Young Robert's Room
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Young Robert's Room |
The open door leads to the hallway. The canopied bed is like one that Robert might have used. At its foot, is a chest on which are children’s toys of the period. The object to the extreme left which looks like a stool is actually child's walker of the period. Made of wood, the walker had small metal casters on the bottom which allowed the child to move it. The stairway behind the walker which leads to the master bed, is a later addition and was not there during the Lee's occupancy. An antique child's cradle, also in the room, is not shown.
What of the children who shared this wing with Robert and their fates? Mildred was a bookish child who married Bostonian Edward Vernon Childe in May 1831. A wealthy lawyer, he relinquished his practice and they went to Paris to live a leisurely life with time to study literature and art. Mildred died in Paris in 1856 at the age of forty-five. Ann settled in Baltimore with her husband Judge William Louis Marshall. During the war, her son was a Colonel in the Union Army. Very close to her brother Robert, he wrote her to explain his resignation from the Army and his decision for the South. He closed the letter saying, "I shall love you till death." Often in ill-health, her death, not his, intervened in 1864, so they were never to meet again. Carter, the eldest, was closest to his father. He graduated second in the Harvard class of 1819 and practiced law in Washington, DC, Mississippi and Virginia. He died in 1871. Smith went to sea at 15. At 18 he was commissioned and eventually rose to be Commandant of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. He joined his younger brother in serving the Confederacy. He died in 1869.