THE LEDGER-STAR
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 28, 1994 TAG: 9409280620
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Virginia News
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WARRENTON, N.C. LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
The remains of General Robert E. Lee's daughter Annie have been disinterred and will be reburied Thursday in the Lee family crypt in Lexington, Va.
Ten members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans used picks and shovels Tuesday to unearth the remains of the 23-year-old woman Lee counted as the ``purest and best'' of his seven children.
``I'm just relieved it's over,'' said Anne Carter Ely Zimmer, Lee's great-granddaughter. She requested the exhumation more than three months ago.
``It was all done in reverence,'' said Jimmy Edwards, great-grandson of a Confederate veteran and owner of the White Funeral Home in Louisburg. ``We did it ourselves. She needed a good resting place.''
A prayer was said before the digging began at 10 a.m. at a shaded cemetery outside Warrenton. Four hours later, a few pieces of Annie Lee's original pine coffin were found, along with a few fragments of bone.
The remains were placed in a new yellow-pine coffin.
Warren County Health Director Dennis Retzlaff issued a permit Tuesday allowing the exhumation. The permit ended a polite argument between descendants who wanted Annie Lee's body to rest near her father's, and North Carolinians who wanted to preserve her grave as an integral part of the state's Civil War history.
``The law makes clear that the only factor to be considered in issuing a permit for disinterment is the wishes of surviving family members,'' Retzlaff said in a statement. All of the dozen or so direct descendants of Annie Lee supported the move.
Annie Lee died on Oct. 20, 1862, from typhoid fever. She had fled to North Carolina seeking sanctuary from the war.
Family members requested the exhumation after reports of vandalism at the gravesite, including the toppling of the 11-foot granite obelisk that marks it.
Gen. Lee, his father, mother, wife and all his children except Annie are buried in a crypt in the Lee Chapel at Washington & Lee University in Lexington.
Annie Lee's death was a severe blow to the war-weary Confederate general. He fell to his knees and wept at the news of her death.
``I cannot express the anguish I feel at the death of our sweet Annie,'' Lee wrote in a letter to his wife. ``To know that I shall never see her again on Earth, that her place in our circle, which I always hoped one day to enjoy, is forever vacant, is agonizing in the extreme.''
Lee could not visit his daughter's grave until March 1870, a short time before his own death. He described the visit as ``mournful yet soothing.'' by CNB