Mythical-LEE!

Tagging Hatte Rubenstein Blejer it's going to take a couple of curators plus pros to get this sorted.

Didn't do anything with it yet except to turn the duplicate "Mary" (wife of Lewis Burwell) into the Martha who did marry him. I think maybe Mary & Martha were twins - need to check those Burwells and see if they were brothers. (Burwells = a Clarke County family.)

And we want to help figure out that James Ludwell Lee ...

I'm guesstimating that James Ludwell Lee may turn out to be a coincidental distaff connection to THE Lees via the Ludwells (his mother's side of the family). If he proves out as a son of James Leigh/Lee of Bath NC, he's not a direct male-line descendant of THE Lees, but may be a collateral relative some 20-30+ generations back (7/8 points of difference). (Leedna.com tends to be very strict in its interpretations of the data.)

If you play around with the leedna.com chart long enough, you start suspecting a small I1a kin-group somewhere around the early Middle Ages that diversified into several of the Lee subgroups.

I am moving house this week and will be exhausted next week, but the LEE family is on my list to work on with Erica and others late next week or the week after. Thank you for the detailed notes on issues.

I have spent a lot of time looking at the Lee DNA material this month.

I don’t remember but think I didn’t work on that branch, although Letitia Corbin is familiar.

We did a lot of analyzing James "Ludwell" Lee on another thread, and concluded there was a lot of puffery and confusion around him (middle name probably fictional, for one small thing).

As for the rest of the mess, yikes!

It's interesting that Edmund Jennings Lee's work holds up so well - no major errors of commission, and only a few errors of omission (I can understand forgetting about Kendall Lee if she died very young).

I have Edmund Jenning’s book right next to me here since I am on the East Coast. I’m taking it to UPS to send to my West Coast study to use next week :). I really missed it last week when I was looking at the Lees.

It's available online here: https://archive.org/stream/leeofvirginia16400inleee#page/n5/mode/2up

My 4th gt-grandmother Ann Talitha Lee McGuire was positive her grandfather was Hancock.Lee II. Her descendants lived their lives as Lee offshoots, following their purported relations into wars (1812,,Mexican, Civil) as a matter of honor. And the name they gave their children:Robert Edward, Winfield Scott Lee, Annie Lee....an avalanche of Lees down to my living aunt Virginia Lee. If they weren't related to the Ditchley bunch, a lot of people lived their lives deluded. And took an unnecessary number of minnie balls.

And as a postscript, let me quote an early English chronicler of the family:"There are more Leghs than fleas".

Can we place this Lee?

Robert Lee, of Petsworth Parish

Doesn't seem to have left any descendants, so it's probably academic whether he was a nephew of Col. Richard Lee or not - traditionally the Col. did have at least one brother who decided he didn't like Virginia and went back home. (If there were any others who stayed, they probably didn't leave male-line descendants down to the present - lines "daughtering out" is a perpetual frustration to Y_DNA research.)

Regrettably, Gail, Ann Talitha McGuire traces back to a gent known as "Thomas Lee of Goochland" or "Thomas Lee (VA)" who is no possible relation to Col. Richard Lee (known descendants, 11 kits worth, tested R1a1a - see http://leedna.com/dnaresults.php?id=21 ).

Checking to see if I can find a connection with the Winchester (VA) McGuires, a family which produced several noted physicians, including Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, "Stonewall" Jackson's personal physician. Those McGuires originated in County Kerry, Ireland.

Re Robert Lee, nephew of Richard

Apparently he died without issue in Virginia but there's a bit of oddity about the property, the widow's son by 2nd husband, Robert Porteus, inherited Lee land from her. That makes me wonder if perhaps there was a Lee child, its not like Porteus wasnt loaded. Also there's a later generation Lee / Portus marriage, so it would be cool to show family connections

Sending my Edmund Jennings’ Lee book via UPS so it does not get lost in the move :)

Early Virginia was lousy with Lees, most of them NOT closely related to Richard Lee m. Anne Constable.

The citation is here, it's a credible source

https://books.google.com/books?id=vSeu6_nvZQAC&lpg=PA24&ots...

Looking through this book which is a lively read and recent

https://books.google.com/books?id=UbyPlhZeKZIC&q=Porteus#v=onep...

The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family
By Paul C. Nagel

I enjoyed this article about the Founder

http://leefamilyarchive.org/reference/essays/montague/index.html

Nice article. He hasn't got his heraldry *quite* right: technically only the eldest son AS heir was entitled to the family arms without a difference, and that only after he inherited.

There are several other factors to consider:

1) The College of Arms *would* allow and confirm a new grant of arms, if the applicant could pay the fee, and they would allow reuse of elements from related family arms if sufficiently differenced.

2) The College of Arms never had official jurisdiction in the Colonies, only in England and Wales (Scotland has its own Lyon Court, which is even stricter, but has no jurisdiction outside Scotland).

3) Things like fesses chequy were relatively late developments, as all the common charges and colors got used up.

Lee of Virginia doesn't *quite* match the records (in Burke's General Armory) for Lee of Langley - the latter was authorized "gules, a fess counter-compony or and azure" between eight billets argent", that is, red background, *two* rows of checks gold and blue, four white/silver rectangles above and four below. Lee of Virginia is genuinely chequy (*three* or more rows of checks) azure and argent - blue and *silver*, and the field appears to be "seme of billets *or* (gold). It looks rather as though Richard Lee(?) tweaked the Lee of Langley arms and got the new version passed as his.

Exactly *when* they became official seems to be a bit of a question. Wikipedia credits the authorization to John Gibbon, Bluemantle Pursuivant of the College of Arms, with a date of 1660/1 - but Gibbon did not become Bluemantle Pursuivant until 1668 (and wasn't formally invested with the office until 1671). He was, however, associated with Richard Lee I, having spent the years 1659-60 or thereabouts managing Lee's Virginia estate as well as investigating Native American "heraldry".

Also, the current version is quartered with Astley of Nordley (Shropshire, UK), based on a tradition of intermarriage with that family.