Lee-Fendall House

The Lee-Fendall House is a historic house located at 614 Oronoco St. in Alexandria, Virginia.

The Lees and 614 Oronoco Street

(originally 429 North Washington Street)
(excerpts obtained from many sources, including "Visitors From The Past", by T. Michael Miller)

In November 1784, Maj. Gen. Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee (1756-1818) purchased 3 one-half acre lots in Alexandria from Baldwin Dade (1716-1783), a merchant. On December 4, 1784, he sold one of these tracts to Philip Richard Fendall I, Esq. (1734-1805), for three hundred pounds, and Philip began building the Lee-Fendall House, for his second wife, Elizabeth (Steptoe) Lee (1743-1789), spring or early summer of 1785. The lot was located on the southeast corner of Washington and Oronoko Street, then the edge of the city. At the time, very few structures were near, and the Fendall’s enjoyed a spectacular view of Oronoko Bay and the ships which docked there. To the north and west lay verdant fields of grass and clover. Alexandria was an up and coming thriving social and political center in Northern Virginia. The architect is unknown, but the style is similar to that found at “Hard Bargain”, an estate built by the Digges family, and located in Charles County from which Philip hailed. It consisted of a “telescopic” design, which was synonymous with Maryland, and had three sections.

The house was completed by November 1785, when George Washington wrote in his diary dated November 10th 1785: "Went to Alexandria to meet the Directors of the Potomack Company and dined at Mr. Fendall's (who was from home) and returned in the evening with Mrs. Washington." The Fendalls are mentioned in Washington's 1785-1786 diaries more than anyone outside his own family, and Washington dined here at least seven times in those years. Elizabeth was a favorite of George and Martha Washington, a frequent visitor to Mount Vernon, and frequent hostess to the Washingtons. Philip was one of the few men who were close friends with Washington and participated in his social coterie.

House history

After the Revolution, Alexandria, already known as "Washington's Home Town", became known also as the "Home Town of the Lees". At "Lee Corner", the intersection of Washington and Oronoco Streets, stands the "Keystone", the Fendall-Lee House, as it was known. North across Oronoco are twin houses: 609, where Cornelia (Lee) Hopkins (1780-1818), daughter of William Lee (1739-1795), lived after her marriage to Johns Hopkins (1795-1873) until her death in 1816, and 607, the last home of Light Horse Harry Lee, and known to the public as "Robert E. Lee's Boyhood Home". Just across Washington Street is the house built by Edmund Jennings Lee I (1772-1843), younger brother of Harry Lee. Directly south of the Fendall-Lee House, on the corner of Washington and Princess, is the house built by Hon. Charles Lee (1758-1815), Attorney General, another of Harry's brothers. Charles and Edmund married Lee sisters, Anne and Sally, daughters of Richard Henry Lee (1732-1794). The Lee-Fendall House is the only Lee family house on Historic Lee Corner that is presently a museum.

Ludwell says Light Horse Harry Lee spent a great deal of time in this house. Matilda Lee was devoted to her mother, and many of Harry's letters are datelined "Alexandria", indicating he was at 614 Oronoco. Also Washington's diary includes several entries about going to Alexandria and dining at Mr. Fendall's to meet colonel Lee. Both Mrs. Fendall and Matilda were in failing health in 1788, and the Lees spent the winter of 1788-1789 with the Fendalls. When George Washington left Virginia to become President of the United States, in April 1789, it was in this house that Lee wrote (in the dining room) the speech delivered by Col. Dennis Ramsey, Mayor of Alexandria at the farewell dinner (201 North Fairfax Street) given for Washington by his fellow citizens.

Elizabeth Fendall lived in the Lee-Fendall House from 1785 until her death in June, 1789, probably from cancer. In May of 1789, while on a trip that was to include a visit to her daughter, Matilda at “Stratford”, she died unexpectedly in Baltimore, Maryland. Her brother Harry Lee wrote to James Madison, Jr.: "You have heard of the loss we have met with in the death of Mrs. Fendall - better for her to be sure had this event taken place sooner & altho' we are convinced of this truth yet our affliction is immoderate. Poor Mrs. Lee is particularly injured by it, as the affliction of mind adds to the infirmity of her body." Her daughter, Matilda, was prostrated by the loss of her mother, and the Lees remained in Alexandria many weeks after the funeral.

A plat on a 1796 insurance policy shows eight buildings on the quarter block, valued at a total of $11,500, including a "Rabbit House" and a "Pigeon House". The main dwelling house was valued at $5,000.

Elizabeth Lee Fendall died shortly thereafter, and in 1791, Fendall married Harry's sister, Mary "Mollie" Lee (1764-1827). Fendall died in 1805, but Mary Lee Fendall continued to live in the house with her two children, Philip Richard Fendall II (1794-1868), and Lucy Eleanor Fendall Buchanan (ca. 1795-1827), until her death in 1827.

During this period, there was a constant coming and going of Lees in the House. The gardens of the Fendalls and the Charles Lees adjoined, at the time, and, thanks to copies of family letters we have already received from Ludwell Lee Montague and Eleanor Lee Templeman, we know that Cornelia (Lee) Hopkins (1780-1818) and Portia (Lee) Hodgson (1777-1840), and the daughters of Eleanor Calvert Custis Stuart (mother of George Washington Parke Custis) visited their "Aunt Fendall" frequently. Cornelia and Portia were the daughters of William Lee (1739-1795), and Hannah Phillipa Ludwell (1737-1784) of “Greenspring”. William was a mercantile agent for Virginia in London, and served as a High Sheriff of London in 1775.

William was appointed by the Continental Congress as Commercial Agent to Nantes in France during the American Revolution. He also served as U.S. Commissioner to The Hague, Berlin, and Vienna. In 1778 William negotiated a loan for the U.S., and arranged a commercial treaty with Holland. He was recalled in 1779. William married Hannah Phillipa Ludwell (1737-1784), the daughter of Philip Ludwell (1716-1776). William was the son of Col. Thomas Lee, Hon. (1690-1750) of “Stratford”.

In 1811 with the assistance of his sister Mary (Lee) Fendall “Mollie” (1764-1827), General Henry Lee was able to rent the stately house at 607 Oronoco, which was owned by William Henry Fitzhugh (1792-1830) (another Lee!). William Henry Fitzhugh had graduated from Princeton University in 1808, was Vice-President of the Colonization Society, and was a member of the Virginia Constitutional Convention from 1829-1830. It is certain that Gen. Robert Edward Lee (1807-1870), the son of Henry, was a frequent visitor of his Aunt Fendall’s household across the street. The family resided at 607 until Robert left for West Point in 1825. The tragedy of Harry Lee's injuries by a Baltimore mob as he tried to defend a friend who had opposed the War of 1812, and his desperate search for health in Barbados, were too much, and Henry died in 1818.

After Mary Lee Fendall's death in 1827, Edmund Jennings Lee I (1772-1843) bought the house, and leased it for many years. In 1836, he moved from his home on 428 Washington, next door, and into the Lee Fendall House. Edmund was a brother of Light Horse Harry Lee. His wife Sally Lee (1775-1837) was the youngest daughter of Richard Henry Lee (1732-1794), a senator and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Sally died here in 1837, and Edmund continued to live here until his death in 1843.

In 1843, two of Edmund J. Lee’s daughters, Hannah (Lee) Stewart (1806-1872) and Sally Lee (1801-1879), inherited the House and leased it to Lucy Lyons Turner. Commonly known as “Aunt Turner”, she was the granddaughter of Virginia Supreme Court Justice Peter Lyons and confidante of the Cassius Francis Lee, Sr. (1808-1890) family.

In 1850 the house was conveyed to Louis Anthony Cazenove (d. 1852), who had married another Lee, Harriott Stuart, daughter of Cornelia Lee Turberville Stuart, in 1850. Louis completely remodeled the house, and with them lived his father, Antoine Charles Cazenove, who had emigrated from Geneva, being an ancient French Huguenot family. Antoine had been a close friend and business associate of Eleuthere Irenee DuPont (1771-1834), the original founder of the great powder making firm.

Although both A. C. Cazenove and Louis died in 1852, Louis’s wife Harriott continued to live here until 1856 when she removed to “Stuartland”. A great granddaughter of Antoine Charles Cazenove, Anne Eliza Gardner (1819-1885), married Cassius Francis Lee, Sr. (1808-1890), son of Edmund Jennings Lee I (1772-1843), and so the house remained in the family.

Anne was the daughter of William Collins Gardner (1790-1844) and Eliza Frances Cazenove (1798-1857). William had moved from Newport, Rhode Island to Alexandria upon his marriage. Eliza was born in Alexandria, the daughter of Louis Anthony Cazenova (d. 1852).

By 1863, the Lee-Fendall House was seized by Union authorities for non-payment of taxes and utilized as an annex to the Grosvenor House military hospital. After the Civil War, Union radicals resided there, E.E. White, a tax collector and Charles Whittlesay, a lawyer and Attorney General of Virginia.

In 1870, it was bought from the estate of Edmund Jennings Lee I (1772-1843) by Dr. Robert Fleming (d. 1871), who had married Mary Elizabeth Lee (1827-1903), eldest child of Col. Richard Bland Lee II (1797-1875). Dr. Fleming died in 1871, and according to Mrs. James Lee Sheridan, Mrs. Fleming moved to Washington, D.C, and permitted her three sisters, Myra Gaines (Lee) Civalier (1841-1908), Evelina Prosser (Lee) Morgan (1832-1867), Julia Eustis (Lee) Prosser, and one brother, Robert Fleming Lee (1849) to reside at the house. Myra became a prominent actress and outstanding celebrity on the Alexandria social scene in the 1890's and also performed throughout the United States. She married Charles Napoleon Civalier (1836), of Bordeaux, France.

Julia Anna Marion Lee (Holmes), wife of James Lee Sheridan, was born at 614 Oronoco Street in 1890, because her mother, also Julia Anna Marion Lee (wife of William Pinckney Holmes of Baltimore), daughter of Myra Gaines (Lee) Civalier (1841-1908), wanted her child to be born in Virginia. Mrs. Sheridan says she visited here frequently, until the death of her grandmother in 1903.

Upon the death of Mrs. Fleming in 1903, the house was to be sold to settle her estate. However, Myra loved the house so much that she threatened to burn it down with herself in it if it were sold out of the Lee family. As a result of her worrying, she was put into a hospital. In the meantime, Myra’s mother went to Myra’s best friend, Mai Greenwell, and asked her to buy the house. At the time she had a house that she was content with, and had no plans to purchase the Lee-Fendall House. However, a suitor was at the meeting, and upon hearing this, told Mai if she would marry him, he would buy the house. The suitor was Robert Forsyth Downham, who bought the house for $5,500, thus ending the Lee family’s control of the structure. The couple lived here until 1937. Between 1785 and 1903, the house had been lived in by 35 members of the Lee family.

Robert Downham, an Alexandria haberdasher and liquor dealer, presided here for the next 31 years. From here the house was conveyed in 1937 to John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers. During the next 32 years, the house was the home of Lewis, his daughter Katherine and his wife Myrta. Lewis was well-known on the national scene during the famous coal strikes of World War II and afterwards as a leader in the labor movement. In 1969, upon the death of Lewis, the Fendall House was leased until 1974, when it was purchased by the Virginia Trust for Historic Preservation. From that time to the present, it has become a well-known Virginia landmark and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The Lee-Fendall House serves not only as an educational historic house museum but also as the setting for weddings and gala social affairs.

External links

* [http://www.leefendallhouse.org/ Lee-Fendall House Museum And Garden Website]
* [http://www.stratfordhall.org/ Official website of Stratford Hall]