page_title: Lee family
section_title: Later generations
hierarchical_section_title: Lee family / History / Later generations
context_page_description: The Lee family of the United States is a historically significant Virginia and Maryland political family, whose many prominent members are known for their accomplishments in politics and the military. The family became prominent in colonial British North America when Richard Lee I immigrated to Virginia in 1639 and made his fortune in tobacco.
  Members of the family include Thomas Lee, a founder of the Ohio Company and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses; Francis Lightfoot Lee and Richard Henry Lee, signers of the American Declaration of Independence, with Richard Lee also serving as one of Virginia's inaugural U.S. Senators; Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, Lieutenant Colonel in the Continental Army and Governor of Virginia; Thomas Sim Lee, Governor of Maryland and lastly, and most famous, General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate States Army and its pivotal Army of Northern Virginia for the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. Twelfth President Zachary Taylor, and ninth Chief Justice Edward Douglass White were also descendants of Richard Lee I. Confederate President Jefferson Davis married Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of Zachary Taylor.
context_section_description: Francis Preston Blair Lee (1857–1944) was a Democratic member of the United States Senate, representing the State of Maryland from 1914–1917. He was also the great-grandson of American patriot Richard Henry Lee, father of E. Brooke Lee comptroller of Maryland and "Father of Silver Spring" and grandfather of Blair Lee III, Lieutenant Governor of Maryland from 1971–1979 and Acting Governor of Maryland from 1977–1979.
  Judge Charles Carter Lee, a direct descendant of Henry Lee III (Lighthorse Harry), was selected to represent the United States at the 2008 Olympic Games as the United States Olympic Committee's Chef de Mission. Judge Lee, a Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge since 1989, was also involved with the 1984 Summer Olympics as he headed a delegation sent to China after the Soviet Union announced a plan to boycott the Olympics in Los Angeles. These talks concluded with China's formal agreement in writing to participate in the 1984 Olympics. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's mother was born Janet Lee and claimed to be part of the family. It was later proven that she was not.
caption: Rear Admiral Willis A. Lee, Jr., USN; circa 1942.
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