Lee was a foremost pioneer of British colonisation in New South Wales, being amongst the first white men to take land in the Bathurst, Capertee, Bylong, Bogan and Lachlan River regions.

Lee was born in the penal settlement of Norfolk Island and was probably the illegitimate child of the convicts, Sarah Smith and William Pantoney.

After Pantoney's emancipation, the family lived in Windsor and Lee, an industrious youth, was placed under the patronage of William Cox who took him to the newly colonised area of Bathurst in 1815.

In September 1841, nine stockmen of Lee and his pastoralist business partner Joseph Moulder, attempted to appropriate land and set up properties at Duck Creek on the Bogan River.

[7][8][9] Lee's overseer, Andrew Kerr, led the police and armed settlers to Duck Creek where they came into contact with a group of Aborigines whom they proceeded to shoot and sabre indiscriminately resulting in a massacre killing at least twelve Indigenous people.

Governor George Gipps did not cancel Lee's ability to take up land but only prevented him from renewing the lease on this particular property at Duck Creek.