The house identified at 611 Cameron Street in Alexandria is associated with Henry Lee III, better known as “Light Horse Harry,” but it is not a Revolutionary War residence. Architectural and local records place its construction in the 1790s, and Lee moved his family there around 1810, living in the house for roughly a year. The site therefore commemorates a veteran’s later domestic life rather than a home he occupied during the dates 1778–1783 sometimes attached to the marker record.

Lee had entered the Continental service as a young Virginia cavalry officer. His speed, discipline, and skill in reconnaissance earned Washington’s confidence, and in 1778 he received command of a mixed force of mounted and foot soldiers that developed into Lee’s Legion. Light troops screened larger armies, gathered intelligence, disrupted supply lines, and struck exposed posts. Their mobility made them especially useful in a war fought across long roads and dispersed settlements.

In August 1779, Lee led a surprise night attack on the British post at Paulus Hook, opposite New York. His men captured more than 150 prisoners and withdrew before the garrison could be reinforced. Congress awarded Lee a gold medal for the operation. He later joined Nathanael Greene in the Southern Department, where the legion fought and scouted during the Race to the Dan, Guilford Courthouse, Fort Watson, Ninety Six, and Eutaw Springs.

Lee resigned from the army in 1782 and entered Virginia and national politics. He served in the Confederation Congress, supported ratification of the Constitution, became governor of Virginia, and later represented the state in the United States House of Representatives. After George Washington’s death, Lee delivered the congressional eulogy containing the enduring description “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

His later years were far less triumphant. Speculative land investments produced crushing debt, and the Lee family’s moves within Alexandria reflected worsening financial circumstances. Henry and Ann Hill Carter Lee lived here with children who included the young Robert E. Lee. Henry eventually left the country to recover his health and finances, returned after suffering serious injuries in the Baltimore political violence of 1812, and died in 1818.

The marker should thus be read with a clear chronological distinction. The surviving private house preserves a tangible Alexandria connection to Lee and his family, but his Revolutionary campaigns occurred elsewhere and decades before his residence here. That correction strengthens the site’s meaning: it links a celebrated cavalry commander to the unstable postwar world of politics, family responsibility, debt, and memory, showing that military fame did not guarantee security in the republic he helped establish.