For Father’s Day, we begin a few stories about Archibald Stuart, the father of J. E. B. Stuart and the owner of the Laurel Hill Farm in Ararat, Virginia, where the latter was born on February 6, 1833. J. E. B. Stuart may have seen Robert E. Lee as a father figure as well. He first met him in 1852 when Lee was Superintendent at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
Archibald Stuart And The Lee Brothers
On November 24, 1836, Archibald Stuart received a letter from Robert E. Lee, an officer in the United States Army, with a deed that Lee’s brother Charles Carter Lee wished to pass on to Stuart, who acted as the Lee’s attorney in Patrick County. This is the first time the names of Stuart and Lee come together that I have found. Archibald Stuart’s son, James Ewell Brown Stuart, would make a name for himself as R. E. Lee’s cavalry commander during the War Between the States.
The story of Lee Land in Patrick County is interesting. After the Revolutionary War, Buffalo Mountain was a part of a 16,000-acre tract of land known as Lee’s Order. This tract was a grant made to General Henry Lee (1756-1818) by the United States for his service in the Revolutionary War. Henry Lee attended Princeton with the future president, James Madison, and served as a cavalry commander under George Washington during the American Revolution. Known for his swift movements and lightning attacks, he earned the moniker of “Light Horse Harry.” After the War, Lee served as Governor of Virginia, but land speculation led to a term in debtors’ prison and a wretched end for the man who said Washington was “First in War, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
Robert Edward Lee (1809-1870), known to history as the “Gray Fox,” commanded the Army of Northern Virginia during the War Between the States, but his brothers are lesser known. Sydney Smith Lee (1802-1869) married the granddaughter of “Founding Father” George Mason, the “Father of the Bill of Rights.” He was the father of “Jeb” Stuart’s subordinate, Fitzhugh Lee. Sydney Lee served in the United States and the Confederate States of America navies. Beginning in 1820 with a midshipman’s commission in the United States Navy, he rose in rank, serving as Commandant of the Naval Academy, commanding the Philadelphia Naval Yard, and accompanying Mathew Perry on his expedition to Japan. During the War, he commanded the Norfolk Navy Yard and the Confederate Naval Academy at Drewry’s Bluff. Considered very handsome, his brothers nicknamed him “Rose.” After the War, he farmed in Stafford County, Virginia, before dying suddenly in July 1869.
Charles Carter Lee was born in 1798 and received a degree from Harvard in 1819. He lived a disjointed life as a New York City lawyer, land speculator, and plantation owner in Mississippi until his marriage at age 49 to Lucy Penn Taylor. He lived on his wife’s inheritance, Windsor Forest, in Powhatan County, Virginia, prospering as a husband, father, farmer, and writer, especially of poetry.
After the death of their mother, Ann Hill Carter Lee, in 1829, the three Lee brothers inherited the property. There were unpaid taxes and bills against the property, but the brothers kept the land. In 1846, the brothers sold 16,300 acres in the three counties to Nathaniel Burwell of Roanoke County (Patrick County Deed Book #12 page 425) for $5,000. Surveyed initially as over 20,000 acres, the Patrick portion was 6,268 near Hog Mountain, crossing branches of the south fork of Rock Castle Creek, the Conner Spur Road, and a fork of the Dan River. The Floyd portion was 7,143, and Carroll was 5,797 acres.
Of the three Lee brothers, only Carter lived on the land in Floyd County. Papers from the courthouse indicate that Carter tried to establish a gristmill on the property and was involved in legal dealings with Archibald Stuart. Tradition states he lived on the Buffalo Mountain property in a home called Spring Camp and that he had a law office. Carter was the last of Henry and Ann Lee’s children to die, but Robert E. Lee may have summed up the ownership of the land in southwest Virginia and the plight of the three brothers after the War when he said, “It’s a hard case that out of so much land, none should be good for anything.”
