Scope and Content Note
The Custis-Lee Family Papers consist of sixteen previously separate collections formerly in the Manuscript Division's Miscellaneous Manuscripts Collection. They span the period 1700-circa 1928, with the bulk of the material produced between 1770 and 1870. The papers include correspondence, transcripts and photocopies of letters in other repositories, facsimiles, financial records, genealogies, indentures, letterbooks, newspaper clippings, notebooks, photographs, poems, and reports. The papers are arranged in the following series: Letterbooks, Correspondence, Transcripts and Photocopies, Financial Records, Miscellany, and Oversize.
The papers document the activities of several generations of the principal members of the Custis and Lee families of Virginia, who as diplomats, statesmen, politicians, planters, and military officers, achieved prominence and power during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The collection contains information on a variety of subjects, including family affairs, military activities during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, agriculture in Virginia, slavery, mercantile and financial affairs, United States relations with France, and politics during the early republic. Prominent correspondents include John C. Breckinridge, William Grayson, Nathanael Greene, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, Joseph E. Johnston, Timothy Pickering, Mary Pinckney, William C. Rives, Winfield Scott, Samuel Harrison Smith, and Louis T. Wigfall.
A letterbook, 1700-1825, of Richard Bland Lee includes correspondence of his grandparents, Henry Lee and Mary Bland Lee. Among the subjects discussed are family finances and business, trade with France, slavery, outfitting of troops during the Revolutionary War, founding of the new government, and the writing of the Constitution.
A group of Custis-Warden transcripts, 1811-1831, consists of copies of letters between David Bailie Warden and Elizabeth Parke Custis Law. The Maryland Historical Society has custody of the originals. Warden was United States consul in Paris from 1811 to 1814, and the correspondence with Custis describes relations with France, naval and military affairs during the War of 1812, and social life in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia during the early nineteenth century.
Robert E. Lee's correspondence, 1830-1868, relates to his long military career, beginning with his early work as an engineer and continuing with his service in the Mexican War and his role as general-in-chief of the Confederate armies. The Civil War correspondence is especially illuminating because it documents important military battles, the movement of troops, and the devastation and destruction caused by the Union Army.
Family matters are the focus of Mary Randolph Custis Lee's correspondence, 1837-1872. After the death of her husband, Robert E. Lee, she planned to build a memorial church for him, and numerous letters describe that effort. Two notebooks, 1823, contain information on the educational standards for young women in the early nineteenth century. One of the notebooks contains an essay that she wrote, "Some of the Principal Epochs of the Life of Buonaparte and of the French Revolution."
A letter from Arthur Lee to Nathanael Greene, 6 April 1784, received in 1985 has been added to the Arthur Lee correspondence. A letter from Robert E. Lee to Albert Miller Lea, 20 May 1862, received by the Library in 1990 has been added to the Robert E. Lee correspondence. A copy of a letter from Charles Lee to President John Adams, 7 Jan. 1799, was received in 1991 and has been added to the Charles Lee correspondence. Letters written by Mary Custis Lee likely to Elizabeth McCall Symington of St. Louis from 1871-1872 were received in 2015 and have been added to the Mary Custis Lee correspondence. A letter from George Washington Custis Lee to General William R. Boggs, 14 Jan. 1876, was received in 2015 and has been added to the George Washington Custis Lee correspondence.