Mildred
Childe Lee ildred
("Milly," "Precious Life") was the baby of the family and
was named after Robert E. Lee's sister Mildred (Lee) Childe. She was at home most
of the time until she went away to boarding school at Winchester, Virginia in
autumn of 1860. The youngest child, she was a bit spoiled and willful. Her father
once complained that she always wanted something. Yet, if able, he gave her everything
she wanted. She had some difficulties with her mother in the spring of 1861, for
making a fuss over a bonnet at a time when the Union was breaking apart, her home
was in danger, and her father's career in jeopardy. But she was a bright spirit
and a lively cheerful person. She had brown hair and rather plain features. She
was not pretty and had a tendency to plumpness but her father thought she brought
light into a room when she entered it, and she often did surprising things that
delighted him.
Like
Agnes she was very fond of her pet chickens
and the family cats. She took music lessons but evidently did not
practice very hard. She loved the flower garden and she had her
own individual plot which she planted with the help of Harry
Washington Gray, one of the slave children on the estate. Mildred,
too, read novel, religious books, and enjoyed singing hymns. She
was very close to her father after the war and was quite lonely
when he died. Of the other children, she was closest to Rob,
her childhood companion. Mildred never married although she longed
for companionship. She traveled widely in the 1870's and 1880's,
but did not seem to enjoy it much.
On March 26, 1905, Mildred died
in New Orleans and was interred in Lexington with other members of her family.
The room with which she was most closely associated was the girls' bedroom where
she kept her things and had play tea parties for her dolls, Jenny Lind and Angelina. More
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