Did Robert e lee father go to debtor prison?

Answer 1

Yes. The father was Richard Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, a hero of the Revolution. As a delegate to the Second Continental Congress he had offered the Resolution that led to the Declaration of Independence from Britain. He was a brilliant man but terrible with money. He was involved in one impractical scheme after another. A few of these, such as one for developing land in the vicinity of Washington DC, were merely ahead of their time. Many prominent men of that era were perpetually in debt, owing far more than they could ever repay, and got by only by continually negotiating new loans from their peers.

Light Horse Harry Lee died of the lingering effects of a beating he sustained from a mob at the time of the War of 1812. Lee's friend and political ally was a Baltimore newspaper editor. The Baltimore mob got the idea that this editor was pro-British. Lee had gone to his offices to help him defend his business when the mob overran the place and beat him severely. He lived for a time and traveled to the Caribbean, probably to avoid further imprisonment for debt. He was returning by ship when he grew ill, and the ship's crew put him ashore at the Amelia Island plantation of his old Revolutionary comrade, Nathaniel Greene, off the coast of Georgia. Lee died in Greene's house and is buried on the Island. Robert E. Lee visited his father's grave for the first time as a Confederate general.

Harry's profligacy cost him the home where Robert was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, which still stands. This was the ancestral home of the Lees, Stratford Hall. It was Robert's lifelong dream to recover this house, but he was never able to do so. After the house was lost the family went to live with relatives in Fredericksburg. Had Robert not obtained an appointment to West Point he would have had little opportunity for higher education. The traumas of these early days go far to explain aspects of Robert's character.

Answer 2

Yes. The father was Richard Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, a hero of the Revolution. As a delegate to the Second Continental Congress he had offered the Resolution that led to the Declaration of Independence from Britain. He was a brilliant man but terrible with money. He was involved in one impractical scheme after another. A few of these, such as one for developing land in the vicinity of Washington DC, were merely ahead of their time. Many prominent men of that era were perpetually in debt, owing far more than they could ever repay, and got by only by continually negotiating new loans from their peers.

Light Horse Harry Lee died of the lingering effects of a beating he sustained from a mob at the time of the War of 1812. Lee's friend and political ally was a Baltimore newspaper editor. The Baltimore mob got the idea that this editor was pro-British. Lee had gone to his offices to help him defend his business when the mob overran the place and beat him severely. He lived for a time and traveled to the Caribbean, probably to avoid further imprisonment for debt. He was returning by ship when he grew ill, and the ship's crew put him ashore at the Amelia Island plantation of his old Revolutionary comrade, Nathaniel Greene, off the coast of Georgia. Lee died in Greene's house and is buried on the Island. Robert E. Lee visited his father's grave for the first time as a Confederate general.

Harry's profligacy cost him the home where Robert was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, which still stands. This was the ancestral home of the Lees, Stratford Hall. It was Robert's lifelong dream to recover this house, but he was never able to do so. After the house was lost the family went to live with relatives in Fredericksburg. Had Robert not obtained an appointment to West Point he would have had little opportunity for higher education. The traumas of these early days go far to explain aspects of Robert's character.