William Lee (diplomat)

Born at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, to planter Thomas Lee (1690–1750) and his wife, Hannah Harrison Ludwell (1701–1750).

He could trace his descent from Richard Lee I, a merchant and colonial officeholder who had founded the influential Virginia family in the previous century.

[2][3] As a younger brother, Lee did not expect to inherit plantations from his parents, but after completing his education moved to London and became a mercantile agent for Virginia in the tobacco trade.

While Hannah proved to be shrewd in understanding the purchasing desires and needs of planters' wives (thus helping to gain business from their husbands), William Lee also made some unwise decisions concerning her Virginia plantations firing the long-time overseer and antagonizing the widely respected Robert Carter Nicholas who was administering Philip Ludlow's will.

[9] Lee became an agent of the Continental Congress during the American Revolution, and was posted to Berlin and Vienna but the political situation caused the family to take up residence in Frankfurt.

[15] Lee learned that his wife died suddenly in Ostend, Belgium on August 18, 1784, on her way home with the children, and ordered her buried in London with her parents.

[15] In 1785, his eyesight failing, he also tried to strengthen the Episcopal Church, while waiting for his daughters to arrive (they did in November, and would be sent to be educated at Menokin by the childless Col. Frank Lee and his wife Becky).

[16] Although ill and going blind (cataract surgery in Philadelphia in 1789 having failed),[17] Lee in 1790 accepted the post of James City County sheriff, and served two years.

[18] His underage sisters remained at Menokin, then after Col. Frank Lee's death moved to Alexandria, Virginia, where Portia married merchant William Hodgson in May 1799.

As executor, Hodgson tried to impose discipline on the plantation, including its slaves freed by William Lee's will on January 1 following his death, but finally sold the estate to George Mason in 1824.

[24] Although William L. Lee's will also made a bequest to establish a free school there, in 1818 the College of William and Mary brought suit, alleging that the annual allotments of corn had not been paid, nor did the college ever establish the school, although the case reportedly reached the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.