Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis
(1788-1853)
BIRTH
April 22, 1788
PLACE
Stafford County, Virginia
NAME
Mary Lee Fitzhugh
DEATH
April 23, 1853
PLACE
Arlington, Virginia
FAMILY
MOTHER
Anne Randolph
(1747-1805)
BROTHER
George Washington Parke Custis
(1781-1857)
BROTHER
William Henry Fitzhugh
(1792-1830)
BROTHER
Robert E. Lee
(1807-1870)
SISTER
Mary Anna Custis Lee
(1807-1873)
SISTER
Anne Carter Lee
(1839-1862)
SISTER
Eleanor Agnes Lee
(1841-1873)
SISTER
Mildred Childe Lee
(1846-1905)
HUSBAND
George Washington Parke Custis
(1781-1857)
CHILDREN
William Fitzhugh
(1741-1809)
CHILDREN
Mary Anna Custis Lee
(1807-1873)
HOMES
NICKNAMES
Molly
POLITICAL VIEWS
AFRICAN COLONIZATION ADVOCATE
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
CHRISTIAN
EPISCOPALIAN
MEMBERSHIPS
AWARDS
Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis (1788–1853) was George Washington Parke Custis’s wife and the mistress of Arlington House. She managed its household, promoted Episcopal worship, and taught enslaved people to read, especially for Bible study. Her only surviving child, Mary Anna, married Robert E. Lee. Her charitable and religious interests coexisted with the family’s slaveholding, which shaped daily life at Arlington. She died before the Civil War transformed the estate.
EARLY LIFE
Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis was born on Apr 22, 1788 in Stafford County, Virginia. The surviving biographical summary provides only limited evidence about childhood, schooling, and the daily circumstances of the household, so those details are not reconstructed here without documentation. What can be stated securely is that this person belonged to the interconnected family world from which HistoryGPS traces participants, relatives, and later descendants of the Revolutionary generation.
Chatham Manor
120 Chatham Lane, Fredericksburg, VA
MUSEUM
Surviving Structures
The available biographical record identifies Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis with work or public activity as a hostess. Those roles provide the clearest documented basis for including this person in the database and should be read in the political, military, professional, or household context of the period. Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis died on Apr 23, 1853 in Arlington, Virginia. Additional claims about employment, public service, or accomplishments have been omitted where the consulted source did not support them.
CAREER
DEATH
Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis was George Washington Parke Custis’s wife and the mistress of Arlington House. Custis died at Arlington on April 23, 1853, a day after her 65th birthday and was buried on the estate. Her husband survived her by four years, at which point Arlington House and the grounds were inherited by their daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis, Mrs. Robert E. Lee. The available biographical account does not describe a continuous final medical course. It gives no dependable sequence of treatment and last symptoms from which to reconstruct a more detailed bedside narrative.
Arlington House
321 Sherman Dr, Fort Myer, VA 22211
GRAVE
MUSEUM
George Washington's Mount Vernon
3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Hwy, Mount Vernon, VA 22121
POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES
100507