BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Arlington Natl Cemetery -- Robert E. Lee Memorial

VA -- Arlington Natl Cemetery -- Robert E. Lee Memorial:

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Description of Pictures: One of the signs on the mansion said:
Notice:
A restoration project is currently underway
at Arlington House, a project that has
necessitated the removal of the house's
historic furnishings. These objects will
return after the restoration is complete in
2010. We apologize for any inconvenience
this may cause.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] ARLLEE_071225_010.JPG	[2] ARLLEE_071225_015.JPG	[3] ARLLEE_071225_020.JPG
[4] ARLLEE_071225_025.JPG	[5] ARLLEE_071225_027.JPG	[6] ARLLEE_071225_029.JPG
[7] ARLLEE_071225_031.JPG	[8] ARLLEE_071225_034.JPG	[9] ARLLEE_071225_035.JPG
[10] ARLLEE_071225_037.JPG	[11] ARLLEE_071225_039.JPG	[12] ARLLEE_071225_040.JPG
[13] ARLLEE_071225_041.JPG	[14] ARLLEE_071225_043.JPG	[15] ARLLEE_071225_045.JPG
[16] ARLLEE_071225_046.JPG	[17] ARLLEE_071225_049.JPG	[18] ARLLEE_071225_051.JPG
[19] ARLLEE_071225_053.JPG	[20] ARLLEE_071225_070.JPG	[21] ARLLEE_071225_085.JPG
[22] ARLLEE_071225_088.JPG	[23] ARLLEE_071225_090.JPG	[24] ARLLEE_071225_092.JPG
[25] ARLLEE_071225_097.JPG	[26] ARLLEE_071225_098.JPG	[27] ARLLEE_071225_101.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. ARLLEE_071225_027.JPG: Arlington House, 1864: On May 24, 1861, Union troops crossed the Potomac River into Virginia and occupied the Arlington estate. Officers lived in the house, while hundreds of soldiers camped on the grounds. The Army crisscrossed the estate with road and telegraph lines, and cut most of the 200 acres of virgin oak forest behind the house for fortifications and firewood.
2. ARLLEE_071225_029.JPG: The Flower Garden: Mrs. Robert E. Lee took special interest in the flower garden, and she helped shape its final design. In the center stood a large, latticed arbor, its wall covered with flowering jasmine. The Lees used the arbor for summer entertaining and as a restful place to read and paint. In 1884, the garden was destroyed to make space for a cemetery memorial. It is now being restored to its 1861 appearance.
3. ARLLEE_071225_037.JPG: Arlington Estate, 1860: In 1778, John Parke Custis purchased most of the 1,100 acres comprising this estate from the Alexander family. John's son, George Washington Parke Custis, came in 1802 and completed the house in 1818. He named it "Arlington" after an old Custis estate on Virginia's eastern shore. The estate prospered throughout most of Custis' lifeline, but a series of events beginning after his death radically altered the character and destiny of Arlington. 1857: Ownership is bequeathed to Mrs. Robert E. Lee, sole surviving child of George Custis. 1861: The Lees leave Arlington forever, and Union troops occupy the estate throughout the Civil War. 1864: Two hundred acres surrounding the house are set aside as a cemetery for Civil War dead. 1882: U.S. Supreme Court returns the estate to Mrs. Robert E. Lee's son, G.W. Custis Lee. With thousands of graves surrounding the house, Lee cannot make his home here, and sells Arlington to the government for $150,000.
4. ARLLEE_071225_045.JPG: Kitchen Garden
5. ARLLEE_071225_046.JPG: Kitchen Garden: Large estates customarily had a vegetable garden and summer kitchen near the main house. Slaves gathered fresh produce, prepared it in the summer kitchen, and carried it directly to the main dining room. Arlington's garden extended from the summer kitchen northward to the edge of the hill. Slaves raised a variety of vegetables, including asparagus, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. There were also a strawberry patch and herb garden. Chickens and guinea hens were kept at the north end of the garden. The privy serving the house was also located here.
6. ARLLEE_071225_049.JPG: Back of Arlington House
7. ARLLEE_071225_085.JPG: Notice: A restoration project is currently underway at Arlington House, a project that has necessitated the removal of the house's historic furnishings. These objects will return after the restoration is complete in 2010. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
8. ARLLEE_071225_101.JPG: The Arlington Woodlands: "Cherish these forest trees...." -- Marquis De Lafayette, 1825. William Howard Russell, a famous 19th century English correspondent, once described the forest before you as "some of the finest woods I have seen in America." Two centuries earlier, the area had been a vast wilderness where Doeg and Necostin Indians had hunted and made stone tools. Today this small woodland has been recognized by the Virginia Native Plant Society as one of the best examples of old growth terraced gravel forest remaining in Virginia. In 1802, this land was settled by George Washington Parke Custis. He named his 1,100-acre estate Arlington. One of the most striking natural features of his property was the 600-acre virgin oak forest that nearly surrounded Arlington House. The 19th century historian Benson Lossing described the picturesque landscape: "Behind the mansion is a dark old forest, with patriarchal trees bearing many centennial honors and covering 600 acres of hill and dale." Mrs. Calvert, a relative of the Custises, had visited Arlington as a child and remembered the ravine before you as a mysterious dell where the children played, saying, "We longed to get beyond these woods, but Fear played nurse to us and enforced the command that we shall not go beyond the dell. It grew deeper and deeper until we seemed lost to the outside world; here we have trees draped with their wild vines, sun flecked shade, ferns, moss, and wild blooms..." Despite constant debts, Custis adamantly refused to use the woods for commercial purposed. Instead, he chose to keep it as a "park" in the English tradition. "Cherish these forest trees around your mansion," the Marquis De Lafayette cautioned Mrs. Custis in 1825. "Recollect how much easier it is to cut a tree than to make one grow." An avid hunter, Custis often led parties into the woods in search of game. His slaves also hunted and gathered food from the forest. The slaves at Arlington may have known these woods best. Archaeological evidence reveals that they disposed of household trash and ashes from the house's furnace in the ravine. An icehouse was also located there. Each winter, the slaves would have filled it with large blocks of ice cut from frozen sections of the Potomac River. The coming of the Civil War would change this idyllic setting for all time. Thousands of Union soldiers occupied Arlington during the war. They cut down much of the forest to build roads and fortifications, to provide firewood and to clear fields of vision and fire for their guns. Even in the midst of war, the soldiers made a conscious effort to save some of the largest, oldest trees around the mansion, including some of the trees here. In June 1864, Arlington Cemetery was created and over 15,000 graves quickly replaced much of the remaining forest. Edward Dicey, a young cannoneer, described the wartime devastation of Arlington to his mother: "There is nothing left to keep up one's spirits... It has been a splendid place, but everything has been destroyed, the magnificent forest has been cut down..."
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arlington House (The Robert E. Lee Memorial), is a Greek revival style mansion located in Arlington, Virginia, USA and was once the home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It overlooks the Potomac River, directly across from the National Mall in Washington, D.C. During the American Civil War, the grounds of the mansion were selected as the site of Arlington National Cemetery, in part to ensure that General Lee would never again be able to return to his home. Yet the United States has since designated the mansion as a national memorial to its former opponent, a mark of widespread respect for Lee in both the North and South.

Construction and early history:

The mansion was built on the orders of George Washington Parke Custis, a step grandson of George Washington and the most prominent resident of what was then known as Alexandria County. The house was built on a 445-hectare (1,100 acre) estate that Custis' father, John Parke Custis, purchased in 1778. Custis named the house Arlington after the Custis family's homestead on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. George Hatfield, an English architect who also worked on the design of the United States Capitol designed the mansion. The north and south wings were completed between 1802 and 1804. The large center section and the portico, presenting an imposing front 43 meters (140 ft) long, were finished 13 years later. The most prominent features of the house are the 8 massive columns of the portico, each 5 feet (1.5 m) in diameter.

In his day, Custis was the most prominent resident of what was then known as Alexandria County, and the house was host to many of the famous men of the era, including Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette, who visited in 1824. At Arlington, Custis experimented with new methods of animal husbandry and other agriculture. The property also included Arlington Spring, a picnic ground on the banks of the Potomac that Custis originally built for private use but later opened to the public, eventually operating it as a commercial enterprise.

Custis' only child to survive to adulthood was Mary Anna Randolph Custis. Young Robert E. Lee, whose mother was a cousin of Mrs. Custis, frequently visited Arlington. Two years after graduating from West Point, Lieutenant Lee married Mary Custis at Arlington on June 30, 1831. For 30 years Arlington House was home to the Lees. They spent much of their married life traveling between U.S. Army duty stations and Arlington, where six of their seven children were born. They shared this home with Mary's parents, the Custises.

When George Washington Parke Custis died in 1857, he left the Arlington estate to Mrs. Lee for her lifetime and afterwards to the Lees' eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee. The estate needed much repair and reorganization, and Lee, as executor, took a leave of absence from the Army until 1860 to begin the necessary agricultural and financial improvements.

Civil War:

At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Virginia seceded from the Union. Colonel Robert E. Lee, who at that time had served in the U.S. Army for 35 years, was offered command of the Union Army. Lee, however, felt that he could not turn his back on the citizens of his native state of Virginia and decided to instead resign his commission in the army, which he did in writing while still residing in the home. After his resignation, Lee reported for duty in Richmond, as commander of the Virginia Provisional Army; he soon joined the Confederate States Army and was promoted to general. Lee was concerned for the safety of his wife who was still residing at the mansion and convinced her to vacate the property at least temporarily. She managed to send some of the family valuables off to safety.

Federal forces occupied Lee's property within a month after Fort Sumter and used it as a headquarters for officers supervising some of the forts that were part of the defenses of Washington. Many of the remaining family possessions were moved to the Patent Office for safekeeping. Some items, however, including a few of the Mount Vernon heirlooms, had already been looted and scattered.

By 1864, the military cemeteries of Washington and Alexandria were filled with Union dead, and Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs quickly selected Arlington as the site for a new cemetery. Meigs, a Georgian who had served under Lee in the U.S. Army and who hated his fellow Southerners who were fighting against the Union, ordered that graves be placed just outside the front door of the mansion, to prevent the Lees from ever returning. Meigs himself supervised the burial of 26 Union soldiers in Mrs. Lee's rose garden. In October, Meigs' own son was killed in the war, and he too was buried at Arlington.

Neither Robert E. Lee nor his wife were to ever set foot on the property again. Mary Custis Lee visited the grounds shortly before she died, but was overcome by emotion and unable to go inside.

Post-war:

The federal government had confiscated the mansion property, in 1864, claiming that property taxes had not been paid. Robert E. Lee and his wife never legally challenged the return of the home. In 1870, after his father's death, George Washington Custis Lee, the eldest son of Robert E. Lee, filed a lawsuit in the Alexandria Circuit Court which resulted in a later Supreme Court decision in 1882 awarding Custis Lee just compensation for the house and 1,100 acres (4 km�). Lee originally asked for $300,000, however, the court only awarded $150,000, considered the fair market value of the property.

In 1920, the Virginia General Assembly renamed Alexandria County as Arlington County, to honor Robert E. Lee and to end the ongoing confusion between Alexandria County and the independent city of Alexandria.

In 1925, the War Department began to restore the mansion, and control of the mansion was transferred to the National Park Service in 1933. Congress designated the mansion as a memorial to Lee in 1955, and it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.

Today, the mansion is managed by the National Park Service as a memorial to Robert E. Lee while the land surrounding the mansion, known as Arlington National Cemetery, is managed by the Department of the Army.
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