So young Robert Lee lived among inspiring surroundings. Stratford House had done much to keep alive the glory of the Lee family. Important men had lived beneath its roof. There were Robert’s cousins, the two li brothers, Francis Lightfoot Lee and Richard Henry Lee, who had signed the Declaration of Independence. And there was Robert’s own father. General Henry Lee, the famous Light Horse Harry, as he was called, who had fought in the Revolutionary War by the side of General Washington when we won our freedom from England.

The boy was told that three generations of Lees had lived at Stratford, and that the gates had always been open wide to their friends. Everyone was always welcome at Stratford, and the finest people of the land were proud to visit the distinguished family who lived there. The house stood for the best in all things. Its library was filled with fine books. Robert’s father was a scholar as well as a soldier, and the boy always remembered him sitting in a big chair or at his desk writing an account of the battles he had fought with his beloved George Washington. The boy saw the brave spirit of the Lees still alive in his father, who was fighting constantly against ill-health. Robert himself had that same brave spirit, and he was to do even greater things than the others of his family had done.