Born in the U.S.A.: Birth, Commemoration, and American Public Memory

5. Stratford Hall: A Memorial to Robert E. Lee?

P 113 p 5P Perhaps it’s a tribute to the exuberance of early twentieth-century monument makers that so many commemorative birthplaces celebrate the memories of people who didn’t remain where they were born for very long. Whether or not a matter of happenstance , this peculiarity has freed the guardians of birth memory to populate these places with a remarkable variety of meanings. Paul Reber and Laura Lawfer Orr, both experienced birthplace stewards, offer a case in point, like Lowe’s, from the golden age of American birthplace commemoration. They explain how the preservation of confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Virginia birthplace—which Lee left at age three—resulted from the efforts of displaced southern women more concerned after the Civil War to promulgate Lost Cause ideology than to confront the complexities of Lee’s life and legacy. With little more than the first years of a newborn to make their point, these progenitors of Lee’s memory moored his legacy in Stratford Hall’s colonial past. The result, as Reber and Orr show us, is less a memorial to Lee than a fascinating glimpse into how twentieth-century Americans enlisted the eighteenth century in what is still a volatile struggle to shape how we understand the nineteenth’s most defining moment. Stratford Hall A Memorial to Robert E. Lee? PAUL REBER AND LAURA LAWFER ORR Stratford Hall is a historic home set on 1,900 acres in Westmoreland County on Virginia’s Northern Neck Peninsula. Constructed circa 1738 by Thomas and Hannah Lee, it was home to four generations of the Lee family. These four generations included many well-known figures who shaped American history. Two of Thomas and Hannah’s sons, Richard 114 p PAUL REBER AND LAURA LAWFER ORR Henry and Francis Lightfoot, signed the Declaration of Independence, and three other sons—Thomas Ludwell, William, and Arthur—played key roles in the struggle for independence. Their sister Hannah became an early proponent of women’s rights. Stratford Hall is best known as the birthplace of Robert E. Lee. While he lived there for less than four years, Robert E. Lee is the personality that most often attracts visitors to the site. Today, Stratford Hall is a private nonprofit historic site administered by the Robert E. Lee Memorial Association. In addition to the historic house, Stratford Hall’s extensive land holdings and location on the Potomac River provide many opportunities for its 30,000 annual visitors to learn about both history and the environment. Stratford Hall’s mission is to preserve the legacy of the Lee family and its plantation community; to inspire an appreciation of America’s past; and to encourage commitment to the ideals of leadership, honor, independent thought, and civic responsibility. Although Stratford Hall now focuses on the importance of the entire Lee family, including its enslaved population and indentured servants, that has not always been the case. The history of Stratford Hall’s preservation and transformation into a nationally significant historic site can be illustrated by the contrasting views of two women: May Field Lanier and Ethel Armes. They cooperated in their efforts but looked at Stratford Hall from different perspectives. One celebrated its role as the birthplace of Robert E. Lee while the other celebrated its architecture and the legacy of its eighteenth -century occupants. Looking closely at these two perspectives provides useful insight into the struggle over public memory as manifested in two social movements prevalent in early twentieth-century America. The first was the principally southern effort to redefine the origins and legacy of the Civil War, a notion widely characterized as the “Lost Cause.” The second involved the aesthetic movement referred to as the Colonial Revival. Considering Stratford Hall’s history in light of these two movements allows us to explore how the professionalization of museums and a female-dominated preservation movement shaped politics and gendered notions of the past.1 The Northern Roots of a Southern Memory In spring 1928, Ethel Armes, a writer from Washington, DC, conducted Stratford Hall P 115 research in Virginia about George Washington’s adult home at Mount Vernon and his birthplace at Wakefield in Westmoreland County. She came across Stratford Hall only by chance. Its appearance struck her as “bleak and gaunt in the center of a bare grass-grown quadrangle . . . scrawny blinds of the eighteen eighties, hanging on broken hinges, and dingy...