America's 250th

Commemorate America’s 250th Anniversary with Stratford Hall

Raised within these walls, statesman Richard Henry Lee first proposed independence from Britain on June 7, 1776; his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee joined him in signing the Declaration of Independence that started the rationale for revolution; eldest sister Hannah Lee Corbin urged her brothers to extend the principle of “no taxation without representation” to property-owning women even as sister Alice Lee Shippen canvassed Philadelphia soliciting contributions in support of the Continental Army; and while war raged at home brother William Lee acted as commercial agent for the Continental Congress in French ports event as youngest brother Arthur Lee collected political intelligence abroad before being appointed co-commissioner to the court of Louis XVI, where he signed the 1778 Treaty of Alliance that brought France decisively into the war on the American side. Meanwhile, their cousin Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee III distinguished himself in the Army, winning a congressional medal for his command at the Battle of Paulus Hook.