Author: Shirley Jean Foreman Bartley

Publisher:

Published: 2016-05-01

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 9784871872553

Lee Family History is an amazing collection of photographs, documents and the genealogy of John Lee (1848-1914) and his wife Margaret Schultz Lee (1853-1936). They were a pioneer family who came by wagon train from Pennsylvania to Nebraska, arriving in 1879 and becoming one of the earliest settlers of Nebraska. They had ten children, almost all of whom had more children, leaving a huge number of descendants throughout the Midwestern United States. The founder of this branch of the Lee Family was William Lee. He died fighting for "Bonnie Prince Charlie," Charles Edward Stewart, the "Young Cavalier" or the "young Pretender," who had returned to Scotland from France with only six companions in the early part of 1746. He at once set to work to regain for his father the crown that James II of England had lost. A large army of clansmen was soon mobilized for the task and among those who rallied to the standard of the "lost cause" was William Lee of the Clan MacPherson. Charles Stewart achieved a victory at Falkirk. However, on the 16th of April, 1746, a second battle was fought at Culloden Muir (Moor), near Inverness, Invernesshire in the Highlands of Scotland. The superior English "red coat" forces decisively routed the clans. The day was not only a disaster to the House of Stewart, but also to William Lee. No word was received from him thereafter. He probably succumbed on the field of battle. He left two young sons, William and James. James, the youngest, was born 30 Sep 1742 in Inverness, Scotland. He was only three years old when his father died in battle. He married Isabelle Davidson in 1775. They had four children. After Isabelle Davidson died in 1791, he along with his eldest son William Lee came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Their fourth child was Alexander Lee who was born 14 June 1814. This is where it gets interesting because he married Sarah Thersa Hassen who is believed to have been a descendant of a Hessian soldier who came to America to fight with the mercenaries for the British during the American Revolutionary War and who never went back after the war. Alexander Lee had eight children with Sarah Thersa Hassen, all of whom married and had more children thus producing a huge number of descendants, of which I am one. The children of Alexander Lee spread out and disbursed. Some stayed in the area of Philadelphia. Others became frontier families going to Nebraska and Oklahoma. This book concerns one of those families, the descendants of John Lee and his wife Margaret Schultz Lee and their ten children. They spread out further and now comprise twenty different families in eight different states of the United States. This book was published to benefit those twenty families and to help them to learn their family origins.