the records of the "care packages" that LT & Mrs Lee received at Fortress Monroe still exist and are on public display there.
Lighthorse Harry Lee died BROKE and his widow & children lived either with family, friends or in rented houses until REL went to West Point. that is why there are so many houses in Alexandria & Fairfax County that can claim to be "Lee's Boyhood Home".
free dixie,sw
Harry's wife did not go bust. She had a legacy in trust that Harry was unable to spend.
And the Robert E. Lee Memorial Association does, indeed, note that, Robert Lee's choice of a military career was dictated by financial necessity. There was no money left to send him to Harvard, where his older brother Charles Carter studied.
Robert E. Lee Memorial Association
http://www.stratfordhall.org/lighthorse.html?HISTORY
After the death of his idol [George Washington], Harry's fortunes began to decline rapidly. the support of a family of six, coupled with disastrous land speculation, reduced him to financial poverty, Then, on January 19, 1807, in the large upstairs room at Stratford where so many Lees had come into the world, Ann gave birth to their fifth son, Robert Edward, named after two of his mother's favorite brothers. As Robert was learning to walk, his father was carried off to debtor's prison in Montross.
With characteristic courage, in a 12-by-15 foot prison cell, Harry wrote his Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States, still the standard text on that portion of the Revolutionary War. When the book was finished in 1810, the family moved to Alexandria, where a new life on a modest scale was made possible by a legacy from Ann's father. Harry's eldest son, Henry IV, became master of Stratford.
/////
Robert E. Lee Memorial Association
http://www.stratfordhall.org/rel.html?HISTORY
Robert Lee's choice of a military career was dictated by financial necessity. There was no money left to send him to Harvard, where his older brother Charles Carter studied.
On June 30, 1831, while serving as Second Lieutenant of Engineers at Fort Monroe, Virginia, he married Mary Ann Randolph Custis of Arlington. Mary was the only daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington and the adopted grandson of George Washington. Robert E. Lee shared his father's reverence for the memory of the General and that bond with the Father of our Country served as an inspiration throughout Lee's life.
The couple moved into Arlington, the Custis house across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., which would later become Arlington National Cemetery.
http://www.ku.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Gazetteer/People/Robert_E_Lee/FREREL/home.html
Douglas Southall Freeman:
R. E. Lee
biography, 2421 pages
in the public domain
Mr. Custis reluctantly gave his consent to a marriage his daughter was old enough to contract on her own account. The nuptials were set for June 30, and the place, of course, was to be Arlington, with bridesmaids and groomsmen in a number becoming so important an event. Robert was to get a furlough for as long a time as he could, and when the festivities were over and the furlough had expired, the two were to live at Fort Monroe — live on his pay, as other young couples did, without any help from Mr. Custis. Mary was determined on that.
* * *
When Lee married Mary Custis, he married Arlington as well, and that, too, was to have a profound influence upon him. The estate was to bring much harassment of spirit, but it was to deepen his reverence for the Washington tradition. Mr. Custis himself was, of course, the nearest link with the first President. Many of the Washington relics were at Arlington — the portraits, the lantern from the hall of Mount Vernon, the china presented by the Society of the Cincinnati, which probably had been ordered by Lee's own father, Washington's bookcase, his camp equipment, even some of the clothes he had worn, and the bed on which he had died. Mrs. Washington's Negro maid, Caroline Branham, who had been in the room on the December night when the great spirit of the nation's founder had passed, was among the servants at Arlington at the time of Mary Custis's wedding. To come into the atmosphere of Arlington was to Robert Lee almost like living in the presence of his foremost hero, his father's old commander. "This marriage," wrote a kinsman-biographer, "in the eyes of the world, made Robert Lee the representative of the family of the founder of American liberty."
* * *
http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/e urope/ancient_rome/E/Gazetteer/Peopl e/Robert_E_Lee/FREREL/1/22*.html
* * *
On November 11, 1857, Robert E. Lee reached Arlington on the saddest of all his ante-bellum home-comings. The shadow of Mr. Custis's death still hung over the plantation.
* * *
Lee soon found that Mr. Custis's will had put a heavy burden on him. He had been named one of the four executors, and as the others failed to qualify, he had to discharge all the duties of settling a troublesome estate under a complicated testament. Mr. Custis had drawn up the paper in 1855, apparently without consulting counsel. He left Mrs. Lee a life interest in Arlington and its contents and in adjacent properties. On her demise all this property except the minor plate was to pass in fee to Custis Lee, "he my eldest grandson taking my name and arms." His "White House" plantation of 4000 acres in New Kent County, Mr. Custis left to Rooney Lee, and the "Romancock" property of like acreage he bequeathed to his youngest grandson, Robert E. Lee, Jr. To Colonel Lee he left a lot in "Square 21" of Washington City. Each of Mr. Custis's granddaughters was to receive $10,000. One paragraph of the will provided that Smith's Island, off Northampton County, and sundry lands in Stafford, Richmond, and Westmoreland Counties, should be sold to provide these legacies. Another section said that these properties and "my estates of the White-House in the County of New Kent and Romancock in the County of King William" were to be "charged with the payment of the legacies to my granddaughters." The will then read: "Smith's Island and the aforesaid lands in Stafford, Richmond and Westmoreland only are to be sold, the lands of the White House and Romancock to be worked to raise the aforesaid legacies to my four granddaughters." This was confusing and contradictory enough, but a final tangle was added by a provision that when the legacies should have been paid, and the properties had been cleared of debt, all the Custis slaves were to be emancipated, "the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from the time of my decease."
* * *
As executor, Lee saw that if his daughters' legacies were to be paid, Arlington must be made self-supporting. If the house was to be saved from ruin, it had to be repaired. To do all this called for the expenditure of at least a part of his salary, and also for his presence on the ground.
* * *
The winter of 1858-59 and the spring of 1859, were in many ways the gloomiest Lee had experienced. The circuit court adjourned in November, 1858, without construing the Custis will, and the pressure on Lee's finances, for the improvement of the property, was so manifest that the always thoughtful Mrs. Fitzhugh was constrained to send him $1000 to be used as he saw fit. Lee had determined to keep the expenditures at Arlington within his means and he could not accept the check, which he acknowledged with warmest gratitude.
* * *