Lee was descended from several 

colonial and Southern families, including the Parke Custises,

Fitzhughs, Dandriges, Randolphs, Rolfes, and Gerards. Through her paternal grandmother, Eleanor
Calvert, she descended from Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, making her a descendant
of Charles II of England and Scotland. Through her mother, Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, she was a
descendant of William Fitzhugh.[2]
Mary Anna Custis Lee was the only surviving child of George Washington Parke Custis, George
Washington's step-grandson and adopted son and founder of Arlington House, and Mary Lee
Fitzhugh Custis, daughter of William Fitzhugh[3] and Ann Bolling Randolph Fitzhugh. Her
godmother, Mary Randolph, the first person recorded buried at Arlington, wrote an early book on
housekeeping and cooking. Lee's birth year is usually given as 1808, but it appears in the Custis
family Bible and in records kept by her mother as 1807, and is also referred to in a letter her mother
wrote in the autumn of 1807. She was born at Annefield in Clarke County, Virginia when her
mother's coach stopped there during a journey.[4] She was well educated, having learned both Latin
and Greek.
She enjoyed discussing politics with her father, and later with her husband. She kept current with the
new literature. After her father's death, she edited and published his writings as Recollections and
Private Memoirs of Washington, by his Adopted Son George Washington Parke Custis, with a
Memoir of this Author by his Daughter[5] in 1859.
Mrs Lee was diminutive and vivacious. She had known her third cousin, Robert E. Lee, from
childhood; her mother and Robert's mother were second cousins, and Lee's father Henry had
delivered the eulogy to a crowd of 4,000 at George Washington's 1799 funeral. [6] Among Mary
Anna's other suitors was Sam Houston.

Engraving of Mary Anna Custis Lee, 1854

Lee inherited Arlington House from her father after he died in 1857. The estate had long been the
couple's home whenever they were in the area during her husband's military career. She was a
gracious hostess and enjoyed frequent visitors. She was a painter, like her father, and painted many
landscapes, some of which are still on view at the house. She loved roses and grew many varieties
of trees and flowers in the gardens there.[7]
Deeply religious, Lee attended Episcopal services when there was one near the army post.
From Arlington, Virginia, the Lees attended Christ Church (Alexandria, Virginia) in Alexandria, which
she and Robert had both attended in childhood. [8]
Lee taught her female slaves to read and write and was an advocate of eventual emancipation. She
did not free her slaves, but could have under state law of the time. She suffered from rheumatoid
arthritis, which became increasingly debilitating with advancing age. By 1861, she was using a
wheelchair.
With the advent of the American Civil War, Robert and their sons were called to service in Virginia.
Mary Custis Lee delayed evacuating Arlington Ho