Gen. LEE came from a distinguished lineage. Two of the family signed our
Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, and another was
Attorney-General under Gen. Washington.
On the paternal side he could refer to his distinguished grandfather,
Gen. Henry Lee, of the Revolutionary army, who was known as Light-Horse
Harry, the commandant of Lee's Legion, so conspicuous in the annals of
that period. His maternal grandfather was the late G.W. Parke Custis, of
Arlington, the stepson of Gen. Washington, and familiarly called in his
day the child of Mount Vernon.
His father, Gen. R.E. Lee, the chief military figure on his side in the
late civil war, was too well known for comment at my hands. It is the
boast of some of the old baronial families of England that their
ancestors rode with William the Conqueror at Hastings. To a certain
extent the pride of ancestry is an ennobling sentiment, and Virginians
must be pardoned when tempted to refer to the illustrious names which
their State in the past has furnished to the nation. The name of Lee has
been a household word in Virginia for three generations of men. In the
death of Gen. WILLIAM H.F. LEE the State has lost one of her truest and
worthiest sons and the Federal Government a faithful and patriotic
Representative.
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