She said of her father, “To me, he seems a Hero - & all other men small in comparison.” He relied on her to run the household after he accepted the position as head of Washington College and they moved to Lexington, Virginia. She had many suitors after the war but turned them all down, as none of them matched up to her father whom she idolized. It was more isolated and did not offer much in the way of diversions, but Mildred was content to continue her collection of animals, especially chickens which she found to be a great comfort. Soon after the war, the remaining family moved to the home of a family friend. Mildred often took walks with him around the city in the evening which brought them closer together. Mildred’s father joined them after the surrender at Appomattox. Fires set by the Union Army reached across the street from their house but no further. Godfrey Weitzel arrived at their doorstep and offered to move them to a safer place but Mary refused.
While the city burned and citizens evacuated, the Lee women stayed. In the spring of 1865, Richmond fell to Union forces.
After a few months of bites and invasions into neighbors’ homes, the squirrel disappeared. Her other goal during her time wartime stay in Richmond was to domesticate a squirrel she found in the neighborhood. Mildred became a full-time knitter for the Confederacy, more specifically for her father’s soldiers. That Christmas she made her way home to Arlington, the last time the entire family was together for the holiday.īy Christmas 1863, she left school and joined her mother and sisters in Richmond. She was very happy there, though she often wrote of homesickness for her pet cat, Tom Titta.
In the fall of 1860, Mildred enrolled at a boarding school in Winchester, Virginia. She had her own space in the family garden at Arlington House, but she ran out of room to grow flowers because of all the cats she buried.
She did that with the help of a menagerie of kittens, chickens, and the occasional squirrel. After the war, she became close to her father, who nicknamed her “Precious Life.”Īs she was five years younger than her next sister, Agnes, who spent most of her time with her closest sibling Annie, Mildred grew up entertaining herself. She was born February 10, 1846, at Arlington House. The fourth daughter, and youngest child, of Robert and Mary Lee, was Mildred Childe, named after Robert’s sister.
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