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STRATFORD ICHARD LEE, of England, founder of a family which made and brilliantly shone in American history through two centuries, and who brought here a name destined to splendid immortality, patented in 1640 the land on which Stratford House was built. His home was established in a dense forest of oak and sycamore, ona high bluff overlooking the Potomac where it is broad, deep and beautiful. Nothing remains or is known of the original building. Records prove that it was destroyed by fire. The house now standing was built about 1725. Evidently the Lees then were in high favor at the British court, and by some special quality or service had won the good will of Queen Caroline, because, we are told in Sale’s ““Manors of Virginia,’ that she sent Mr. Lee ‘‘a bountiful present out of her own Privy Purse.”’ From this gift, the Stratford House, now standing, and in which General Robert E. Lee was born, was built. Such a mansion puts before us clearly, after the intervening decades and vicissitudes, the customs, habits and mode of life of the period in which it was created and first occupied. In itself it is history: its rooms the chapters; its stories volumes; its furniture illustrations; its inmates the characters; its garden the bindings. Stratford House, with solid walls of glazed bricks and massive rough-hewn timbers, represents and expresses well the strength and solidity of the sturdy race of Lees which has stood always for what was finest and best. They have given to their State one governor, four members of the council of State, twelve members of the House of Burgesses; to the State of Maryland one governor, two councillors, three members of the Assembly; to the American Revolution four members of the convention of 1776, two signers of the Declaration of Independence and two brothers representing their government at the courts of Europe. To the Confederate States [185 |
