General information about Arlington House on Wikipedia
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Arlington House
Arlington House is the historic Custis family mansion built by George Washington Parke Custis from 1803–1818 as a memorial to George Washington.
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The start of the cemetery at Arlington
The U.S. Army of the Potomac used the mansion for a headquarters and buried Civil War soldiers in the garden by the mansion. In a gesture of unity after the war, 2,111 unknown Civil War soldiers from both sides and several battles were buried together in a vault located near the mansion.
After the war
The government had confiscated Arlington Estate claiming that its rightful owner, Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee, did not pay her property taxes on time in person (she had sent an agent to pay, who was refused). As per the Custis will, Arlington would later go to her son George Custis Lee. After the War, the property was returned to the Lee family, after a Supreme Court decision determined that the Federal Government had unlawfully refused payment, invalidating the subsequent confiscation. Custis Lee sold the property back to the U.S. with the graves undisturbed.
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Lee's Mansion Before the War
Mary Anna Randolph Custis married her childhood friend and distant cousin, then-U.S. Army Lieutenant Robert E. Lee, and all but one of their children were born there. They all lived at Arlington House together as Lee traveled as a soldier in the U.S. Army. It was there that Lee decided to resign from the U.S. Army after having been offered command of it, to eventually lead the Army of Northern Virginia in the Confederate States Army during the U.S. Civil War.
