Ravensworth

Ravensworth. Temporary Safe Haven. , The nearby Ravensworth mansion provided a safe haven for Mrs. Robert E. Lee (Mary Randolph Custis Lee) at the beginning of the Civil War. Constructed about 1796, Ravensworth was the home of Mrs. Lee’s widowed aunt, Anna Maria Fitzhugh. The newlywed Lees spent part of their honeymoon there in July 1831., In May 1861, Gen. Robert E. Lee left his wife’s home, Arlington House, for Richmond to become commander of state troops and military advisor to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Concerned for his wife’s safety so close to the U.S. capital, Lee urged her to move to her “Cousin Anna’s” home, Ravensworth. She was reluctant to go and later wrote, “I left my home in obedience to the wishes of my husband.” After less than a month, she left Ravensworth for other relatives’ homes after Lee wrote that her presence might imperil Mrs. Fitzhugh., Mrs. Fitzhugh remained at Ravensworth throughout the war with a few slaves. The house and its occupants escaped “serious molestation,” although both armies seized some of the property’s resources. Federal soldiers cut wood there in February 1863. Confederate Maj. John Scott wrote that on August 23,1863, Confederate Maj. John S. Mosby and his rangers slept in a haystack there and in the morning were shocked to “find themselves in full view of and close proximity to an encampment of Yankees.”, After Mrs. Fitzhugh died in 1874, the Lee children inherited Ravensworth. In 1877, the U.S. government rejected a claim from the estate for reimbursement for 3,000 pounds of hay seized during the war. The house burned in 1926.