On October 20, 1862, Annie Carter Lee, daughter of Robert E. Lee, died in Warren County. She had been ill with typhoid fever while visiting the Jones Springs resort there.
Lee sent both Annie and her sister Agnes to North Carolina in June 1862 when Union troops occupied their home in Arlington, Va. When Annie died it was not possible to take her body back to Arlington, which was then behind enemy lines. The owner of Jones Springs offered to have her body buried in his family cemetery and the Lees accepted.
Zearell Crowder, a Confederate soldier, created the 11-foot tall obelisk that marks her grave to this day. It was dedicated in a ceremony in 1866. The Lee family and the citizens of Warren County paid for the monument, and Robert E. Lee visited the grave in 1870.
In 1994, descendants of the Lee family had Annie’s body removed from the Warren County grave and interred with the rest of the family at Washington and Lee Chapel in Virginia.
The obelisk remains in the Jones Family Cemetery located on Annie Lee Road.
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