05/28/2026
Did you know??
On this day in 1768 George Washington purchased William Lee, who was about 16 years old, from a widow in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Lee would go on to become Washington’s personal valet and his constant companion during the Revolutionary War. A muscular, athletic man, and a skilled horseman, Lee is described in numerous wartime accounts as riding alongside General Washington in battle and as he reviewed troops. In addition to being responsible for such things as laying out Washington’s clothes and tying his hair, Lee also acted as a courier and was responsible for maintaining the general’s papers. His wartime service made Lee a something of a celebrity.
Often called “Billy” in contemporary accounts, Lee preferred to be called “William” and that (or “Will”) is how Washington always referred to him after 1771.
Little is known about Lee’s personal life. It is known that he had a wife and child living on Mt. Vernon at the end of 1775. That wife must have died shortly after that, however, because it is known that during the war Lee married a free black woman named Margaret Thomas, a seamstress and washerwoman working in Washington’s headquarters household. At Lee’s request, Washington was making arrangements to move Margaret to Mt. Vernon in 1784, but there is no record of her ever having lived there. In Washington’s letter asking a friend in Philadelphia to procure her passage he writes that Lee’s wife “has been in an infirm state of health for sometime.” There being no further record of her, it seems likely that she passed away before being able to come to Mt. Vernon.
In 1785, while assisting Washington on a surveying project, Lee fell and broke a kneecap. In 1788, on a trip to the post office in Alexandria, Lee fell again, this time breaking his other kneecap.
Despite his painful and debilitating injuries, Lee left Mt. Vernon in 1789 to go to New York for Washington’s inauguration, traveling with Tobias Lear, Washington’s secretary. By the time they reached Philadelphia, however, Lee was unable to continue, and was left there in the care of two physicians. When Washington learned of Lee’s condition, he sent a message to Philadelphia recommending that Lee return to Mt. Vernon but adding that because “he has been an old and faithful servant,” “every reasonable wish” of Lee should be gratified. Lee insisted on traveling on to New York. After being fitted with a steel knee brace, he arrived in in June 1789, where he served as President Washington’s valet for a little over a year. In August 1790 he returned to Mt. Vernon, where he began working as a shoemaker, a job he could do while seated.
George Washington died in December 1799. In his will written five months earlier, Washington provided that upon the death of his widow Martha, all his slaves were to be freed. He made an exception for William Lee, however, who was granted “immediate freedom.” Washington’s will also allowed Lee to remain on Mt. Vernon if he wished “on account of the accidents which have befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment,” and he granted Lee a lifetime annual stipend. “This I give to him,” Washington wrote, “as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War.” (An aside—rather than wait until her death, Martha Washington freed all the rest of her husband’s slaves about a year after he died.)
Unfortunately, it appears that Lee had a difficult life after his emancipation. The painter Charles Willson Peale saw Lee during a visit to Mt. Vernon in 1804 and described him as “a cripple & in an extraordinary manner.” Writing in 1858, the historian Benson Lossing reported that in his later years Lee suffered from the effects of alcoholism. West Ford, a free black man who had treated Lee, told Lossing that Lee died at about age 60, during a fit of delirium tremens. Lee was buried at Mt. Vernon, but the exact location of his grave has been lost to history.
The image is John Trumbull’s 1780 portrait of Washington, with William Lee in the background.
