Ethel Armes Collection of Lee Family Papers
Catalog Record: http://lccn.loc.gov/mm82054304
General International Standard for Archival Description
Manuscript Division Library of Congress Washington, D.C.
Finding aid encoded by Library of Congress Manuscript Division, 2009
Encoded Archival Description
Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Version 2002
collection
Ethel Armes Collection of Lee Family Papers 1671-1936
Armes, Ethel, 1876-1945
Scope and Content Note The Ethel Armes Collection of Lee Family Papers consists principally of photocopies and transcripts of documents found in other repositories. Armes collected and assembled these in preparation for her book, Stratford Hall: The Great House of the Lees (1936). Materials date from 1671 to 1936 and include family correspondence of the Lee and Shippen families pertaining mainly to life during the Revolutionary War period. The bulk of the correspondence is that of Henry "Lighthorse Harry" Lee, Revolutionary War general and father of Robert E. Lee, and Major Henry Lee, brother of Robert E. Lee. Subjects detailed in the correspondence include military activities during the Revolutionary War, politics and political appointments, financial affairs in the colonies, agriculture, planting, and slavery in Virginia, and family life on Shirley Plantation. Among other family members represented in the collection are Charles Carter Lee, Richard Bland Lee, Mary Randolph Custis and Robert E. Lee, Alice Lee Shippen, Thomas Lee Shippen, and William Shippen. One noteworthy item in the collection is a copy of a letter of former slave Eleanor Berry to Elizabeth Collins Lee, her previous mistress. Duff Green, Nathanael Greene, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Tyler, and George Washington are among the more prominent correspondents in the collection. Copies of architectural plans and drawings of various Lee family estates, family genealogies, legal papers, maps, and newspaper clippings are included in the collection. The few original documents in the Ethel Armes Collection of Lee Family Papers consist mainly of research notes and correspondence of Armes and pertain to her book. Of particular interest is a letter of Franklin D. Roosevelt to Armes; Roosevelt wrote the foreword to her book.
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Correspondence
Armes, Ethel (b. 1876), 1932-1936, undated
Carter, Lucy Grymes Lee (1786-1860), 1798-1813
Corbin, Hannah Lee (1728-1782), 1759-1760
Izard, Elizabeth Byrd Carter Shippen, 1799-1824, undated
Lee, Ann Hill Carter (1773-1829), 1805-1816
Lee, Anne Robinson McCarty, 1828-1837, undated
Lee, Charles Carter (1798-1871), 1817-1868
Lee, Cornelia (Cornelia Lee Hopkins) (1780-1815), 1801-1808, undated
Lee, Elizabeth Collins (1747-1858), 1792, undated
Lee, Elizabeth Collins, 1925-1927, undated
Lee, Henry (1756-1818)
Undated
Lee, Henry (1787-1837)
Lee, Mary Randolph Custis (1806-1873), 1834-1871, undated
Lee, Richard Bland (1761-1827), 1811-1812
Lee, Richard Henry (1794-1865), 1840
Lee, Robert E. (1807-1870), 1840-1865
Lee, Thomas (1690-1750), 1720-1750, undated
Shippen, Alice Lee (1736-1817), 1778, undated
Shippen, Nancy Lee (Anne Home Shippen Livingston) (1763-1841), undated
Shippen, Thomas Lee, 1783-1809
Shippen, William, 1814
Other family correspondence, 1807-1825
General correspondence, 1753-1827, undated
Armes, Ethel, research notes, circa 1930s
Original documents, 1809-1895
Architectural plans and drawings of Lee family estates
Copies of title pages from books in Lee family library
Lee family genealogies
Lee, Charles Carter, writings
Legal papers
Newspaper clippings, 1870, undated
Transcripts of letters, 1750-1891, undated