Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-06-02
Tales of Well Known Folk
In Social and Official Life
Campaign for Preservation of One of Washing
tons Most Cherished Landmarks Is Attract
ing Liberal Financial Support.

recent decision of the various Gale
DOMAIN societies throughout the coun-
try, be hereafter annually celebrated
in the typical way Of kits and bag
pipes. There also will be inaugurated
q thorough search in the Highlands to
discover all that may be obtained from
parochial and county records about the
maker of the flag which Paul Jones
SO defiantly unfurled in the War of
independence. All efforts to affiliate
this historic needlewoman with the
various families of Ross who attained
distinction during the Revolutionary
struggle have failed. Absolutely no
data exists to furnish even a meager
biographical sketch, other than that
she was from the Highlands and was
very proud of the fact. But with the
painstaking Scotch historians at work
and a searching of Philadelphia's rec
ords at the time she lived in the pic
turesque house now a municipal shrine,
there will no doubt be secured
exact information. George Ross, the
signer, seems to have known the maker
of the flag, but his family records throw
no light on a possible connection. He
was the grandson of Scotchman who
settled at Newcastle, Del, and was en-
gagged in the shipping business. The
signer left Newcastle when he went to
Philadelphia to study law, and he was
in the practice of his profession in
Lancaster, Pa. when he was sent to
the Continental Congress.
Thomas Lee, the first native-born
governor of Virginia, was not the build
er of Stratford, the wonderful old man
sion in which so years later many Lees
saw the light, but he was the founder
and immigrant of the family and came
to the colony in 1850. That third
Thomas Lee, whose sons played such a
dominant role in the Revolutionary
struggle, built his mansion on the 600
acre grant which had been made to his
grandfather and he established in
Stratford the Lee court, over which, as
lord of the manor, he presided and
passed judgment on freemen and the
gentry, and in the lower floor his stew
ard held the minor court which dealt
with offenSeS committed by those in
bond. Perhaps the most interesting
chamber in this ancient stronghold of
the Lees, recently acquired by the
Daughters of the Confederacy, is that
under the peaked roof and extending over
one-half the house, where the legal ses-
sions were held. Records of the Lee
court in which Thomas the first pre-
sided are precious for the historian who
seeks earliest legal measures passed
in the Old Dominion, and many vol
umes of these are treasured in the vari-
Gus Lee homes in other parts of Vir-
ginia. For nearly a century the Lees
have not owned Stratford, the splendid
old mansion and it's broad acreage hav-
ing been sold for debt during the war
between the States, and when the
William Alexander, jr., Chapter of the
Daughters of the Confederacy acquired
title a few months ago, the owner was
Mr.. Charles E. Stuart, a lawyer of
Montrose. From many Lee households
will go ancient belongings of Stratford.
In order that as a historic shrine of the
Lees it may reproduce something of