Sunday, June 9, 2013

Rober t E. Lee's Daughter's Trunks Discovered

On May 19 I blogged about Mary Custis Lee's connection to the First White House of the Confederacy, with the generous gift by friends of her marvelous Secretary/Desk/Bookcase which we placed in the President's study.
 
White House friends from Oregon saw the blog and sent us an article from the Washington Post, Dec. 2002, saying that more than 80 years after her death, two steamer trunks full of her papers and travel souvenirs were found in a bank vault in Alexandria, Va.
 
What a marvelous find! Everything in the trunks was Lee related, and included family letters, pictographs, clippings of her father's obituary, strands of hair from royalty collected on her European trips, and other goodies.
 
  "There are thousands of letters in there" said Rob E. L. deButts, a Lee descendant, who was responsible for the find, as he had contacted the bank Ms. Lee used when out of the country and they had discovered the two trunks .
 
The contents were taken to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond for cataloguing and preserving. I wonder what has happened since then? Wouldn't it be fun to read some of these?
 

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