Cleydael, King George County, Virginia

Cleydael's History:
The Stuarts:
Booth @ Cleydael:
Lees & Other Relations:
1. Lee Family Connections
2. Other Relations
Cleydael Today:
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The Lees of Virginia and Cleydael

A less well known role that Cleydael played in history was to serve as a temporary home for General Robert E. Lee's two middle daughters, Annie and Agnes, for a several months in the summer of 1861 after the family had lost their beloved Arlington to Federal occupation.

Letters from General Lee to his daughters while at Cleydael were reprinted by his son Robert E Lee Jr in his biography of his father.

Two of the Stuarts' daughters, Ada and Mary, had gone to school at the Virginia Female Institute in Staunton with the two Lee girls and are mentioned in Agnes Lee's school days diaries¹ from the 1850's.

Her diaries also decribe a family visit to the Stuarts at Cedar Grove and visits to Arlington by her Stuart cousins.

Agnes and Annie's stay at Cleydael must have been bittersweet, as their cousin and school chum Mary Stuart had died at the tender age of 19 a mere year and a half before in December 1859, of a cause described only as "paralysis".²

Julia Calvert Stuart was a cousin of Mary Custis Lee on the Calvert side of the family and had been a bridesmaid at the Lees' wedding at Arlington in 1831. Her father, George Calvert, owner of "Riversdale", in Prince Georges County, Maryland, was a younger brother of Mrs. Lee's paternal grandmother, Eleanor Calvert. After the death of her first husband, John Parke Custis, Eleanor remarried in 1789 to Dr. David Stuart of Alexandria, Virginia, who was also Dr. Richard H. Stuart's uncle. Dr. and Mrs. Stuart probably met through being part of the same extended family circle, with her aunt having been married to his uncle.

The Stuarts and Lees were close friends and near-contemporaries in age.. After the War, when General Lee was President of Washington College, he wrote a letter to his wife when she was away at the hot springs with her cousin Julia Stuart. Mrs. Stuart was apparently a frequent travelling companion of Mrs. Lee's, despite the fact that King George County was a fairly long journey from Lexington.

“You must have had a pleasant time at 'Clydale’.”
— Gen. Robert E. Lee to daughter Annie, Dec 8, 1861

The Stuart's second daughter, Margaret was said to be General Lee's favorite, and in a letter he wrote during the War, he notes that she had made him a pair of gauntlets. The eldest Lee daughter, Mary Custis Lee, reknowned for her headstrong independence stayed at Cedar Grove, the Stuarts' large plantatinon on the Potomac for most of the War. She refused to budge, even when it became unsafe to be on the shores of the Potomac, despite her father once sending the cavalry to go fetch her! She too must have at least occasionally visited Cleydael, to see her hosts.

The Stuarts and Stratford Hall

Dr. Stuart was connected to the Lee family in other ways. He inherited General Lee's birthplace, Stratford Hall in 1879 from his half sister, Elizabeth McCarty Storke, one of his mother's two daughters from her first marriage. Mrs. Storke's husband, Henry D. Storke had bought Stratford Hall when it came up for auction in 1828, after substantial gambling and other debts (and a lawsuit from Mr. Storke, as Elizabeth McCarty's new guardian) forced Robert E. Lee's elder half brother "Black Horse Harry Lee" to sell the house which he had inherited from his mother, Mathilda Lee.

There was more than an element of poetic justice in Mrs. Storke ending up the owner of Stratford Hall. Her sister, Anne Robinson McCarty, was "Black Horse Harry's" wife. The sisters were the victims of the Lee family scandal in which "Black Horse Harry" took advantage of his wife's sister who had been his ward. At the time, his wife Ann was suffering from depression and had become laudanum dependent after their two year old daughter and only child had been killed falling down the stone steps at Stratford. Black Horse Harry consoled himself with his sister in law, whom he seduced. He got her pregnant but the baby was stillborn. He also managed to fritter away both his wife's inheritance and his sister in laws. His wife left him because of the embarassing situation and moved to Tennesee, where she eventually cured herself of the laudanum habit. She and her husband were eventually reconciled and moved to France, where he died in 1838 and she died in 1840.

In Harry Lee's defense, there is some controversy about who might have actually been at fault in the affair. His wife was depressed and drug-dependent, he too was depressed over the death of his only child, and on the premises was his attractive and vivacious sister in law, who had in fact requested that her brother in law serve as her guardian, in preference to her stepfather, Richard H. Stuart (father of our Dr. Stuart of Cleydael). Undoubtedly, life at Stratford Hall was gayer than at home at Cedar Grove, and a young woman's head could have been easily turned. However, given Harry Lee's reputation as a rake and "man about town", this researcher's inclination is to fault the man in the situation and that was the general public opinion at the time. This scandal initially caused George Washington Parke Custis to disapprove of young Robert E. Lee's courtship of his only daughter and heiress. Although he was fond of young Robert personally and knew him to be of sterling character, the fact that the family had been tained by recent scandal gave him pause.

Mrs. Storke did not have any more children and according to Lee biographers, dressed in mourning throughout her life. With her having no direct heirs, Stratford passed to her half brothers Richard and Charles, as trustees for her nephews (also named Richard and Charles), the sons of Dr. Stuart's brother Charles Edward Stuart. (Dr. Richard Stuart having left no male heirs as his two sons had died of scarlet fever in 1862.) Dr. Stuart's brother was involved in practicing law in Alexandria, so Dr. Stuart assumed the main trusteeship role for his nephews and spent much of his time at Stratford Hall until his death.

Ironically, these two Stuart boys, Richard and Charles, chose the same professions as their namesakes. Richard Henry Stuart (son of Charles, named for both his uncle and grandfather) became a doctor, and Charles Edward Stuart, named for his father, became a lawyer. This younger Charles Edward Stuart, served as a judge and as speaker of the House in the Virginia General Assembly. They divided the property, with Judge Stuart taking some of the land as his share (as he, like his father, was based in Alexandria) while Dr. Stuart lived and practiced medicine at Stratford until his death in 1924. Dr. Stuart left the property to his son, Charles Edward Stuart, an attorney, businessman and a four-term Delegate to the Virginia General Assembly in the 1930s.

Dr.and Mrs. Stuart's portraits hang at Stratford Hall today and the Stuart family continued to live at Stratford Hall until 1932, when it passed to the ownership of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Association. The family continued to live there until 1932. The Stuart Society, a new association for descendants of Rev. David Stuart the original immigrant was formed in 2002 and held its first reunion at Stratford Hall in 2002. The Fredericksburg Freelance Star covered the reunion in this article. Betsy Stuart Valentine, the President of the Stuart Society, is a granddaughter of Charles Edward Stuart, the last private owner of Stratford Hall.

Footnotes:
1. deButts, Mary Custis Lee. ed. Growing Up in the 1850's: The Journal of Agnes Lee. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
2. Source: 1860 Census Mortality Schedules, King George County, VA

Cleydael is a private home. please respect our privacy and do not visit without an invitation. (Unless, of course, you're somebody we know, in which case y'all come!!
-- but phone first and give us a heads up and be expected to be handed a paint brush!)