Robert Edward Lee was the fourth child of Colonel Henry Lee and Ann Hill Carter. On both sides, his family had produced many of the dominant figures in the ruling class of Virginia. Lee's father, Henry (“Light-Horse Harry”) Lee, had been a cavalry leader during the Revolution, a post-Revolution governor of Virginia, and the author of the famous congressional memorial eulogy to his friend, George Washington. Intermarriage with most of Virginia's ruling families was a tradition, and Robert would eventually marry a distant cousin, Mary Anne Randolph Custis, the great-granddaughter of George Washington's wife and heiress of several plantation properties.
