Philip Lee

Philip Lee (?), also known as Phill and Uncle Phil, was an enslaved American of mixed race who lived for most of his life at Arlington House plantation, now the site of Arlington National Cemetery. Lee was kin to a number of key servants at Mount Vernon plantation in Virginia. Lee served as valet and body servant to George Washington Parke Custis for at least 32 years, beginning in 1800. G. W. P. Custis was the step-grandson of U.S. president George Washington and father-in-law of Confederate Army general Robert E. Lee. Custis repeatedly described Lee as a man of sterling character, and considered him a friend. Custis trusted Lee with long-distance errands such as delivering George Washington memorabilia to New York City and delivering four Virginia opossums to the Marquis de Lafayette.

In 1829, Lee's wife and seven children, who had a different legal owner than Lee and lived on a different plantation, were to be sold to slave traders and transported to Georgia. With fundraising publicity organized by Custis, businessmen Arthur Tappan, Richard Varick, and Eleazar Lord, and ministers Ralph Randolph Gurley and Samuel Hanson Cox, New Yorkers and people of the District of Columbia donated the $1,000 necessary to purchase Lee's wife and his seven children (all under 11 years old), thus saving them from being sold south.

Early life Philip Lee was most likely born in the 1780s, Philip Lee was the son of Lucy, who worked as a cook, and butler Frank Lee, who served as the butler at Mount Vernon "for nearly half a century." who was "second cousin of Mary Custis Lee (the wife of Robert E. Lee) and a grandniece of George Washington Parke Custis," the association of Lee and G. W. P. Custis may have predated the death of Martha Washington. Writing in 1854, Williams recorded the following anecdote:

1802–1862 historic period map showing local context of Arlington Estate (Map: Jennifer Hanna, U.S. National Park Service)

In 1802, after Martha Washington died, ownership of Philip, his siblings, and his mother, passed to Eleanor (Nelly) Parke Custis Lewis. According to Mount Vernon historians, 17-year-old Philip Lee was then "sent to Arlington House" where he became valet to Washington's stepgrandson, George Washington Parke Custis. Arlington House, the headquarters of the 1,100-acre Arlington Plantation, "set upon the highest topographic point of the estate...designed and built between the years of 1803–1818 by George Hadfield, an English architect who is known for designing numerous classical residences as well as Treasury Building (1800) and the District of Columbia City Hall (1820). The house is notable for being the first temple-form residence built in the United States, and was purposefully set in a prominent position overlooking the growing capital city of Washington, D.C." Over the course of his life and work, one of Lee's responsibilities was "the nighttime illumination of Arlington House" for special events. While Lee lived there, he would have known the natural spring called Arlington Springs, as well as the market garden, orchards, pastures, and cropland. Over time, Philip Lee came to be called "familiarly, uncle Phil, and [was] known by that title very extensively in the vicinity" of Washington City and Arlington, D.C. Nelly lived on another plantation, making her what was sometimes called a "broad wife." Philip and Nelly had 14 children together, the first seven of whom died in infancy.

In 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette sought American wild turkeys and opossums to take back to Europe with him. The Baltimore American Farmer newspaper published a letter written by Custis from Arlington:

The price of for mother and seven children was deemed "a very reasonable sum, they say, who seem to be judges in the case of 'sinews, bought and sold.'"

Philip Lee's story was mentioned in the Genius of Universal Emancipation abolitionist newspaper in January 1830, in a regular column called "The Blacklist." The topic of the article was the increasing number of American slave ships departing from Virginia seaports and the moral consequences of family separation in American slavery.

Ten thousand from the single port of Norfolk! The above facts forcibly remind me of the case of Philip Lee, the son of Washington's servant, and the bursting of his grief in anticipation of that time, which, but for the interposition of friends, would have separated him forever from his wife and seven beloved children...Ten thousand, in the technics of the country, 'picked hands,' selected one here and another there! Who can estimate the number of families thus broken up? One day the degraded, yet comparatively happy slave is surrounded by a family equally degraded and happy. The next, he is on his way to the Georgia market, his children to Tennessee, and his wife to New-Orleans. Thus separated, the hammer of the auctioneer soon fixes their destinies for life. I say, think of the evils consequent on this trade. Think too of its guilt: But charge not this guilt exclusively upon our brethren at the south. No; you are a criminal too. The tent in question was huge, required three people to set up, was decorated in "laurels and honeysuckle," and on this occasion was "pitched in front of City Hall by the First Division of the New York State Artillery unit."

Seven months later, there had apparently been no progress on Custis' claim that Lee "would not be my slave much longer." In September 1832, Custis' wife Mary Lee (Molly) Fitzhugh Lee wrote him, "Philip is very unhappy...He wishes to hear from you, from family, and to know what are the wishes of his master. He evinces no disposition, that I can see to do wrong in any sense...I consider Philip the greatest sufferer...of his own responsibility and agency...All I want is that right should be done to all parties…If you can come to a decision about that, my dear husband, it ought not to be delayed."

It is unknown whether Philip Lee was ever emancipated. His date and place of death are also unknown.