Mary Greenhow Lee

Mary Greenhow Lee

Courtesy of Stewart Bell Jr. Archives of Handley Regional Library

Quick Facts

Significance:

Southern Diarist

Place of Birth:

Richmond, Virginia

Date of Birth:

September 19, 1819

Place of Death:

Baltimore, Maryland

Date of Death:

May 25, 1907

Place of Burial:

Winchester, Virginia

Cemetery Name:

Mount Hebron Cemetery

Residence: Resident of Winchester 
Role in War: Southern Diarist
Born: September 19, 1819
Died: May 25, 1907
Photo Credit/Donated by: Courtesy of Stewart Bell Jr. Archives of Handley Regional Library

Description:

Mary Greenhow Lee was born on September 19, 1819 in Richmond, Virginia. She was the daughter of Robert Greenhow, Virginia assemblyman, mayor of Richmond, and businessman, and his second wife, Mary Lorraine Charlton Greenhow of Yorktown.

Mary grew up in an octagonal two-story brick home that took up the better part of the block facing the state capitol. Mary's earliest environment was filled with luxury and comfort. The year Mary was born, her father paid taxes on twelve enslaved people to help run this large urban home. Robert Greenhow built a successful mercantile firm and amassed as many as twenty-one city lots and copious farmland in surrounding Henrico County.

In addition to her family's wealth, Mary grew up in the presence of some of the most important men in city, state, and national government. Mary's siblings were James Washington Greenhow, two years her senior, who eventually became a lawyer; and Robert Greenhow Jr., her half-brother, who was twenty years old when she was born.

Robert trained as a doctor, but then joined the U.S. State Department as an interpreter and librarian during Andrew Jackson's presidency. Robert introduced Mary to the workings of government in the federal capital, while his wife, the future Confederate spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow, took Mary to social events where she flirted with Martin Van Buren's son and drank afternoon tea with Dolley Madison. Possibly because they possessed the same bold personalities that would make them fierce Southern supporters during the war, Mary and Rose formed a strong bond.

Mary left Richmond in 1843 when she married the Winchester lawyer and distant cousin Hugh Holmes Lee. Although Hugh and Mary had no children, when he died on 10 October 1856, Mary was not left alone. Hugh's two unmarried sisters and the four children of Hugh's deceased sister lived with her.

By the time Virginia seceded from the Union in April of 1861, Lee had been a widow for over four years and was the head of household for a large family that included five slaves. This, in addition to the exposure to politics provided by her father and brother, is why she exhibited such capability handling Union occupation in Winchester during the war. Her Southern patriotism--and all of her strength of will and intelligence--led her to make good use of what few material resources she owned to become personally involved in the war.

She turned her home into a boardinghouse for Southern officers, while resolutely refusing to open her home to Union officers during their occupation of Winchester. She amassed a storehouse of contraband for Southern soldiers, building a supply of food, socks, and shoes; and, as hotels and churches became hospitals, Lee supplied at least one of them with food and bandages.

After the war, Lee's journal provided details of some soldiers' last hours for grieving family members; she tended to them as they died, even paying for one soldier's burial. From the pages of Lee's Civil War journal, historians learned not only what civilian life was like during the war but also minute details of troop movements and casualty numbers. Military historians were particularly impressed with the accuracy of Lee's wartime reports.

The chivalry expected of men toward women, especially of the nineteenth-century elite, became Mary Greenhow Lee's weapon during the war, as she refused to acknowledge Union officers' offers of assistance, denying them part of their male identity. She also used her elite status as a weapon, refusing to invite Union officers into her home, implying that they were not worthy of her company.

Union General Philip H. Sheridan banished Lee from Winchester, apparently for snubbing Union officers, in February 1865. After the war, Lee relocated to Baltimore where she operated three successive boardinghouses. She served as an officer of the Baltimore Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and she also joined a society whose goal was to build schools throughout the South.

She died in Baltimore of kidney failure in 1907. After a memorial service in Baltimore, her body was taken by train back to Winchester where she was buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery. A Baltimore tax collector calculated that Lee owned no taxable wealth at the end of her life. Nevertheless, one of the most valuable assets she left was her Civil War journal, which provides a vivid picture of the ways in which the war touched all elements of society.

Source:

· Phipps, Sheila R. "Mary Greenhow Lee." The American National Biography Online. Last modified October 2007. Accessed March 31, 2013. http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-03524.html