold an island in the Potomac River near its conjunction with Broad Run to his cousin Wilson Cary V. Seldon, who built a house and for whom the island would later be named.Eugene M. Scheel, Loudoun Discovered: Communities, Corners & Crossroads, Volume One: Eastern Loudoun: "Going Down The County", (compilation of columns published in the Loudoun Times-Mirror and republished by The Friends of the Thomas Balch Library2002), p. 18


Death and legacy

Lee died in 1836, survived by his second wife, who with the assent of his children, sold Belmont Manor to Margaret Mercer, a dedicated member of the American Colonization Society who had worked as a teacher in order to pay her father's debts, free the slaves she had inherited, and send them to Africa a decade earlier. She operated a school for girls at Belmont, and tried to use the plantation to demonstrate that farming could be successful without enslaved labor, although after her death her executors sold the property to Alexandria's largest slave trader. Lee was buried at Belmont, as was his widow in 1850. By that time, his son Richard Henry Lee, who had become a lawyer, was a professor of languages and belle letres at Washington College in Washington, Pennsylvania. He would soon begin studying theology and became an Episcopal priest. His two eldest sons (Richard Henry Lee and Philip Ludwell Lee became U.S. Cavalry captains during the American Civil War). Belmont Manor, which he constructed beginning in 1799, remains today, and is on the
National Register for Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of sites, buildings, structures, districts, and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...
.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Ludwell 1760 births 1836 deaths 19th-century American lawyers Members of the Virginia House of Delegates Politicians from Fairfax County, Virginia People from Loudoun County, Virginia People from Prince William County, Virginia Virginia lawyers Virginia state senators 19th-century Virginia politicians 18th-century members of the Virginia General Assembly