Philip Lee, Sr.
United States Naval Captain, Judge,& Justice of the, and Sheriff in colonial Virginia
Philip Lee, the Elder (1681–1744). He was the son of Colonel Richard Lee II, Esquire (1647–1715), by his marriage to Laetitia Corbin (ca. 1657-1706, and he born in 1681.
Paradise, Northumberland County, Virginia. He moved to the Province of Maryland in about 1700, and married his first wife, Sarah in about 1707. Lee was commissioned a Captain in 1708, and that same year was elected as a member of the Lower House of the General Assembly from in which he served until 1722. Lee was a Justice of Prince George's County, Maryland from 1710–1720 and the Sheriff from 1722-1725. From 1725-1744 he was a member of the Upper House, and also on the King’s Council during the same time. Lee was a Justice of the Provincial Court from 1726–1732, and Associate Commissary General in 1727, and a Naval Officer of the North Potomac from 1727-1744. He owned some 2,467 acres (9.98 km2) and his estate was valued at 4,240 pounds of current money, including 87 slaves, 2 servants, 185 oz. old silver, 1 yawl, and books, at his plantations in Prince George’s, Charles, and Dorchester Counties in Maryland.
Lee had been living in Maryland about fourteen years when he inherited from his father a tract of land at Cedar Point in Maryland called the “Lee’s Purchase” plantation, of Stump Dale, situated on the Potomac in Charles County. However, this property was occupied by a tenant with a sole and exclusive contract between 1705 and 1718. It was not until the later date that Lee would gain legal title to the land, when the dispute between his father and another claimant to the land was settled by the Provincial Court. The property was only just being developed when Lee died in April 1744, and his will was recorded in Charles County on May 1, 1744. At this date there was a one-room-and-loft dwelling which doubled as Lee’s naval office. In addition he had built a bakehouse and mill which he listed in his will. Lee’s home plantation was his Prince George’s County seat, where all of his children were undoubtedly born.
The Lee family of Virginia and Maryland bore arms that were blazoned as, “Gules, a fesse componee or and azure between eight billets argent”. Crest: “On a staff raguly a squirrel cracking a nut from dexter end of the staff an oak branch fructed, all proper”. These were the same arms used by the Lees of Coton and Langley, Shropshire, and were confirmed by the College of Arms for the Maryland and Virginia branches of the family.
