THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 29, 1994 TAG: 9409290446
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WARRENTON, N.C. LENGTH: Short : 43 lines
Annie Lee is going home to Virginia.
The remains of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's daughter were removed Tuesday from the cemetery outside Warrenton where they have lain for 132 years.
The body will be taken today to Lexington, Va., where Annie will be re-interred beside the bodies of her parents, two brothers and three sisters in the family crypt at Washington & Lee University.
The action ends months of uncertainty over the grave site, a historic attraction in Warren County, but one that has been vandalized over the years.
``It's been a lengthy process, but we are glad to see that finally the wishes of the family have prevailed,'' said Louisburg attorney Larry Norman, representing descendants of the general who requested the move.
Officials in the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources offered to take over maintenance of the site in an effort to dissuade Lee family members from moving Annie.
In the end, the decision was solely up to the next of kin, said Dennis Retzlaff, county health director, who issued a permit for disinterment Tuesday.
Retzlaff sent registered letters to the seven family members closest to Annie, all of them great-grandchildren of the general. Four sent affidavits supporting the move, and the rest failed to respond, Retzlaff said.
Shy, raven-haired Anne Carter Lee, the general's third daughter, died of typhoid fever while visiting the Jones Springs resort in October 1862. She was 23.
With the Civil War raging in Virginia, Lee's wife accepted an offer from the Jones family, her distant relatives, to bury Annie in the family plot.
An 11-foot granite obelisk, carved by a crippled Confederate veteran to mark Annie's grave, will remain at the site. by CNB