Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 15, 1994 TAG: 9409150056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WARRENTON, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
Anne Carter Zimmer, the great-niece of Annie Lee, has led an effort to exhume the body and return it to Lexington, Va.
She has said there is no opposition to the exhumation from the dozen or so Lee descendants still alive.
But Health Director Dennis Retzlaff said he wanted to make sure none of Annie Lee's other closest living descendants objected to removal of the body from the 132-year-old grave just outside Warrenton.
He has written to two great-nephews and a great-niece to explain Zimmer's request.
``I have sent a final letter to the last remaining branch of the Lees I have not heard from,'' Retzlaff said. ``If I hear no objection from them, I'll issue the permit on the 26th'' of September.
The effort to have the body moved began this year after reports of vandalism at the grave site, including the toppling of the 11-foot obelisk that marks it.
The general, his father, mother, wife and all his children except Annie are buried in the Lee family crypt in the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington.
Annie Lee was buried just south of Warrenton, where she had sought sanctuary from the Civil War. She died of typhoid fever there at the age of 23.
Two North Carolina officials tried to set up a meeting with some Lee descendants to urge that Annie Lee's body remain where it is.
Betty McCain, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Review, and William Price, director of the Division of Archives and History, have written to the Lee family asking for a meeting in Raleigh or in Lexington.
But Zimmer said she was not interested in meeting with North Carolina officials, Price said.
by CNB